People ask what a property is worth as though the question had one answer waiting to be looked up. It does not. A valuation is a reasoned opinion, given by somebody qualified to give it, about a described property, as at a particular date, for a particular purpose — and that last element is not a formality on the cover page. It is part of the question, which means it is part of the answer. What a house would fetch in an ordinary sale, what it would cost to rebuild after a fire, and what a lender would treat as recoverable security are three different questions about one building, and they produce three different figures without anybody being wrong. Which explains the thing families and buyers find hardest to accept: two honest reports on the same property can differ, and before deciding one of them is dishonest it is worth comparing the purposes, the dates and the assumptions, because that almost always accounts for it. Two more corrections are worth making at the start, because both are believed widely and both cost money. The government reference figure published for a locality is not a valuation — it is an administrative benchmark that knows nothing about your particular property. And a price is not a valuation either: a price is what two specific people agreed on one day, for reasons that may have had little to do with the building. Everything below is about getting a report that answers your actual question, and then reading the page that tells you what the figure really means — which is never the page with the figure on it.
Worth pinning down, because the word is used for several different documents and people arrive expecting whichever one they have heard of.
A valuation report is a reasoned opinion of value, set out in writing, by somebody qualified to give it. It describes the property, states what was inspected and what was assumed, explains how the opinion was arrived at, and gives a figure as at a stated date for a stated purpose.
The figure is the shortest part of it and the least interesting. Anybody can produce a number. What makes the document worth its fee is that the number comes with its reasoning attached, so that a reader can see what it rests on and decide how much weight to give it.
Which is also the test of a bad report. Not that the figure is wrong — you usually cannot tell — but that nothing in the document lets you see how it was reached. A page with a number and a signature is not a valuation; it is an assertion with letterhead.
So when you read one, judge it the way you would judge any argument: are the facts stated, are the assumptions visible, and does the conclusion follow from them?
A distinction people resist, understandably, because they wanted certainty and are being handed a judgement.
Some things about a property are facts. Its extent. Its age. Whether a structure exists. Those can be measured and verified, and a report that gets them wrong is simply wrong.
Value is not in that category. It is an estimate of what would ordinarily be expected in given circumstances, formed from evidence that is always incomplete — because the one thing that would settle it, an actual sale of this exact property today, has not happened.
So the honest version of what a valuer produces is: on this evidence, for this purpose, as at this date, in my judgement. Every qualification in that sentence is doing real work, and a report that omits them is not more confident, it is less complete.
The practical consequence is that a range is often more truthful than a point, and that where a single figure is required — as it frequently is — the reasoning behind it matters more than its last digit.
The central idea on this page, and the one that dissolves most of the arguments people have about valuations.
Consider one house. What might it fetch if sold in the ordinary way? What would it cost to rebuild the structure from nothing? What would a lender treat as recoverable if it had to be sold quickly? What is a one-fifth undivided share in it worth to somebody who cannot sell alone?
Four questions, one property, four different figures — and none of the four is a mistake. They answer different questions, and the difference between them can be large.
Which is why the purpose is stated on the report rather than mentioned in passing. It tells the reader which question was answered, and it warns them against using the document for a different one.
So decide the purpose before you engage anybody, and say it plainly. “What is it worth?” is not a brief. “What would it be expected to fetch, in an ordinary sale, as at this date” is.
And where a report is being obtained for two purposes at once, say so at the outset. Sometimes one document can serve both. Sometimes it cannot, and it is much cheaper to know that before the inspection than after.
Families discover this at the worst possible moment and conclude that somebody is being dishonest. Usually nobody is.
Five things move a figure legitimately, and any one of them explains a gap. A different purpose. A different date. A different extent included — one report covering the land and structure, another only the unit. Different assumptions about condition, permissions or access. And different evidence available, because comparable information is not equally available to everybody.
So the first move when two reports disagree is not to accuse. It is to put them side by side and compare those five things. That exercise takes half an hour and it resolves most disagreements without anybody having to be wrong.
Where the five match and the figures still differ meaningfully, you have a genuine difference of judgement, which is a real thing and is dealt with differently — by understanding the reasoning on each side rather than by picking the one you prefer.
And where one report turns out to rest on a factual error, that is neither a difference of opinion nor dishonesty. It is a correction, and it should be raised as one.
A question with a definite answer that people discover far too late.
The recipient of a valuation frequently has requirements of their own: who may prepare it, what it must contain, sometimes the format itself. A lender commonly does. An office may. In a family matter, the other side certainly has a view, even if it is not written down anywhere.
So before anybody is engaged, put the question to whoever will read the report: whose valuation do you accept, and is there a form it has to take? One call, one answer, and it prevents the commonest waste in this subject.
In a family or a dispute, do more than ask — agree the valuer in advance, in writing, with everybody. A report commissioned by one side and presented to the others is rarely accepted whatever its quality, and the money spent on it is usually wasted twice over, because it also hardens positions.
Where two sides cannot agree on one person, agreeing on two, and on what happens if the figures differ, is a workable second best. Deciding that after the reports arrive is not.
A small line on the cover that decides what the document is worth.
A valuation is an opinion as at a date. It does not speak about last year and it does not speak about next month. A report six months old is not wrong; it is simply answering a question about a day that has passed.
There is no general shelf life, and anybody who tells you a figure holds good for a fixed period is describing a convention rather than a fact. Whoever is relying on it has their own view about how recent it must be, which is another reason to ask them first.
The subtler point: the right date is not always today. Where a valuation is needed in connection with a death, a transaction that has already happened, or an event at a particular time, the relevant date is that one — and a report dated today answering a question about then is the wrong document.
Say the date you need when you commission. It changes what the valuer does, because an opinion about an earlier date is formed from the evidence available about that date rather than from what is around now.
Conflated constantly, and separating them saves people from two opposite mistakes.
A price is a fact about one transaction: what a particular buyer paid a particular seller on a particular day. It can sit well above or well below any reasonable estimate of value, for reasons that have nothing to do with the property — somebody needed money quickly, the parties were related, one side did not know what they had.
A value is an estimate of what would ordinarily be expected, taking such transactions as evidence rather than as proof.
Which is why a single sale nearby is information and not an answer, and why a valuer looks at several and asks how comparable each really is — same kind of property, similar condition, similar circumstances, near enough in time.
The first mistake is treating one neighbour’s sale as settling the matter. The second is dismissing all evidence because no two properties are identical. The report exists precisely to do the reasoning in between.
Its own section because it is the most widespread confusion in this subject in India, and it cuts both ways.
Authorities publish reference figures for localities, used for particular official purposes. Those figures are administrative instruments. They know nothing about your property — not its condition, not its position within the locality, not its access, not what has happened around it.
So they are not a ceiling: a property can be worth a great deal more. And they are not a floor in the sense people imagine either: a property in poor condition or with a problem attached is not worth a published figure merely because the figure exists.
Where such a figure is relevant for an official purpose, it is relevant for that purpose, and a valuer will note it. What it cannot do is substitute for an opinion about this particular property.
The version of this mistake that costs the most: deciding what a family property is worth, for the purpose of dividing it among people, by looking up a published figure. That is a shortcut whose consequences last a generation.
Described in general terms, because the detail belongs to the person doing it and a page like this should not pretend otherwise.
Broadly, there are three lines of reasoning, and a good report says which it relied on and why.
Comparison — what similar properties have actually transacted at, adjusted for the differences. Sensible where there is a real market in comparable things.
Cost — what it would take to provide the same thing, allowing for age and condition. Relevant where the structure is the point, which is why it appears in insurance questions.
Income — what the property produces or could produce, treated as the basis of its worth. Relevant where the property is held for what it earns.
A property can be looked at through more than one of these, and where two approaches point to very different places, that divergence is itself information. A report that mentions only its conclusion has hidden the most interesting part of its own reasoning.
For most purposes an inspection is the foundation of the exercise, and its absence changes what the report can claim.
What a visit establishes cannot be got from papers: the actual condition, what has been built and whether it matches the plan, the access, what is happening around it, whether anybody is in occupation, and the dozen small things that a photograph does not convey.
There are limited situations where a desk exercise is what has been asked for, and that is legitimate provided the report says on its face that the property was not inspected and what that means for the opinion.
What is not acceptable is a report that reads as though a property was seen when it was not. That document is a weakness in your own file, and it fails at exactly the moment somebody examines it closely.
So arrange proper access, and be there or send somebody who can open everything and answer questions. An inspection conducted from the gate produces a report with a great many assumptions in it.
The single thing most within your control, and it directly determines how many assumptions end up in the report.
The instrument by which the property is held, so that what is being valued is identified from the document rather than from conversation.
The approved plan, where there is one, and anything showing what was sanctioned as against what stands.
The identifiers and the schedule, including boundaries and extent.
The municipal or tax record, which frequently carries the area and the description the authorities work with.
Anything about the unit and the land, where the property is part of a building.
Where you do not hold a document, obtaining a copy from the record is worth the few days — our certified true copy guide explains why a copy issued by the record-keeper is the one to have.
Every gap you leave becomes an assumption, and every assumption is a place where the report can later be said to have proceeded on a wrong basis.
Unglamorous and responsible for a startling share of disputes about valuations.
Several areas can be stated about the same property and they are all different: what the document records, what the municipal record shows, what is physically built, and the various ways a built area can be described.
A report must say which it used. Where it does, a disagreement can be resolved in minutes. Where it does not, two people argue about the figure while actually disagreeing about the floor.
So check that line first, before the conclusion. And where the areas in your own documents disagree with one another — which is common — raise it at the start rather than letting the valuer discover it.
Where a difference between the sanctioned plan and what stands is discovered, that is a fact about the property with consequences beyond valuation, and it is better known early. Our title verification guide deals with that side of it.
Stated plainly, because people read a valuation as a clean bill of health for the property and it is nothing of the kind.
A valuation ordinarily proceeds on the assumption that the title is good, that the property is free of charges, and that there is no dispute attached to it. That is an assumption, not a finding. The valuer has not investigated it and the report should say so.
Which means a high figure is not reassurance about ownership, and a report in your file answers no question at all about who is entitled to the property.
The separate exercises that do answer it: a search of the registration records, which our encumbrance certificate guide covers, and the wider examination set out in our title verification guide. Our property verification service does that work.
Read the two together and they answer different halves of the same practical question. Read the valuation alone and you have a figure attached to a property you have not checked.
The most common reason people encounter this exercise, and the one with the most rules attached that are not yours.
A lender is forming its own view of security. It will usually want a valuer it accepts, on a format it uses, for its purpose — which is not the same as what you would ask if you were selling.
So a report you commissioned yourself may simply not be usable by them, however good it is. Ask what they require before commissioning anything, and if they have a panel, use it.
Two further things worth knowing. Their valuation is for their benefit, not yours, and a loan sanctioned is not somebody else’s opinion that your purchase is sound. And you are frequently entitled to see the report or at least the figure — ask, because it is useful information about the property whatever it is being used for.
Our mortgage documentation service deals with the paperwork on the security side, and our home loan guide with the wider file a lender expects.
The confusion here quietly costs people more than any other on this page, because it surfaces only at a claim.
Insurance of a building is generally concerned with what it would take to reinstate it — a construction question. A market figure, by contrast, includes the land and reflects location, and land does not burn down.
So using a market figure as an insured value can leave a property significantly under-insured or over-insured, and neither is discovered until it matters. Ask the insurer what basis they use, and have the valuation address that basis.
The same logic applies to reviewing cover over time. Construction costs change independently of property prices, and a sum insured fixed years ago on either basis is worth checking.
Where a claim is already in progress, that is a different exercise entirely — our insurance claim documentation service deals with it, and our insurance claim guide sets out what such a claim actually needs.
Short, and short on purpose.
Valuations are required in connection with various official processes, and what is acceptable for each is set by the rules governing that process rather than by general practice.
This page prints no rules, no thresholds and no guidance about any of them, because they differ, they change, and a stale line here would be quoted back at somebody years later to their cost.
What is useful and general: ask the authority or your own adviser what form of valuation is acceptable, from whom, and as at what date — before commissioning. Those three answers are what make a report usable, and getting them wrong means doing it again.
And take advice on the tax or official consequences from somebody qualified to give it. We prepare and coordinate documents; we do not advise on liability and would be the wrong people to ask.
Where valuations do the most good and cause the most trouble, and the difference between those two outcomes is decided before the report exists.
Agree the valuer first. In writing, with everybody, along with the purpose and the date. A report commissioned by one branch of a family and produced to the others is almost never accepted, and the attempt usually hardens everybody’s position.
Where agreement on one person is impossible, agree on two and agree in advance what happens if they differ — split the difference, take the average, appoint a third. Deciding that after the figures are known is deciding with everybody’s interest already visible.
Be precise about what is being valued. The whole property, or each share? Land and structure, or the structure alone? Including or excluding something the family treats separately?
And remember that the figure is an input to an arrangement, not the arrangement. Our partition deed and gift deed services prepare the documents that record what is decided, and our partition guide deals with the shape of such an arrangement.
Handled gently, because people arrive at this while managing a great deal else.
Two things distinguish a valuation in this situation. The relevant date is frequently not today, and saying which date is needed at the outset changes how the valuer works. And the property’s records are often out of date, sometimes by a generation, so the exercise runs alongside putting them in order.
Our mutation guide covers the record side, and a family that has postponed it for years will find that this is the moment the postponement becomes expensive.
Where there is a will, the valuation is an input to giving effect to it; where there is not, it is an input to whatever arrangement the family reaches. Our will drafting guide deals with the other end of the same problem, and it is worth reading afterwards rather than during.
One practical kindness: get one report, agreed by everybody, rather than allowing several to be commissioned separately. At a time when a family is already under strain, competing figures are the fastest route to a dispute that outlives the estate.
Two questions hide here, and a report has to say which one it is answering.
What is it worth as it stands today, part-built, with whatever has actually been done? Or what would it be worth completed, on assumptions about completion that may or may not come true?
Both are legitimate and they are very different numbers. A figure for a completed building presented as a present value is misleading even where nobody intended it to be.
So say which you need, and expect a report on a completed basis to state the assumptions it rests on — that the work is finished to a stated standard, by a stated time, with approvals in place.
And where the property is being bought from a developer, remember that the valuation says nothing about whether the project will be completed. That is a different risk and it is not one a valuation addresses.
Frequently needed, frequently done badly, and the error is always the same: dividing the total.
An undivided share is not a piece of land. It is an entitlement that cannot ordinarily be dealt with alone, and what it is worth to somebody who must act with others is its own question.
So a report that takes the whole and divides by five has answered a different question from the one asked, and in a family arrangement that difference is exactly where the argument lands.
Say clearly what is being valued when commissioning: the whole property, a defined portion, or an undivided share. The three are different instructions and produce different documents.
Where the intention is that one person will take the property and pay the others, say that too. It is a real fact about the situation and a valuer working without it is working with less than they need.
A short method, and it deliberately leaves the figure until last.
Check the purpose and the date first. Are they the ones you asked for? A report answering a different question is not a report you can use, however good it is.
Check the property. Is the description the property you mean, and does the area stated match what you believe?
Read the assumptions and exclusions, which is the section covered next and the heart of the document.
Follow the reasoning. Which approach was used, what evidence supports it, and does the conclusion follow?
Then look at the figure — and read it as what it is: an opinion about this question, on this date, on those assumptions.
If you read nothing else in a valuation, read this part, because it is where the figure is defined.
It typically records what was inspected and what was not, which documents were seen, what was assumed about title and permissions, what has been excluded, and any limitation on who may rely on the report.
Each of those changes what the number means. A figure assuming good title is a different figure from one that investigated it. A figure excluding a structure is not a figure for the whole. A figure based on a plan rather than on what stands is answering about a building that may not exist in that form.
So go through it line by line and ask, of each assumption, is this true in my case? Where one is not, that is not a quarrel with the valuer — they said what they assumed. It is a fact you now need to give them.
And note any restriction on reliance. Reports are frequently addressed to one party for one purpose, and handing such a document to somebody else does not make it theirs to rely on.
Common, and the response that works is narrow rather than indignant.
First, read the assumptions. Most surprises live there — an area, a condition, an exclusion, a purpose you had not registered.
Then separate fact from judgement. A document not seen, an area misstated, a structure not counted, a permission overlooked — those are factual matters and a proper basis for asking that the report be revisited. “I think it is worth more” is not.
Then put the factual point in writing, with the evidence attached, and ask specifically whether it changes the opinion. Our application drafting guide covers writing that kind of letter — one point, with the document behind it.
What you should not do is press for a different number. A valuer who revises an opinion because a client was unhappy has produced something worth less than the original, and the person holding it carries that.
There is a real version of this and a version that damages you, and the difference is the reason.
Legitimate: the first report rests on a factual error; a great deal turns on the figure; the parties agreed in advance to obtain two; or the recipient will not accept the first for reasons of form.
Not legitimate, and visible: commissioning reports until one produces a figure you like. Anybody who later sees them together — and in a dispute they generally do — can read that sequence as easily as you can.
Where two reports are obtained properly, keep both, including the one you liked less. Producing the convenient half of a pair is worse than producing neither.
And where two competent reports differ on judgement rather than on fact, the useful response is to understand both sets of reasoning rather than to average them and move on.
The shortest section here and the least negotiable.
It happens quietly: a figure is mentioned in passing before the engagement, or a purpose is described in a way that makes the desired answer obvious. It does not feel like pressure and it is.
A valuer who will produce a figure to order is not producing an opinion. They are producing a document, and the risk of that document sits with the person who holds it — at exactly the moment somebody examines it, which is the only moment it will ever matter.
So ask for the reasoning, never for the number, and be honest about the purpose even when the honest purpose is less convenient.
The ordinary warning signs apply here too: a fee before anything has been looked at, a promise about the outcome, and a reluctance to inspect. And the same is true of us — if anybody at this firm were ever to suggest arranging a particular figure, that would be a reason to take your work elsewhere.
Small habit, real payoff, and it takes ten minutes.
Keep the report itself, the instructions you gave, the documents supplied to the valuer, and a note of the date of inspection. Scanned, together, findable by somebody who is not you.
Why the instructions matter: years later, the argument is almost never about the figure. It is about what the report was for, and the instruction letter is the answer to that.
Keep superseded reports too, with their dates. A property valued three times over a decade has a history, and that history is occasionally the most useful document in the file.
And where the property belongs to a family, tell one other person the file exists. This is the same instinct as everywhere else in this area: a document only you can find is a document that will not be found.
Each is assumed by somebody every week, and each assumption ends badly.
It does not establish ownership. It assumes it.
It does not certify the building is sound or lawful. A structural survey and an examination of approvals are different exercises by different people.
It does not fix a price. What somebody will actually pay is decided in a negotiation, and a report is one input to that.
It does not speak for any date but its own, which is why a report produced for one occasion should not be quietly reused for another a year later.
What it does do, properly commissioned, is give you a defensible answer to a clearly stated question — which is exactly what is needed when somebody has to justify a decision involving property, and that is most of the situations in which anybody asks for one.
None of them are the valuer’s fault, which is the point.
The purpose was never stated, so the report answers a question nobody asked.
The recipient was never asked whose report they accept, and will not take this one.
The date was left as today, when the question was about an earlier one.
Documents were withheld or missing, so the report rests on assumptions nobody has checked.
One side commissioned it in a family matter, and nobody else was ever going to accept it.
The assumptions page was never read, so the figure was used to mean something it did not say.
We do not value property and we will say so before anything else. Our part is everything around the opinion, and it is what decides whether the opinion is usable.
First, settling the brief: what exactly is being valued, for what purpose, as at what date, and — the question most people skip — who is going to read the report and what they will accept. Those four answers written down before anybody is engaged prevent most of the waste in this subject.
Then the papers. We assemble what the valuer needs, obtain copies from the record where something is missing, and flag the differences between documents — particularly in area — before the inspection rather than after the report.
Then coordination: arranging access, making sure somebody is there who can open everything, and seeing that the inspection is a real one.
And afterwards we read the report with you: the purpose, the date, the area used, the assumptions and exclusions, and what the figure therefore does and does not mean. Where something in it rests on a factual error, we help you put that point properly.
We do not value anything. Not informally, not as a guide, not “roughly”. A figure from us would be worth nothing and could be quoted later as though it were worth something.
We do not influence a valuer. We give them documents and access and leave the opinion to them, which is the only arrangement under which their report is worth commissioning.
We do not advise on tax or on investment. Both come up in every conversation about property value and neither is ours.
We do not certify title or structure. Those are separate exercises and we will tell you which one you actually need.
We promise no figure and no range, before or during. Anybody who does is either guessing or arranging, and both are worse than waiting.
Our own work begins at ₹3,500, the usual span is 3 – 10 days, the whole figure is told to you before we start, and nothing is payable in advance. Reading a report you already hold, rather than arranging a fresh one, is a smaller job and priced as one.
The valuer’s professional fee is separate and belongs to them. We tell you what it is rather than folding it into ours, because those are two different things and mixing them would obscure exactly the relationship this page says should stay clean.
What lengthens the work is usually a missing document or a property whose papers disagree with each other about area. Both are worth resolving before the inspection rather than after the report.
And the note this page owes, since the most valuable parts of it cost nothing: state the purpose. Ask the recipient whose report they accept. Fix the right date. Hand over every document. Insist on a real inspection. Read the assumptions before the figure. Do those six things and you will get a report that answers your question — which is the whole of what anybody is buying.
Most wasted valuations are perfectly competent reports answering a question nobody needed answered. We settle the brief before anybody is engaged — what is being valued, for what purpose, as at what date, and whose report the reader will actually accept — then assemble the documents so that nothing has to be assumed, arrange a real inspection, and afterwards read the report with you: the area used, the assumptions, the exclusions, and what the figure therefore means. We do not value anything ourselves, and we will never suggest a number to anybody who does.
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