Vic Allerton was a mortgage advisor who called at 8 Coronation Street in February 2013 to value the house and advise prospective buyers David and Kylie Platt on a mortgage they could obtain to buy it.
A week earlier, owner Gail McIntyre had herself taken a loan out on the house and been conned out of the £40,000 proceeds by Lewis Archer. Intending to go to Italy with Lewis and abandon her family, they had little sympathy for her plight and her mother Audrey Roberts had given her grandson David the £9,000 deposit he needed. Gail came back from the Rovers in a slightly tipsy state to find David, Kylie and Vic gathered round the kitchen table discussing financial matters on the house that was valued by Vic at £90,000. With a drunken grin on her face she entered into a diatribe on how Vic’s own two children, then aged five and two, would one day turn on him and his mother would do the same as well. Later, as Gail snored on the sofa, Vic left, telling the youngsters that they should be able to obtain a mortgage easily.