Why are we seeing more mortgage frauds than ever before?
Over the last few months we have seen a number of high-profile mortgage frauds before the UK courts with an alleged £50 million mortgage fraud announced only last week. It would appear on the surface at least that we are now seeing more and more mortgage frauds than ever before but is this really the case?
The truth is that when the UK property market was booming we saw very few problems with mortgages and a number of mortgage lenders were perhaps not as a tentative and as vigilant as they could have been. However, with property prices continuing to rise in the boom time, mortgage lenders in the UK continued to make money and seemed fairly well set for the future. When the UK mortgage market turned and mortgage lenders became more vigilant it was then that a number of irregularities appeared and the sector began a root and branch investigation of mortgage lending.
This is perhaps the reason why we are now seeing more alleged mortgage fraud prosecutions than ever before and why there are probably more in the pipeline in the short to medium term. In the boom times it would appear that may be mortgage lenders were happy to stretch their limits and their conditions to bring in business, but in the doom and gloom times every penny needs to be accounted for and every transaction considered in minute detail.
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