If you don’t need a mortgage to fund a property, you are in control of more of the process; after all, you’re not waiting for a massive organisation involved in huge number of sales to move at the speed of its limitations rather than your expectations.
Cash buyers don’t have to face the prospect of unexpected delays in mortgage approval, worries about the loan not being forthcoming and they don’t have to wait for a lender to check the property is good security for any loan.
Remember the old saying – ‘buyer beware’
You might not HAVE to do the checks that a mortgage lender insists on, but that doesn’t mean you should automatically skip them.
A lender insists on a survey as a check that their loan could be re-paid by the sale of the property. In theory, you don’t need to do this, especially since a survey and valuation are both included in the Home Report required by law for every property for sale in Scotland.
Given how much money is involved in purchasing property and given that a valuation is a relatively low proportion of the total, instructing a survey can give you peace of mind that everything is in order.
What about the Home Report?
Each Home Report includes a single survey and a mortgage valuation report and both are professionally written. However, both only tell so much of a story. The sole aim of the mortgage valuation report is to give the lender enough information and comfort to make a decision on whether to lend the money or not – they don’t want to know what the property is worth, simply whether they’ll get their money back when it is sold. The Single Survey is also not without its limitations. It tends to give bare facts rather than telling you how easy or otherwise it might be to fix a fault or whether a problem is relatively common or a potential nightmare to fix.
What’s in my best interest?
Only a surveyor instructed by you can provide the advice, the insight and the authoritative valuation that you need to make an informed decision based on your requirements.
However, on newer property you might be more than comfortable with what the home report tells you.
It really comes down to your attitude to risk. Given the sums involved, we would always advise consideration of instructing an independent survey and valuation. If it confirms the Home Report and mortgage valuation survey, then all well and good. If the valuation differs or the survey suggests that problems highlighted in the Single Survey could be worse than expected, you could save yourself a lot of time and trouble.