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CML issues mortgage fraud comment

A potential plus point of a housing market slowdown has been noted by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).

The body said yesterday that mortgage fraud in the UK might have been hidden by double-digit annual house price inflation.

However, with price rises grinding to a halt - according to latest figures from Hometrack, Nationwide and the Land Registry - the fraudsters could become increasingly exposed.

Sue Anderson, head of member and external relations for the CML, said: "There is no decent data available on the extent of mortgage fraud - there are no decent numbers on it, so to talk about whether we're on a rising trend or not is actually quite problematic because we don't really know."

She added: "We're at that point in the market where, where fraud is occurring, it's going to be that much more obvious because house price inflation is not masking it to the same degree that might happen in a rising and more active market."

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