Refinancing and insurance
If you are refinancing and looking to maximise your valuation we can help. We are landlords who have bought, built and renovated to maximise value. We offer a free 20-minute call to discuss your property and can also create valuation packs for your surveyor.
Getting the valuation right
Most landlords treat a valuation as something that happens to them. It isn’t. A surveyor arriving at a property with no information, no comparables and no context will value it conservatively, because conservative is the safe answer when you don’t know.
A valuer is in the property for twenty minutes. What they see in those twenty minutes decides what the property is worth.
We prepare properties and paperwork for valuation. That means the property is presented properly on the day, and the surveyor arrives with everything they need rather than working it out from scratch.
What we do
- Prepare a pack for the surveyor: schedule of works and costs, room measurements, floor plan, tenancy and rent detail, licence and compliance certificates
- Pull local comparable evidence, so the valuer isn’t relying only on what a portal search returns
- Set out the rental income properly, which matters more than the bricks on an HMO or a multi-let
- Meet the surveyor at the property and answer questions on the spot
Valuation preparation is £150 for a single let and £200 for an HMO, including meeting the surveyor at the property.
The difference is the comparable evidence — room-level comparables on a shared house take considerably longer to assemble than sales comparables on a terrace, and they are the part that moves the valuation most.
The fee is the same whether or not you use a broker we introduce you to.
Why it matters more on an HMO
A six-bed HMO valued as a six-bed house is valued wrongly. Where a property is valued on its income rather than on comparable sales, the rent roll, the room count and the licence position all feed the number — and if the surveyor hasn’t been given them, they will use what they can see instead.
The difference between a property valued as a family home and the same property valued on its income can be substantial. Getting that right is usually worth more than the rate you end up on.
Finding the right lender
We aren’t mortgage advisers and we don’t recommend products. What we can do is introduce you to a broker we work with, who does this properly and who understands HMO and portfolio lending rather than treating it as an awkward version of a residential mortgage.
You are free to use your own broker. Our fees don’t change either way, and we will still prepare the property and the pack.
Insurance
Landlord insurance is one of those things that gets bought once and renewed without much thought, and HMOs are where that goes wrong most often. Cover written for a single family let can respond badly to a property with multiple tenancies, unrelated occupants and a licence attached.
We can introduce you to a broker who arranges landlord and HMO cover. As with lending, we don’t advise on products and you are free to arrange your own.
How we’re paid for introductions
We may receive a commission from brokers we introduce you to. We will tell you before making the introduction. Our fees are the same whether or not you use them.
We think you should know this before you act on a recommendation rather than after.
Where to start
If you have a refinance coming up, the useful time to talk is before you instruct anyone, not the week the surveyor is booked. Preparation takes a few weeks, and most of the value is in what happens beforehand.