Andrew Murdoch
Valuation Panel Director at VAS Valuation Group
I think for residential properties, the agents it’s fair to say, sometimes aren’t particularly helpful. They’re perhaps they are not as invested in the deal enough to share the information. And sometimes they tend to hide behind confidentiality. Additionally, the rents that are achieved aren’t published on property databases like RightMove or Zoopla. They tend to show the asking rents and not necessarily what was achieved.
For commercial properties, headline rental figures and the agreed terms are generally available on the usual property databases like CoStar, but often they don’t reveal any of the incentives that have been offered by the landlord to secure the letting. So, incentives can include things like rent-free periods, break clauses or repairing clauses. In order to get a like for like comparison, the valuer would need to speak to the commercial agent who brokered the letting to understand exactly what was offered. And most commercial agents are generally pretty helpful because they’ve been involved in the negotiations. But occasionally it can be challenging to get all of the relevant incentives that have been offered