A thought occurred to me the other night

Nick Johnson or Urban Splash muses about how valuers would work in a world where postcodes didn’t determine value.

The Thought couldn't have happened in a more apposite setting. I was at a property awards dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel surrounded by the cognoscenti of the property world, many of which, I'll harbour, were valuers. And it's valuers that were in the midst of this Thought.

Superhero Roger Zogolovich and I were putting the world to rights in the way that developers do - berating planners with their bleeding section 106 agreements, beating up architects and bemoaning legislation that squeezes and suffocates the last breath of enthusiasm from all but the most obstinate and intrepid. It was thoroughly cathartic, the kind of clearout that we all need from time-to-time.

 

The Thought was sparked by the redoubtable M&E engineer Patrick Bellew, renamed Patrick Bellow for the evening, courtesy of a sleight of hand from the Grosvenor events team - though it provided an altogether more suitable epithet for a man who designs the kit that blows the air around our buildings.

The Thought came out of a discussion that, inevitably these days, settled on environmental responsibility. Deborah Saunt, re-named Savant by a knowing member of the same events team, 'fessed up to ownership of a Toyota Prius (or the Toyota Pious as I like to call it), the congestion busting dual-fuel saviour of the planet.

The Thought was still only fledgling at this point; it hadn't properly occurred. It was 'Rog Zog' who gave it full form and legs. His view was that the punter should be prepared to pay more money for a building that was environmentally friendly and, hey presto, all the world's problems would be solved. After all, he argued, people are prepared to pay 29p more for organic broccoli than its common chemical brother.

And that was it - the clouds parted, the sun shone and the Thought was delivered. Now I have to preface the Thought with my own little confession: I belong to the noble profession that the Thought is connected with. Part of me is a valuer.

I thought about Rog Zog's outrageously reasonable proposition, and my Thought was this: his reason, his logic, his common sense won't ever apply to the property industry because we have valuers. If we had valuers in supermarkets we wouldn't have organic broccoli. If we had to pass through the valuation department before we got to the till, the valuer would point out that, in spite of my willingness to pay a premium for my health and welfare, that normal broccoli - the self same green (or purple if you're seasonal and posh) veg - could be picked up for 29p less on the counter opposite, thereby establishing the market price. Consequently we can no longer justify the economies of raising broccoli on pig muck because we can't get a high enough price to offset the additional production cost.

So what has broccoli got to do with Building for Life? Well, price and product differentiation seem to occur in all markets with the exception of the newly built residential market. The VW Toerag is the same body as the Porsche Cayenne, both thoroughly menacing machines. In the old days it was known as 'badge engineering'; its what made a Jag cheaper than a Daimler. They each have 4 wheels, 5 doors, 5 seats and an engine. They transport people from a to b in a far less responsible way than the Pious. They are both known colloquially, by pious drivers, as 'Chelsea Tractors'. Yet one retails for £90,000, the other for £40,000. Why? Because prestige, design, brand, speed, engineering and all the other things that the marketers lead us to believe are desirable attributes are deemed to add value.

So if a developer chooses to use a really good architect, chooses to make his scheme low or no carbon, chooses to use really nice materials from a really sustainable source, he gets penalised - not rewarded - at the point of purchase. Although the punter may be prepared to pay the requisite premium, the valuer is stuck - his computer says "no".

Why is it, when markets are so demonstrably able to differentiate the wheat from the chaff, the best from the better, that the property industry fails to allow the valuer to employ the very subjectivity that happens all around to act as an influence when it comes to signing off the mortgage form?

As long as this paradox, this property conundrum, this consequential illiteracy exists, we will never be able to truly recognise and capture the added value that is apparent to everyone - with one notable exception. The value that comes from a good architect, doing a good job, in a good scheme.

Nick Johnson is a CABE commissioner and deputy chief executive of Urban Splash