The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has put out alerts about an increase in property title fraud:
- Protect Your Property from Illegal Sales Through Parcel Owner Impersonation
- FBI Boston Warns Quit Claim Deed Fraud is on the Rise
Basically, criminals will forge some documents and pretend to be you online, and then either hire a real estate agent to sell the property or take out a loan against it. The most vulnerable are vacant parcels and “unencumbered” properties with no mortgage lien on them (i.e. you’ve paid off your mortgage).
This Realtor.com article states that 59% of title firms reported encountering at least one seller impersonation fraud attempt in the prior calendar year. In general, title insurance does not protect the property owner from post-closing events.
The actionable advice here is to check if your state or local office offers a “property alert” service. In addition, be on the lookout for unexpected changes in tax or utility bills. I would simply run a search for “[your county] property recording alert” or “[your county] property recording watch”. For example, let’s take Multnomah County of Portland, Oregon. If you search for “Multnomah Country property recording alert”, you will find their Property Recording Alert Service (PRAS) which is a free e-mail alert service for when a recorded document is indexed under a monitored name. This means that you should be able to be get an alert if a property titled in your name has its ownership changed.
This is how most of these free services work; they don’t actually prevent the fraud, but at least you are notified quickly after it occurs. That way, you can immediately start to take steps to fix it and possibly prevent someone taking out a loan against the property.
Make sure you are entering your information into a legitimate government website. I’ve seen some questionable sites mixed in with the official ones.
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It would help if title companies did what their job entails. 2 out of 2 transactions with title companies had issues with the title company not doing their job.
Can’t imagine how much title fraud is committed in part due to laziness, stonewalling or downright incompetence on the part of title companies.
Just another unless step to make home buying more expensive and provide no actual benefit to those paying.
Agree 100%. Title insurance is one of the largest frauds being perpetrated upon the American public! They take your money, but do nothing. If there is a problem you have to win a lawsuit to get them to take action.
Title insurance companies should be the ones preventing this fraud, it should not need to be the responsibility of homeowners. However, since title companies intend to do nothing except take you money at closing, they have no intention of providing the service they are selling.
Between this and the show squatters one can get paranoid ?
Hey Thanks Jonathan.
I checked my city and they offer this alert service….signed up.
Now, the next time we see one of those “Title Protection” commercials on TV, I can just subtly comment to the wife that we’re already signed up with the city for Title modification alerts.