A mum-of-three made £700 after reporting her neighbour's abandoned home where fly-tippers would regularly dump rubbish.
Ayyesha was sick of the derelict home next door and reported it to YouSpotProperty.com. The 29-year-old, from Smethwick, West Midlands, described the property as the “neighbourhood eyesore”.
She later received £700 for the tip as the website pays members of the public for reporting abandoned properties in England. The home met the eligibility criteria will now be refurbished and made ready for someone else to move into.
A property is eligible to be reported if it is privately owned, not up for sale and no planning permission applied for recently. A £20 voucher for M&S or Amazon will be given for the initial tip, the Mirror reports.
If the house is purchased by YouSpotProperty, a share of one per cent of the property value, up to £10,000, if given to the person who reported the home.
An estimated 250,000 properties currently stand empty or derelict in England.
Ayyesha said: “We know from neighbours that the owner had once lived in it years back, yet for the past five years that we’ve lived next door, it had been left unoccupied - he’d returned maybe once a year only to sweet the front step.
“No one wanted to help, she said. No action was taken. Fly-tippers eventually started dumping mattresses on the front garden and this went on for nearly five years.
“We knew who the owner was and tried to track him down, but he failed to respond to any of our concerns, much to our frustration.”
Ayyesha received a £20 voucher when she first reported the property to YouSpotProperty in 2022.
She was stunned when the property was later cleaned out and put up for sale - leaving her eligible for £700 after she took photos of the home and uploaded them to the company website.
She said: “When something is too good to be true, it usually is, however, I called YouSpotProperty following the email and was immediately answered by their finance controller who said ‘you must be Ayyesha’ – I was gobsmacked and overjoyed.
“Initially, I thought I would be getting another voucher, following the £20 Amazon one I received in 2022 for spotting the house – I hadn’t clocked the 1 per cent reward incentive linked to the firm actually purchasing the property.”
Ayyesha added: “I’m 30 this year, I didn’t have an 18th or a 21st, so this money will definitely go towards a celebration this year.”
YouSpotProperty have "rescued" more than 100 empty homes in England over the past decade, with the company having given out 8189 £20 vouchers.
So far, 133 people have received reward fees for homes bought by the firm.
In 2017, Paul Woodley of Hertfordshire was paid £10,000 - making him the largest one per cent recipient - after YouSpotProperty completed the purchase of a £1.15million property.
YouSpotPropert.com co-founder, Nick Kalms, said: “Dealing with empty homes is one of the most complex situations to resolve for local communities, as the reason they fall into this position is often so varied.
“Mostly, it’s near impossible to locate and speak to owners as they can’t easily be traced. We have a specialist team to deal with just this element.
“Often, houses are the subject of long and complicated probate following the death of an individual, and they can sit empty for years.
“Councils have limited powers and resources to allocate to this which is why they end up blighting neighbourhoods – and this is where we step in.”
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