From the Blog

Putting your property into the right frame.

January 21, 2025

Have you considered taking equity out of your property? Equity release or retirement mortgages are becoming more commonplace for later-life lending and the market is beginning to open for Surveyors.

So how is a surveyor going to help in that journey? There was a recent article in Mortgage Solutions online publication that reported on research which was carried out by More2Life in the last year. It identified that the most common reason for a lender declining an equity release loan application was the mortgage valuation was too low.

Why would anyone put themselves in that situation? Getting in an RICS Surveyor right at the beginning of the journey could make an enormous difference to the value of the property. Getting in a surveyor to provide you with a full report on the property, will give you an understanding of the work that is going to be needed for the property to reach the maximum value, but more importantly, a surveyor could also advise you on how to make a small investment into the property now, which could potentially increase the valuation and therefor improve the changes of securing the equity release.

I recently met with a client, who was purchasing a 2-bedroom property, with a very small amount of renovation, this property could be increased to a 3-bedroom, putting it into a better sales bracket and improving the value immediately.

When a client is reliant on the cash that will be released from the property to manage a retirement gap, optimising that investment and doing everything possible to secure the loan in advance of the application, seems like a sensible option.

If you are looking for advice on getting the most from your property investment, get in touch today and chat with one of our qualified team.