Why There's More To Valuing Your Buy to Let Property Than You May Realise

I regularly receive emails asking if I can give advice and guidance on how to assess the value of a buy to let or investment property. Obviously this will be very useful knowledge to anybody who is thinking of buying or selling a property. And particularly for somebody who's thinking of buying a property and then doing a refurb, and who is wondering what the property will revalue at when the refurb is finished. I can tell from the way that the question is posed that the asker often expects a very short and simple answer. In turn this suggests that they think that valuing a property is easy. Perhaps even that there is only one answer, and there is a quick and simple process or system or formula to arrive at that answer, if only they knew what that process or formula was But unfortunately none of this is true. Frustrating though it may be for those of us who are more details minded, valuation is imprecise. You’ll often hear it said that valuation is an art and not a science, and that is true. It's not a single figure. The value of a property will lie within a range of opinions, and most, and sometimes all, of those opinions are valid. There's also no quick or easy system or process to arrive at that range of opinions. It's not as simple as sitting at your computer, and plugging an algorithm into Rightmove, and then printing off the answer. You might know that I'm an ex Chartered Surveyor, and I spent three years at University studying property, where one of the modules I studied was valuation, and then spent two years obtaining practical experience before I qualified as a Chartered Surveyor. Even then, after 5 years, I was only let loose on the simplest of valuations. Having said all of that, if you have an opinion of the value of the property, then that opinion IS equally valid as somebody else’s opinion, IF you have undertaken the necessary research to validate and back your opinion. And we will be looking at what that necessary research is in our in the next video. But in this video I want to talk about some of the behind the scene stuff which is important to know if you want to understand how valuation really works.. Here's to Successful Property investing. Peter Peter Jones (ex) Chartered Surveyor, author and property investor https://www.ThePropertyTeacher.co.uk PS. By the way, I've rewritten and updated my best-selling e-book, The Successful Property Investor's Strategy Workshop, which is an account of how I put together my multi-property portfolio, starting from scratch and with no money of my own, and how you can do the same. For more details please go to: https://www.ThePropertyTeacher.co.uk/the-successful-property-investors-strategy-workshop