In the next instalment of ‘What do they do?’ we are looking at Valuers.
If you have bought a house, then what a valuer does is not a completely foreign concept. You will recognise from our PDS and SPDS’s, GPS always relies on a ‘net realisation’ valuation when establishing our lending levels.
These valuations, therefore, play a critical role in ensuring we lend the appropriate amount. In order to obtain this valuation, GPS works with several valuation firms who are on our approved panel. These include CKC, m3 Property, JLL and other smaller firms. All GPS valuers are assessed by our director, Matt Buckley, who is the former managing director of Savills. Matt ensures that our valuers are all appropriately qualified and hold at least 5 years’ experience in development valuation prior to them being able to value for GPS.
It is important that valuers are assessed as their approach to the valuation process can either make or break a deal. You don’t want them to be too conservative as this will result in deals being incorrectly determined as unviable, and you don’t want them to be too bullish resulting in unrealistic determinations.
GPS has a library of comparable sales that allows us to assess a valuation with a critical eye to make sure they match our knowledge and real life experiences. If the valuers are not in line with the market, they are removed from the panel.
GPS strives to build strong and prolonged relationships with individual valuers as opposed to firms, so while our panel of firms may change from time to time, the people completing our valuations stay the same.
Over the years this has promoted loyalty to GPS including the referral of new, successful deals, accurate reporting and excellent communication over the viability of all proposed projects sent to them for assessment.
The relationship with our valuers is just another example of GPS’s focus on building mutually beneficial connections.
