From: "Jane Tweedynn" 
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Subject: BBC Investigatation - Mortgage Advisers
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 16:15:24 -0000

Last year when we visited Ealing, a house price hot-spot in West London,
nine out of ten of the mortgage advisers we consulted recommended we should
lie about our £30,000 salary, falsely boosting it to over £50,000 on our
mortgage application form.

The effect of the lie was dramatic.

Instead of the £105,000 or so we could have raised on an honest mortgage
application, suddenly we were being offered mortgages of around £185,000,
giving us vastly more buying power to pump into the local housing market.

Full BBC Story http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3478635.stm

Don't know how credible a BBC report is these days.