Surveyor availability is rapidly worsening, and is posing a threat to the residential property market recovery.
The claim comes from Blemain Group, a specialist lender of mortgages, secured loans and bridging products.
Tracey Bailey, head of residential underwriting at Blemain Group, said: “The property market is poised for a strong and sustained recovery.
“However, the industry as whole, including surveyors and their insurers, must recognise the need to serve all parts of the market or this recovery could falter.
“Where surveys are delayed, there’s an increased chance of the loan application not proceeding and in some instance the series of chain events involved in the transaction collapsing entirely.
“It’s a real issue, as second charge and other specialist lenders are being impacted – in many cases to the same extent as the traditional first charge residential mortgage market.
“We’re hearing reports of customers losing the property the want to buy due to the extended period to obtain the survey.”
She said that surveys are being delayed and sometimes cancelled at short notice, causing knock-on delays in the underwriting process.
She said: “Checks and documents that are time sensitive often have to be redone as they have expired, leading to yet further delays.
“Also, if investors are looking to release equity from existing property to fund additional purchases, any delay will hamper these efforts and withhold much-needed liquidity from the market.”
According to the RICS, there are currently 8,500 residential valuers registered in the UK, of whom 5,500 list residential valuation as their primary activity, and around 2,000 of whom work for the largest 20 firms in the UK.
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Comments
Go back to drive buys, it saves time.
Why not use Energy Assessors and they can just then ask the agents for the price like out of town surveyors do?
Another surveyor here, tomorrow I am expected to fund a 60 mile round trip make 3 calls and get paid less than £100 in 3 months time. It is simply not worth it.
It is little wonder there is a shortage of mugs like me
"All in all a perfect storm is brewing!" You forgot to add, "Again!"
When Santander bought Abbey they steadily made redundancies amongst us in-house surveyors, and reduced our numbers from 120 to 40 (approx) over a 5 year period.
Then they sold us to e.surv (despite having said repeatedly that they would not sell us) where our salaries halved. At that point I decided to go and do something else. Is it any wonder there's a surveyor shortage?
Plus RICS are too concerned with conquering the world to worry about the small independent firms earning rubbish fees whilst paying huge PI premiums.
It is not just the low panel fees, what possible motivation is there to have anything at all to do with RICS?
The cost of PI and the constant bleating on and on about CPD. the youngsters don't want all that hassle so the only folk actually doing the valuations are the old guard whose minimum age is about 50, plus many many older surveyors who retired once and agreed to do a few a week but are being pressured to do upwards of 30.
It doesn't matter though the lenders can always rely on a Compooter generated valuation, Oh wait no they can't , that is what caused the financial meltdown in 2008.
And then there is the pressure to value up to agreed asking price. Agents are happy, Vendors are happy, Help to buy applicants are happy to escape from renting but whose PI is going to cough up when the extra 20% over valuation doesn't actually stack up in 2 years time?
All in all a perfect storm is brewing!
I agree - a call out to fix your washing machine costs more than you get to carry out a lender valuation they need to put their fees up and at the same time take action against or stop using the parasites that are the panel managers - these leeches add nothing and yet cream up to a third of the fee off for themselves!
I think you will find that there is more of a problem with the derisory valuation fees than the number of surveyors. Start paying proper valuation fees and watch things change.