The response followed comments made by RICS residential director David Dalby at the Mortgage Solutions Surveyor’s Breakfast Briefing, where he said that lender’s should pay for property valuation costs.

However, Simon Webster, managing director of brokerage Facts & Figures, said that it does not matter who pays for valuations, because the consumer will still ultimately pay the cost.

He said: “The lender will just add the cost onto the arrangement fee, so the consumer is unable to escape paying the cost.

“If someone lends you money, they are going to set a number of hoops for you to jump through and they are going to set a price.

“It is ultimately up to the consumer to make a judgement to decide whether they consider that price to be fair and reasonable.”

Sponsored

Aldermore Insights with Jon Cooper: Edition 10 – The biggest barrier to homeownership isn’t affordability. It’s outdated lending.

Sponsored by Aldermore

Webster added that the valuation fee is not of huge concern to borrowers, saying it is only a “small sum to pay” compared to the overall cost of a property.

However, he insisted that valuation costs could be considered unfair when looking at properties at the lower end of the market.

He said: “Where people are paying between £50,000 to £80,000 for a property, a valuation fee becomes a slightly more material figure and maybe even a slightly higher percentage of the overall purchase price.

“There is always an underlying cost to get a valuer to get out of bed, go to a property, look at it and write a report.

“However, it does not go up significantly beyond that because the valuer still has to do the same amount of work no matter how big the property is.”

*Poll result accurate at the time of writing