What is a Help to Buy Valuation?
What is a Help to Buy Valuation?
If you have been looking at buying a home, yet you have found that you are not able to raise the funds in the way that you normally would, then you may have heard of the Help to Buy Scheme. Help to Buy was designed as way to allow more people to buy their own home for them and their family to live in.
The Government purchases some of the home and the home owner buys the rest, which means that they have a shared ownership with the Government and don’t have to raise a full mortgage. The scheme will loan you a proportion of the value of the property, it will not be a set amount of money. This means that in order to work out how much you need to pay back, you will need to organise a help to buy valuation.
But what are help to buy valuations? Who can do them and what happens during one?
What are help to buy valuations and who can do them?
In order to have a help to buy valuation on your property, you are going to need to have a specialist help to buy valuation surveyor come to you. These will be chartered RICS surveyors and will know exactly what they need to be looking out for when they are conducting the valuation.
What happens during one?
During a help to buy valuation there are a number of strict criteria’s that the surveyor is going to be looking for. These include:
- Following the RICS Valuation Standards (also known as the Red Book)
- That they act independently from any estate agent
- That they will provide a report that will be signed by a member of RICS
- That they will be able to provide comparable information of sales of local properties that have been sold within the last 12 months
- That they will ensure that there are no conflicts of interest
- That both the interior and exterior of the property will be properly checked over and covered within the report
- That the date of the inspection will be included in the report
- The report will take into account the general condition of the property and will include photographs
- That any assumptions that have been made and used will be evidenced
In order to accurately do this, they need to be a qualified and experienced RICS Certified Help to Buy Surveyor and Valuer. Which means that they understand what it takes to provide a proper valuation and take into consideration all of the key factors that can impact a valuation of a property.
Any Help to Buy valuations that are carried out will be valid for 3 months and you will need to make the sale, the repayment or the re-mortgage on the property within those 3 months. However, depending on the valuation surveyor that you use, you will often find that they will be able to extend the valuation report beyond this time so that it continues to apply and can be used within the sale.