Lenders undervaluing properties, claims NAEA: The National Association of Estate Agents certainly went for it yesterday when they published their report criticising lenders for deliberately undervaluing properties.

Whilst the report was very restrained when compared with the conversations I have with some estate agents, (now that would have been a more interesting report), I’m sure the sentiments and frustrations are shared.

NAEA members believe that mortgage lenders could be deliberately undervaluing properties by as much as 10 per cent causing sales and remortgages to fall through.

So here’s a snippet: "Whilst I understand that lenders are operating under severe constraints, it is neither fair nor ethical for valuations to be lowered on the basis that it might reduce exposure to competitive loan rates."

It looks like the stronger banks are pushing on regardless: Barclays, the parent company of Woolwich, reported pre-tax profits for the last six months of £2.98bn. Strangely, this was almost exactly the same amount that HSBC posted (isn’t that a bit weird? - two massive, complex corporate giants posting almost the same amount of profit – anyway, I digress…).

This was in sharp contrast to the poor relation, Northern Rock, who reported a loss of £724m. The interesting point about Northern Rock is that despite their losses on old loans, they are still in the market for new business – in buy to let they still have a couple of useful niches, namely:

1.  Will remortgage within 6 months (albeit on the original purchase price not valuation)

2.  Will lend on up to 4 flats on one single title.