How vulnerable is the legal profession to lenders’ claims? ask Mike Willis and Charles Bending
Many professionals (and their insurers) will recall the multitude of claims and losses that flowed from the property crash in the early 1990s, primarily by lenders thwarted in their mortgage recoveries by fraud, overvalued securities or wrongful legal advice and documentation.
A fresh slow-down or even recession of the property market seems now to be in sight. The meltdown of the US sub-prime market has had worldwide knock-on effects, spectacularly so in Britain, with the well publicised crisis at Northern Rock reportedly due to its overexposure to high risk lenders. Meanwhile interest rates have risen, restricting the supply of money; the availability of low cost housing is falling; and various forces squeezing returns in the rental markets are reducing the attraction of buy-to-let mortgages and investments.
MORTGAGE FRAUD
Mortgage fraud has not yet been seen on the same scale as the 1990s, but an upsurge has been reported in the US, and the UK market-place is already rife with stories that it has returned. More ingenious frauds, taking
