EWJ August 62 2025 web - Journal - Page 89
How to Get the Best
From Your Valuer
I was challenged by a colleague to insert the only
two words which both feature all five vowels in the
correct order into a document. So as I cannot find
a way to use the word ‘abstemiously’ in an
article about valuation, I will continue…to value
five properties?....”
Some years ago I received an email which simply
read: - “...Please can you give me the cost to value
five properties?....”
Like with all professions these days, we need to know
our client(s). The identification and resolution of conflicts of interest is a major part of professionalism in
all disciplines and providing expert witness evidence
is no different. If the identities of the parties is not
divulged early on, it will be embarrassing and time
consuming for the lawyer appointing me to do the job,
if I discovered that one of the parties was already a
client of my firm and they have to restart the tendering process to find another expert. All valuations
carried out by Chartered Surveyors must include a
conflict of interest check irrespective of the nature
of the work, therefore it is imperative that at the
beginning of the fee quote process, the identities of
the parties are revealed.
The correct but facetious answer of course was “No”,
but given the question came from an obviously junior
member of a legal team with limited experience in either expert witness work or valuation of property, I
decided that the better answer was to ask a series of
questions which would enable me to provide a comprehensive response and which would also alert the
contact to the issues that all valuers face when quoting
for a job. Most of my work is single joint expert valuations and therefore the questions I asked were: • What are the names of the parties?
• What are the addresses of the properties including
the postcode?
• Do you have the title numbers?
• What is the use of the properties?
• Are they owner occupied or tenanted?
• If tenanted do you have a copy of the tenancy
agreements?
• Are there any issues affecting the properties that
require special consideration over a ‘standard’
valuation?
• Do the parties have their own opinions of value?
It should be obvious that all valuers must be
competent, but competence in this context is not the
basic ability to value property but, does the valuer
have the knowledge to value this type of property in
this location? The old adage of ‘location, location, location’ applies to valuation as it does to buying a family home. When a valuer asks for the address of the
property they are looking to check for two things: how
far away is it from their base and is it in a location in
which they feel competent to value. Clearly the distance and time needed to reach a property is a factor
in determining the fee but also, as even in these days
of swathes of comparable evidence data being available online, nothing beats the ability to say in Court,
this is an area in which I am more than simply competent, but I have years of experience operating in the
locality. A surveyor from out of town will not know the
nuances of micro-locations where simply crossing a
main road can double or halve the value of seemingly
identical properties. As an expert, it would be inappropriate to take on a job if they did know the location
well. Consequently there is little point asking a Manchester based valuer to value property in London and
inside the M25, the RICS would prefer you only
valued within a radius of five miles of your office.
It is possible that not everybody reading this article
will understand why these questions were asked and
for those that don't, the explanation of each of the
points above will give a detailed insight into how Chartered Valuation Surveyors (by definition, Registered
Valuers) are trained and regulated.
The valuation of property in an expert witness report
is governed by three of four documents. The first is
the RICS Valuation - Global Standards incorporating
the UK National Supplement. This is colloquially
known as the Red Book. The second document is the
RICS Practice Statement “Surveyors acting as Expert
Witnesses” and provides detailed advice to Chartered
Surveyors about all aspects of providing expert
witness evidence, both written and oral. The Family
Procedure Rules Part 25 or the Civil Procedure Rules
Part 35 depending on the nature of the dispute
between the parties complete the set of documents
and it would be assumed that all litigation lawyers
would be familiar with these.
EXPERT WITNESS JOURNAL
Similarly with the type of property. Not all valuers
would be able to value domestic property and commercial property has a wide range of sectors, some of
which, such as warehousing, or offices are valued principally by reference to their size but others such as
leisure property (pubs, hotels etc), or day nurseries or
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