[Background: back in November we put an offer in to buy the flat we're already living in. Offer accepted and paperwork signed in December]
All was going so well.... until the bank decided to settle on a valuation that's 5% lower than the agree price, so they'll only lend based on that figure, meaning we'd need to make up the shortfall.
There is another identical flat for sale for a bit less still, which would be absolutely great and worth the extra effort to move all our stuff from one apartment to another identical one on a higher floor, but the owner is out of the country and we're now urgent to decide what the fuck we're doing on the current flat.
Rargh...
Comments
I had issues with someone renting the house next door and got the details of the owner from the land registry, it cost £3.
Edit: didn't notice you're in Abu Dhabi
Trouble is I don't really want to go and tell our landlord "reduce price or we walk" until I've seen the other unit and know it's not got any major problems.
You have a sound basis for negotiation too - certainly check your options on the other place so you've got a fallback option, but I would then be quite open with the owner, show him the bank stuff, explain that the difference is going to be hard for you to summon up as cash, and ask what he can do.
I think the important thing is to show the owner the bank's valuation so he can see that you're not just trying it on, you have a genuine problem to solve.
Like @monquixote says, if that's the bank's valuation, that's more than likely bang on. That means any prospective buyers are going to be in the same position as you, which is a problem for your landlord.
It sounds as if there are too many solid reasons not to cough up that extra 5%.
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I would endeavour to challenge the comparables if you think they are wrong - if not, renegotiating the price is the way forward....
@jalapeno - the issue is we'd have to pay all of that extra 5% entirely ourselves, which is a chunky amount of money to find in a hurry (about 20k sterling). It basically moves us from a 75% mortgage to 71.5%.
Feedback
Second valuation done and came in at the asking price, so they're taking an average, meaning a slightly bigger deposit but not stupidly so. I'm ok with that.
And the bank knocked more than the extra fee off their upfront fees, so the extra valuation hasn't cost us anything.
Unless anything else goes wrong we'll complete next week. And the pound is going up a bit since "strong Brexit message plus Trump" so our UK savings are worth slightly desert dollars than they were last week. There might be champagne tonight...
Which of course in reality means I now have more massively debt than I've ever had before, and my monthly outgoings are almost unchanged, apart from who receives the cash. But property ladder and all that.
Woo!