Guns, rifles, drugs and hoards of cash, are just some of the things our surveyors have uncovered during routine home inspections over the last year, as we saw a 54% rise in our reporting of suspicious activity.
e.surv routinely reports on the suspicious activity that our surveyors discover while conducting residential valuations and surveys for our lender clients. But over the last 12 months we have seen a vast increase in such reports, as well as compared to previous years.
Reports of financial-related crime are on the rise. Examples include a hand gun found in a property , a rack of assorted rifles, cannabis farms, and black bin liners stuffed with huge sums of money.
More widely, our surveyors are reporting a steady rise in “scheme abuse” – this is, for example, where a mortgage product is mis-issued, due to applicants applying for a residential mortgage which they subsequently use for a buy-to-let.
Our reports of suspicious activity show that the most affected areas of the UK are Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham and London.
Much of the increase in reporting of suspicious activity is due to our use of improved technology. The functionality we have built into our surveyors’ iPads enables surveyors to submit reports quickly and easily at the touch of a button.
In addition to meeting our ethical and legal responsibilities, the reports have also saved our lender clients up to tens of millions of pounds each. One client was saved £30 million pounds in one year alone.
e.surv takes these incidents extremely seriously and we continue to ensure the safety of all our surveyors through the deployment of a variety of security measures.