What is home title fraud?
Home title fraud is an involuntary transfer of property ownership without the true owner's consent or knowledge. In this scheme, someone tries to transfer ownership (title) of an owner's property to someone else. They then borrow money using someone else's property as collateral. This unfortunately is easily done with one forged deed document.
In 2017, the FBI reported over 9,600 real estate and rental fraud victims with losses totaling over $56 million. In just two years, this number grew to almost 12,000 victims with losses totaling over $220 million. Sounds scary, but these statistics include all different types of real estate, rental, and timeshare crimes, with only a small fraction of cases involving home title fraud.
For most, their homes are their biggest investment. Even if it is only a small fraction of home fraud cases, would you want to risk your biggest investment when you could have easily avoided the risk?
How do you safeguard against home title fraud?
When we drill down it is clear that the instances of home title fraud are very low and usually occur in very specific situations:
- When there is not a mortgage on the property. If there is an incumbent lender when a scammer tries to retitle the property, the lender is on the deed and will need to approve any transfer of title and the existing loan will have to be paid off. If you have a loan on your property, the chance of this happening is near zero. Get a small loan on your home.
- When properties are vacant and not monitored it is easier to forge a deed and transfer the property illegally. Monitor your vacant properties.
- Elderly property owners are more vulnerable as monitoring this may be too difficult for them. Have someone you trust help in monitoring your home.