Nationwide raises valuation fees for different price bands

The Nationwide Building Society, the UK's largest building society, recently announced that it would be raising the cost of its valuations – but the building society seems to have done this very erratically, placing different percentage increases on different groups, and oddly hitting those paying under £200,000 for their homes and those paying over £800,000 the hardest.

From the increases it appears that people that are buying property or remortgaging for an amount under £200,000 – usually those with budget restraints such as first time buyers – are to be hit as hard as those that can afford to pay between £800,000 and a £1M for a property.

In reality the actual cost of most of the valuations will increase by around ten or fifteen pounds, but in terms of percentages there does not seem to be any real consistency. People paying under £200,000 (or remortgaging for under this amount) are being hit with increases of between 3.5% to 7.5%.

Those paying between £800,000 and a £1M for their property may be hit with increases of between nine and a half and over nineteen and a half percent. However, those in the middle groups that lie between these two bands will only incur increases of around 0.8 percent.

The buildings society is now being accused of targeting families and first time buyers, who can generally not afford to pay more than two hundred thousand for their properties.

However, an official for Nationwide stated: 'The reason the charges have gone up in such a fashion is primarily because of the charges that we incur from surveyors, which differ due to prices and they fluctuate quite randomly. We try to do it in a way that makes us as competitive as possible.'

Tom Smith
01.03.07

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