Valuations and surveys
Do you deal with customer complaints about valuations and surveys for a mortgage lender or broker?
This page will give you an overview of the complaints we can help with and how we approach them.
On this page
Do you have a mortgage complaint?
Complaints we deal with
Because you instructed the surveyor, your customer may think it’s up to you to put things right. Consumers often tell us:
- that their lender arranged the wrong type of survey
- the survey on the property didn’t flag up important problems
- they wouldn’t have bought a property – or would have reduced their offer – if they’d known the facts
- the valuation didn’t match the asking price – so their lender refused to offer what was needed to buy the property
It may be that the surveyor is responsible for the content of a valuation or survey. But the complaint might be about issues arising from the instruction, or lending, based on the report.
We can’t usually deal with a complaint about the actions of an independent surveyor. In these cases, we’ll direct the consumer to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) for help.
Rules on valuations and surveys
When we look at complaints about valuations and surveys, we use the regulatory and legal standards that applied at the time of the event that the consumer is complaining about.
The Mortgages and Home Finance: Conduct of Business (MCOB) sourcebook sets out how mortgage lenders should provide services to borrowers, covering regulated:
- mortgage contracts – including first and second charge mortgages and bridging loans
- equity release products
- home purchase plans, and
- sale and rent back agreements
Handling complaints about valuations and surveys before they come to us
Good complaint handling can repair a relationship, build confidence in financial services, and help customers understand your financial products. We'd expect to see that you have:
- made sure you understand the customer’s complaint
- thought about your responsibilities relating to the report, and
- where appropriate, signposted your customer to the surveyor or RICS.
We'd expect your complaint handling teams to fully understand:
- all the relevant rules and regulations, including the requirements of the Consumer Duty
- what to send us when we're dealing with a complaint about your firm
Our decisions database holds all the final decisions we’ve published since 1 April 2013. They're anonymised to protect the identity of complainants but are based on real-life complaints, so will give you a good picture of how we resolve disputes.
Our complaints data will give you an idea of the volume of complaints we receive and resolve, and the proportion that we have upheld in consumers’ favour.
How we resolve complaints on valuations and surveys
We only look at complaints you've had an opportunity to look into first. If the consumer is unhappy with your decision, or you don't respond to them within the time limits, they can come to us.
We’ll start by working out whether your firm is responsible for the report. Even if you issued it and it bears your name and corporate logo, that's doesn’t automatically make your firm responsible for it.
We also need to look at:
- what was said about responsibility for preparing the report
- if the buyer had direct contact with the surveyor
- what the surveyor said
- the format of any report the buyer saw – for example was it on your headed paper with your logo
- whether an independent surveyor signed off the report
Each case is different, so what we require will vary. But we’ll look at the facts and evidence from both you and your customer. We’ll usually consider:
- relevant laws and regulations
- regulators’ rules in place when the event happened, including the Consumer Duty
- guidance, standards and codes of practice in place at the time of the event
- whether you were clear about who carried out the valuation – an in-house or an independent surveyor
- whether the independent surveyor you instructed was a member of RICS
- whether you commented on parts of the survey report, which therefore appeared to be your opinion rather than the independent surveyor’s opinion
- anything you said in the report that turned out to be wrong
We may ask additional questions or for specific information, for example, to explore whether your firm complied with the Consumer Duty.
We follow the FCA’s dispute resolution rules (DISP) and will take into account how you’ve tried to put things right.
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Customers pay for valuation reports, but their purpose is to help you decide whether the property is good security for the loan.
If the customer wants a survey to help them decide whether to buy a property, they’ll need to pay for an additional report from the surveyor. They can also choose their own surveyor.
Customers can choose from three types of survey approved by the RICS:
- valuation report
- HomeBuyer report
- full structural survey
Generally, a customer shouldn’t rely on the lender’s valuation report. But if they asked you to arrange a more detailed report and didn’t get the type of survey they wanted, you might have made an administrative mistake.
If the customer didn’t learn about defects in the property as a result, they might end up spending money on unexpected repair costs.
However, HomeBuyer reports are much more detailed than basic valuation reports. So, we may conclude that the customer knew they’d got the wrong type of report.
If we uphold a consumer's complaint, we'll tell you what you need to do to put things right. We might ask you to:
- reorganise and pay for a new survey
- contribute to the costs of repair works if the survey didn’t report building defects that it should have
- compensate your customer for any distress or inconvenience
Case studies
'The valuation was too low, and now I can't get the mortgage I need'
Mortgages
‘My bank carried out the wrong kind of survey.'
Mortgages
Business Support Hub
Businesses and consumer advisers can contact our Business Support Hub on 020 7964 1400 for information on how we might look at a particular complaint, or for guidance on our rules and how we work.
We also work with businesses and other organisations to help prevent complaints.
