Sydney’s booming property market is not only impacting first home buyers or home makers for that matter, it is also affecting the manner in which lenders conduct their valuation for lending and other purposes, by means of desktop valuation.
Today’s valuers are under increasing pressure from banks and other clients to conduct their assessments faster.
Valuers have always been proud of their profession when in their day, they conduct their service in full and in line with established practices.
With mounting pressure to deliver valuations quickly, some in the industry have turned to electronic valuation platform aka desktop valuation, that rely on a database of information to make quick assessments, free of any hands-on assessment. New technology in this area is surely the cornerstone of speedy reporting. Right? Well, it is no in this case.
The desktop valuation is somewhat faster to complete and submit to the client, because it is performed without stepping foot on the property, but for the speedy delivery of the report, the process eliminates the most crucial factor of the service to deliver accuracy and relevancy. Why I hear you ask?
The “electronic” desktop valuation fails to understand that every property – even a vacant land is different – every property will have a varying level of quality, desirability, distraction, extension, renovation, maintenance, even the quality of the internal finishes and the structural integrity of the building. These are but a few of the elements that cannot be assessed by valuation firms that rely on electronic valuation platforms alone.
Would-be homebuyers are finding that desktop valuation that fall significantly short of the selling price are resulting in smaller mortgages issued by banks and the need for larger deposits.
Those who wish to borrow against the value of their property to pursue new investment opportunities are also losing out, finding that banks will offer them less than they would otherwise be entitled to, based on desktop valuation.
The only way to rule out the risk of an inaccurate property valuation is to seek the expert advice of a proven valuation firm that doesn’t rely on desktop valuation platforms for their processes.
Valuations require an in-depth understanding of the market as well as the property – the infamous DSR, Demand and Supply Ratio, market trends, right down to the size of each bedroom, the views from each window, or the car space on title (or exclusive use).
No technology can replace the human touch, at least not when valuing a property.
