Quote ="King Street Cat"I recently had a few valuations on my property with a view to selling. What one of the valuers told me was interesting. He said that a lot of the banks, if investigated properly, would be guilty of mortgage fraud. Forget people knowingly getting themselves into massive debt, the banks were actively encouraging it with reduced deposits and the promise of big returns in short timescales. When banks were sending surveyors out to give places a risk assessment and make sure that the value of the loan and the value of the property added up, in most cases they would just tick a box on a sheet without even going inside the property. Banks were more than happy to give 100% mortgages on property values that were totally unrealistic and with no risk assessments carried out.'"
The last two houses I bought pre-2007 (in fact one of them April 2007) had the usual building society survey paid for by me and done by what I presume was someone qualified by the BS to do so, when I asked the vendors if they'd spoken to the surveyor on both occasions they never saw a surveyor let alone invite them in, the building society "survey" was obviously just a kerbside cursory glance to make sure there was a property at that address, or possibly not even that.
