Upcoming Events :
Housing Seminar: Partnerships with the Public Sector – Avoiding the pitfalls
Thu 31 May 2012
Minerva House, 5 Montague Close, London, SE1 9BB
High Court rules for Countrywide Surveyors
Wed 18 Jan 2012
The High Court has ruled in favour of Countrywide Surveyors after it was deemed to have overvalued a property by Paramatus AMC Ltd.
It was decided the organisation had not been negligent when estimating how much a flat was worth, due to instabilities in the wider housing market.
Indeed, the court said an eight per cent disparity could be considered an acceptable margin of error in the particular circumstances of the case including the prevailing volatility at the time of the valuation.
Mark Vinall, a partner at Winckworth Sherwood Solicitors, commented: "Surveyors and their insurers fearing negligence claims will take comfort from this case as, firstly it allowed an increased margin of valuation error when valuing in difficult circumstances, including a lack of comparable evidence and the market being unstable and, secondly as it was held (obiter) that even if the valuer had been found to be negligent, then the lender would have been 60 per cent contributory negligent due to ignoring discrepancies between the credit check report and the mortgage application and the product being self certified."
