In its latest fraud report, it said the decrease was due to an 11.7% drop in application frauds to 2,994 in 2011, which could be linked to increasing unemployment.
It said that a lack of employment may be putting off fraudsters who would have committed fraud from obtaining a larger mortgage than they can afford to repay.
While application frauds identified in 2011 decreased when compared to 2010, CIFAS revealed that the number of cases involving false employment details has almost doubled to 512 cases, up from 283 the year before.
The report said: “Historically, mortgage application frauds have always seen a high level of falsification of documents in order to make it seem that the applicant earns more than is actually the case.”
The report also showed that identity fraud increased by 3% to 68 in 2011.
In a separate study by Experian, its last quarterly index showed that mortgage fraud increased by 77% year-on-year in Q3 2011, with 49 in every 10,000 mortgage applications were found to be fraudulent.
Experian’s index showed that current accounts were the second most commonly targeted financial product during the period, with 30 frauds in every 10,000 applications, up 48% on Q3 2010.
Nick Mothershaw, director of Identity & Fraud Services at Experian UK & Ireland, said: “More than 90% of mortgage fraud tends to originate from genuine individuals misrepresenting their financial situations attempting to buy property that would ordinarily be out of reach.”
