UK Insurance News

The ‘blame culture’ that spreads like wildfire during times of recession and falling property values, has caused an increase in the number of surveyors and estate agents being sued for negligence over property matters in the last year.

There were 25 commercial or residential cases against surveyors or estate agents in 2009, compared to just one such case in the five years previous.

City law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain (RPC) claim that losses by banks in the UK property market have run into billions of pounds since the credit crisis reared its ugly head and RPC partner Alexandra Anderson said;

“This has put a lot of pressure on banks and investors to pursue any option open to them to recover their losses, including launching a negligence claim against the surveyor who valued the collateral for the loan.”

Obviously banks and financial institutions should not accept any fault in their handling of funding such purchases and will always look to offload the blame elsewhere.

Some of the cases bought against surveyors and estate agents include;

• They negligently overvalued commercial premises such as shopping centres that subsequently collapsed in value because tenants became insolvent in the recession.

• They negligently overvalued residential property development sites which plunged in value because of falling house prices and the glut of similar new build that was erected in the housing boom, particularly in cities such as Manchester and Leeds.

• They negligently underestimated the cost of putting a development project on hold.

• They negligently valued a property that was subject to a fraud that has been exposed because of falling prices in the recession.