Property Valuations

There seems to be an enormous differential in peoples opinions of property values!

We recently had a property valued for remortgage purposes in Wimbledon and felt that having done our own research looking at similar properties sold in the vicinity and asking local Estate Agents, a value of £425,000 would be sensible.

We instructed a valuer to visit the property and initially did not advise them of our opinion as to the value. They provided a valuation report and declared a value of £325,000!!

Upon challenging this valuation and providing suitable comparable evidence of sold properties to back up our estimated value of £425,000, the valuer revised their value to £375000!!

The strange thing about this, was their original comparable evidence was based upon sold properties in a different London borough!

Bearing in mind that the "valuers" are supposed to be the experts, I find it rather odd that they valued the property so low in the first place and when presented with material facts, they felt compelled not to agree with the valuation of £425,000 but only "meet us halfway" with a valuation of £375,000.

Despite further evidence to support our "case", the valuer refused to increase the valuation any further, so we instructed another firm to carry out a second valuation.

This company valued the property at the £425,000 without query!!

What is going on?

I thought that we had enough problems with inexperienced / optimistic Estate Agents valuing properties for sale, but surely valuers should be more knowledgeable and provide an accurate valuation?

This seems to be a growing problem, with more and more valuers seriously under valuing properties.

I appreciate that the housing market is "cooling", but I don't believe that in most areas property prices have fallen yet and I don't think that it is the position of a valuer to try to drive prices down!

Has anyone else had similar problems??