Limit to valuer’s duty of care

George & others v Countrywide Surveyors (Liverpool Technology and Construction Court 18 October 2002, unreported)

The duty of a valuer undertaking a mortgage valuation report for a lender who knows his report will probably be relied upon by the buyer, extends only to modest domestic house purchases. The claimants in these proceedings were not ‘ordinary domestic householders purchasing their home’, but were purchasing a two-bedroom terrace property with the intention of letting it to tenants so as to provide them with an income, above the mortgage repayments, and an appreciating capital asset for their retirement. In those circumstances, the surveyor retained by the lender to provide a mortgage valuation report did not owe a duty of care to the claimants, and he was not, therefore, liable to them when they eventually sold the property for a third less than the price they had paid two years earlier. Furthermore, the surveyor’s disclaimer clause was entirely appropriate within the circumstances for which it was intended, therefore liability had been effectively put aside; thus even if a duty had been found to exist, it had been effectively negated by the valid disclaimer.