I made £700 by reporting the home next door – now I’m going to spend it on a massive birthday party!

A mother who pocketed £700 by reporting her neighbor to the authorities plans to spend the money on a big party.

The house next to mother-of-three Ayyesha had been locked up and abandoned for so long that illegal dumpers were constantly dumping their rubbish in the yard.

Ayyesha, 29, from Smethwick, West Midlands, received the money for reporting the dilapidated house, which will now be renovated and restored for a new resident to move in.

The 29-year-old, who works as a student housing manager, contacted YouSpotProperty.com after expressing dissatisfaction with what she described as a “neighborhood eyesore.”

The money was disbursed by YouSpotProperty.com, which pays money to the public for reporting abandoned properties in England.

If a reported property meets their criteria – it’s privately owned, not on the market and hasn’t recently applied for planning permission – the person alerting them will initially be given a £20 voucher to M&S or Amazon.

If YouSpotProperty.com then buys the house, that person will receive a one per cent share of the value of the property, up to a maximum of £10,000.

It is thought that as many as 250,000 properties are currently vacant or derelict in England.

Ayyesha stated: ‘We know from neighbors that the owner had once lived in it years ago, but for the last five years we lived next door it had been left empty – he came back maybe once a year just to sweep the front step.

She said no action was taken, which resulted in dump trucks dumping their rubbish, including items such as mattresses, in the front yard next door.

“We knew who owned it and tried to track him down, but he didn’t respond to our concerns, much to our frustration,” she said. The mirror.

Ayyesha said she received a £20 voucher after initially reporting the house to YouSpotProperty in 2022.

However, after the property was cleaned and put back on the market for sale, she said she was surprised after receiving an email saying she could receive a £700 payout.

All Ayyesha did was take a picture of the house and upload it to the company’s website, before YouSpotProperty launched their own investigation.

She said, “If something is too good to be true, it usually is. I called YouSpotProperty after the email and was immediately answered by their financial controller who said ‘you must be Ayyesha’ – I was stunned and overjoyed.

‘Initially I thought I’d get another voucher, after the £20 Amazon voucher I received in 2022 for spotting the house – I hadn’t clocked the one per cent reward associated with the company selling the property good actually bought.’

She added that she didn’t have an 18th or 21st birthday party, but since she turned 30 this year, she spent the money on a party.

Over the past decade, YouSpotProperty has ‘rescued’ over 100 vacant homes with the company handing out 8,189 £20 vouchers.

To date, it has paid 133 reward fees for homes that they ended up buying before returning to use.

The largest one percent recipient is Paul Woodley of Hertfordshire, who received £10,000 in 2017 after YouSpotProperty completed a £1.15 million property purchase.

YouSpotPropert.com co-founder Nick Kalms said: “Dealing with vacant homes is one of the most complex situations for local communities to solve because the reasons why they end up in this position are often so varied.

“Most of the time it is almost impossible to locate and speak to owners because they are not easily traceable. We have a specialized team to tackle exactly this element.

“Houses are often the subject of long and complicated probate deeds after a person’s death, and they can sit empty for years.

“Councils have limited powers and resources to allocate to this and so they destroy neighborhoods – and this is where we step in.”