A valuation opinion often starts with the property in front of you. It should also start with the market around it. London's average fall-through price sat £142,911 below its average new instruction price in June, the widest regional gap in this month's Sprift Sales Market Intelligence Report, which tracks new listings, sales agreed, and pricing data for Great Britain every month. A surveyor relying on national figures to justify an opinion is missing the local evidence that holds up when that opinion gets challenged. Read on for the regional evidence behind a defensible valuation this month.
The gap between a property's original asking price and its price at fall through is an early signal of overvaluation, and it varies enormously by region. London's average new instruction price sat at £804,518 this month against an average fall-through price of £661,607, a gap of over £140,000 reached after 76 days on average. East of England showed a much tighter gap, £444,200 against £411,901 at 67 days.
This is comparable evidence a surveyor can use before finalising a valuation opinion. A wide, persistent gap between new instruction pricing and fall-through pricing in a given area suggests vendor and agent pricing has been running ahead of what buyers will pay. That is worth having on file, since RICS valuations need to be supported by evidence, particularly when a figure is queried by a lender, vendor, or borrower.
Conversion rates ranged from 39.4% in London to 70.1% in Scotland this month, a spread of more than 30 percentage points. Price reduction behaviour told a similar story: South East listings were reduced 43.0% of the time, the highest of any region, while Scotland sat at just 21.5%. Time on market varied within regions too. North West flats averaged 222.5 days against 136.3 days for detached homes in the same region, the widest single-region spread in the data.
A physical inspection and a condition assessment still come first. An opinion built only on national trend lines will miss the local reality a valuation or survey needs to reflect. A surveyor citing days-on-market or reduction likelihood as supporting evidence should cite the regional and property type figure specifically.
RICS valuations need the opinion supported by evidence, especially when a figure is challenged by a lender, vendor, or borrower. Here are five checks you should build into the file well before that conversation happens.
Compare the area's average new instruction price against its average fall-through price before finalising the opinion. A gap of more than a few percent points to pricing that has run ahead of what buyers will pay, and it is evidence worth having on record if the figure is questioned.
Cite the regional conversion rate and average days on market when justifying an expected marketing period in a report. The national figure alone, 55.4% this month, masks a 30-point spread between Scotland and London.
Check the regional price reduction rate before treating the asking price as a reliable starting point. Areas above the 38.6% national average, such as South East at 43.0%, carry a higher chance of a listing being repriced before sale.
When a valuation comes in below the agreed purchase price, keep the regional fall-through and reduction data alongside the opinion. This is the evidence a lender or vendor query will ask for.
Record the month the data was pulled. Market conditions move within a cycle, so the evidence behind an opinion should be dated to the month of inspection.
National figures alone will not carry a valuation opinion through a challenge. Regional fall-through pricing, conversion rates, and reduction rates give the local evidence RICS valuations need, and building the five checks above into every file means that evidence is already there before a lender, vendor, or borrower asks for it.
The feature underneath all of this is straightforward: Sprift pulls pricing and market activity data into one place, updated daily. The advantage over piecing this together from separate sources is time and consistency, since every property is deduplicated and linked by UPRN rather than repeated across multiple listings. The benefit for a surveyor is an evidence trail that can be defended, built in minutes rather than assembled from several disconnected sources before a report goes out.
Fall-through pricing and regional conversion data belong in the file from the site visit onwards, ready for the moment a challenge lands. They are the evidence a valuation or survey opinion sits on.