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Valuation Surveyor

All surveyors are trained in various aspects of valuation, but when it comes to property of all types, clients often need a specialist valuation surveyor. Housing Associations, Councils, property companies, pension funds and a large number of organizations own numbers of properties. They will want to know the exact value of each site. This can include assessing income from rents, or redevelopment potential, or even the cost of maintaining empty property. If a property is subject to continual damage or vandalism then the owner needs to set aside a larger amount for maintenance.

 

Similarly, if a property has been subject to flood or structural issues, its value will be affected. In the final analysis, a valuation surveyor can tell a client whether it might be more sensible to sell, hold, redevelop or re-invest in a site or building. They will often be involved in valuing a whole portfolio (collection) of differing sites and building owned by a client, and be retained as agents to do so on a regular basis. If an owner has borrowed from a bank (or mortgage company) to buy a property, they too need to know that they have not lent above the value of that property. If the banks had used more valuation surveyors, they might not have over-lent or bought mortgages in the US, and we may well have avoided the current economic crisis.

 

Quantity Surveyor

Most people do not notice green-field land much as they walk or drive through the countryside, but we do all notice a new development in the towns, cities and villages we live in. Yet even the process of development and building needs a specialist surveyor. Quantity surveyors will assess a site to see if it economic to develop and how. They also manage the process of development and costs on a building site, from the materials to the skilled labour, and when this should be bought and delivered to the site. For example, having bricks and bricklayers on a site before they are needed is expensive.

 

Quantity surveyors will assess whether a development is potentially profitable before the land or site is even bought, as well as manage the development itself. They will often work with the other types of surveyor before, during and after the project. This means they need to understand if not master a large range of subjects.