VAS Audit personalises AVMs with Desktop+ launch
VAS Audit has launched Valuation Desktop+, an expert led review service for lenders who require the speed and flexibility of an Automated Valuation Model (AVM) delivered by one of the company’s highly experienced in-house valuation professionals.
With a commitment to turnaround all reports within 48 hours, Valuation Desktop+ has been designed to work with standard mortgageable residential property below £2m in London and £1m in the rest of the country, as well as semi-commercial and commercial properties.
The service takes all aspects expected of an AVM and augments them significantly, including explanations to all key factors plus conclusion and recommendations. It provides clients with a land registry mapped site plan to make sure the entire boundary has been taken into consideration within the valuation.
AVMs have traditionally been used in low loan-to-value cases where a site visit isn’t deemed necessary, on second change properties, or when moving a bridging loan onto a term facility when a security value is required.
For lenders it also meets the requirements for loan book reviews if a property falls outside standard criteria, and post-funding management where there is a need to understand current values to support discussions with a client.
Valuation Desktop+ joins live and retrospective valuation auditing, project monitoring audits and loan book monitoring as VAS Audit’s core service areas.
VAS Audit is part of the leading multi-faceted valuation market specialists VAS Group, which also incorporates VAS Panel and VAS Software.
Daniel Owen-Parr, managing director of VAS Audit, said: “Many lenders are reticent to use AVMs on residential properties at this moment because while automated systems are improving many properties are not vanilla in nature. There is also no option for semi-commercial and commercial properties.
“As such our new Valuation Desktop+ service has been developed to provide a speedy, flexible, cost-effective solution, led in-house by one of our highly-experienced auditors with many years of valuations experience, to provide a valuable valuation tool for lenders and brokers across multiple property types.
“We can review all aspects of a case, so not only will our service cover the basics of a desktop opinion of value, but also it creates the capacity and foresight to highlight any other issues which have to be considered as part of a loan security decision, all delivered through our set report templates.”
