Secured Lending Report Review Guide for Valuers

A secured lending report review guide is most useful in the last stage of an instruction, when the valuation rationale is settled but the report has been assembled under real time pressure. That is where small disconnects can survive: a £2,500,000 figure in the executive summary and £2,550,000 in the valuation section, a rent quoted monthly in one table and annually elsewhere, or a comparable described as having a 75-year unexpired term when the schedule says 57 years.

None of these points necessarily changes the professional opinion. Each can, however, create avoidable questions from a lender, panel manager or later reviewer. A disciplined final review should test the report as a single document, not simply read each section in isolation.

Start with the instruction, not the draft

The first question is whether the report answers the actual secured lending instruction. Lender requirements are often specific and may sit outside the core valuation narrative. They can include minimum comparable evidence, required commentary on marketing periods, leasehold thresholds, EWS1 disclosures, assumptions or special assumptions, and prescribed wording around marketability.

Set the instruction beside the completed report before reviewing the valuation. Confirm that each required item is addressed, rather than assuming it is covered because the property has been described fully. A well-written market commentary does not answer a requirement for a stated exposure period if no period is given.

This is also the point to check dates. The valuation date, inspection date, report date, comparable transaction dates and any market evidence cut-off should make sense together. A comparable agreed after the valuation date may still be relevant contextual evidence, but its treatment needs to be clear. Dates copied forward from an earlier draft are easy to miss because they are often plausible in isolation.

Review the numbers across the whole report

A secured lending report can repeat the same fact in several forms: narrative, summary, comparable schedule, calculation, appendix and certificate. The final review needs to reconcile all of them.

Begin with the reported market value. Search every occurrence of the figure, including rounded figures. If the opinion is £1,850,000, check that the certificate, executive summary, valuation section, loan security summary and any sensitivity commentary all state £1,850,000 or clearly explain a different basis. A mismatch of £50,000 may be a simple drafting error. It still looks material to the recipient.

Then test the calculation trail. For an investment property, that normally means checking passing rent, market rent, net income, yield, purchaser’s costs and capital value. If £180,000 per annum is capitalised at 6.00%, the implied value before costs is £3,000,000. Where the reported value differs, the report should show why: voids, incentives, non-recoverable costs, a term adjustment or a separate treatment of accommodation.

For residential work, reconcile floor area, adopted rate per square metre or square foot, and the value conclusion. A flat stated as 92 sq m in the description but 82 sq m in the calculation can materially distort the implied rate. The point is not that every valuation follows a mechanical rate-per-area calculation. It is that the stated evidence and the adopted conclusion should not contradict each other without explanation.

Check units with particular care. Square metres and square feet, monthly and annual rents, net and gross areas, hectares and acres, and percentages and basis points can all generate figures that look credible at a glance. These are not judgement calls. They are repeatable checks worth separating from the valuation judgement itself.

Test the evidence against the conclusion

Comparable evidence should support the valuation method and the final opinion, but a report can weaken when its evidence is internally inconsistent. Review every comparable for address, property type, tenure, area, date, price or rent, and the derived rate. Then compare the schedule to the narrative discussion.

If Comparable 2 is recorded as a freehold sale at £4,200 per sq m, the text should not describe it as leasehold at £3,900 per sq m. If a transaction is subject to an unusually short lease or a material incentive package, that feature should carry through to the adjustment discussion. A reader should be able to understand why a comparable is relevant, what makes it different, and how that difference has informed the adopted figure.

This is especially useful where the valuation conclusion sits outside the simple range of headline comparable rates. That may be entirely reasonable. A superior floor, stronger covenant, longer unexpired term or better configuration can justify it. The report should make that reasoning visible. The task at review stage is not to force the conclusion into the middle of a range. It is to make sure the narrative supports the conclusion actually reached.

Treat lease terms and covenant commentary as report-wide facts

Lease detail is commonly repeated in property description, tenancy schedule, valuation rationale and risk commentary. Confirm the commencement date, expiry date, break dates, review pattern, passing rent and unexpired term against the underlying documents. A lease with 12.4 years unexpired cannot become “approximately 15 years” elsewhere unless the reference date is different and that distinction is made clear.

Tenant covenant statements need the same discipline. If the report identifies a tenant as a subsidiary, guarantor support or a particular trading entity may matter to the analysis. Avoid broad statements that do not match the evidence held. The valuation judgement remains the surveyor’s, but the facts on which it rests need to be consistent.

Read for contradictions, not just omissions

Many final reviews focus on what is missing. Contradictions can be harder to spot and more damaging because they leave the recipient unsure which statement to rely on.

Read the executive summary against the detailed sections. Check whether the report describes the property as vacant, owner-occupied or let consistently. Compare marketability comments with the marketing period adopted. If the report states there is no cladding risk identified, confirm whether an EWS1 form, building height consideration or other disclosure elsewhere qualifies that statement.

The same applies to condition and assumptions. A report might assume no deleterious materials while noting potential asbestos-containing materials in an inspection note. That is not automatically a problem, but it requires coherent wording. The reader needs to understand what was observed, what was assumed and whether the valuation reflects an allowance or special assumption.

A useful method is to review each key risk from beginning to end: tenure, tenancy, condition, environmental matters, fire safety, market exposure and comparable evidence. Follow the subject through the report rather than reading the document only in page order. It is slower than a spellcheck but quicker than responding to a lender query after issue.

Use a second review layer where volume demands it

Peer review remains valuable, particularly for unusual properties, thin markets and significant departures from local evidence. Yet a colleague reviewing several reports at the end of a day is subject to the same time pressure and familiarity with house style as the author. The repetitive task of locating every repeated figure, area, date and lease term is well suited to a separate audit layer.

WriteUp is designed for that role. It reviews a draft report in one to two minutes and flags items such as market value mismatches, unreconciled rents and yields, inconsistent floor areas, lease-term conflicts, gaps in comparable evidence and requirements that may not have been addressed. It does not decide the value or replace the valuer’s review. The surveyor considers each finding and retains control of the final report. For sensitive report data, the practical questions should be clear: processing should be private and encrypted, with no report data stored or used to train models.

Keep the sign-off review proportionate

Not every instruction needs the same depth of second review. A straightforward residential valuation with good local evidence calls for a different level of checking from a multi-let industrial investment, a specialist asset or a property with an active cladding issue. The risk lies in treating either report as routine.

Use the complexity of the asset, the lender’s requirements, the number of data points and the consequences of ambiguity to set the review effort. Then reserve your own time for the matters software cannot resolve: the appropriateness of the comparable set, the weight given to evidence, the effect of a lease event, and the judgement behind the final figure.

A report does not need to be longer to stand up under scrutiny. It needs its figures to reconcile, its evidence to support its reasoning, and its assumptions to be stated plainly before it leaves your desk.