As I told you in the previous article, one of the most important steps in the evaluation is conducting the inspection/viewing.

What does this step entail? After receiving the necessary documentation, the appraiser establishes a date and time for the apartment inspection in agreement with the seller or buyer. On the agreed date, the appraiser inspects the apartment and reports any differences in the representation of the apartment's dimensions and characteristics in the documents compared to the physical situation on the ground. The appraiser is obliged to record in the appraisal report all the discrepancies noted.

When it comes to granting a loan, banking institutions have quite strict criteria in accepting real estate as collateral. Following a thorough analysis of the documentation and the appraiser's findings during the apartment inspection, aspects that may complicate the loan granting process may be reported.

We will briefly present one of the most common situations that can influence the quick obtaining of a loan and that you can avoid from the beginning.

One of the most important conditions imposed by most lenders (banking institutions) is the similarity of the information in the survey (the apartment's sketch) and the physical situation on the ground, as of the date of the inspection. The physical situation on the ground does not always coincide with the apartment's survey, and interior changes can be difficult to notice if you do not work in the field. The reasons are diverse, from the seller's desire to re-compartment the apartment by removing some walls or building others, removing storage spaces (pantry or closet), to building a balcony. If the seller does not update his cadastral documentation (survey) after making interior changes, the buyer may risk losing financing, as the lender may refuse to take as collateral a property that does not have updated documentation or postpone granting the loan until the cadastral documentation is updated, which may lead to additional costs for the owner or buyer.

The difference between the cadastral documentation provided by the client and the Land Registry extract or the property deed is another situation that can make it difficult to grant a loan. This difference is often neglected by buyers or sellers, but to which lenders give importance, this being sometimes a decisive factor in granting the loan. As a result, it is important to pay increased attention to verifying the correctness of the information in the apartment documents, as this can mean wasted time and money, leading in the worst case to the loss of financing and even the cancellation of the transaction.

Therefore, our recommendation is that before buying or selling an apartment, make sure that the situation in the documents coincides with the physical one of the apartment. This way, the duration of the loan granting process will be greatly reduced.