Improve your property valuation

A property valuation is important if you are looking to sell your property to know where it sits in the market or if you are looking to take out a home loan.

Lenders use a valuation to determine what value they will place on a house for lending and to make sure that the property is a suitable security for the loan. If you are looking to refinance or sell, or to use your equity to build your investment portfolio, there are ways to help improve your chances of getting the best possible valuation.

The key items to consider are:

A well-presented property can make a significant difference when your property is being valued. You should treat your valuation like you would an open home, at the end of the day you want to leave the valuer with a positive opinion of the property. If key areas are obstructed with personal items, the valuer may miss the quality of your fixtures. This also extends to your outdoor areas, ensure trees and shrubs aren’t obstructing any views and that they are maintained.

If you have readily available building plans that are important to increasing the property’s value, hand them over to the valuer so that they can take them into consideration when preparing your valuation report.

The valuer may not be aware of modifications such as solar panels or underfloor heating. Make a list of any modifications and give it to the valuer to ensure they are not overlooked when they are completing their walkthrough. This also extends to any renovating of the property that you have done since you have purchased the property and the approximate cost of those renovations. The valuer will be looking carefully at the original purchase price and any increase in market value.

Care should be taken to manage the renovation costs in order to avoid over capitalising. Many home owners overspend on their renovations and this expenditure is not reflected in the increased value of the property. You should also be mindful that there should be consistency throughout the house, for example upgrading your kitchen to be modern while the rest of the house remains outdated, can look out of place and therefore does not improve the value of the house. The valuer is looking at how the house looks on the day not what it could potentially look like.

The valuer will take into account recent sales of similar properties in your area to help determine the value of your property. You can conduct your own research to get an indication by attending auctions, viewing recent sales in your area on websites like allhomes.com.au or domain.com.au or you could contact a real estate agent for a sales report for your suburb.