Home burgling is one of the many crimes on the rise, with hundreds of people lodging complaints and reports every day in the United States. However, another type of home theft crime gaining quite the attention is title fraud. Most people don’t come to understand this criminal activity until they’ve become victims. Hence, this article aims to provide pre-knowledge of home title theft and ways to protect against this situation.
What Is Home Title Theft?
Before getting into protecting your home title, let’s discuss what title fraud is.
Home title theft (or home title fraud) is when someone steals or uses your personal information illegally to obtain ownership of a home. It could be by forging a deed to get a loan, selling forged documents, or renting an unoccupied house to another person unlawfully. Regardless of the method, it could cause damage to the person and their line of credit.
How Does Home Title Theft Happen?
The idea around home title fraud is stealing people’s information and using it illegally, such as making people believe they are the actual owner of the property. Below is a list of steps that must have been taken for the crime to be committed.
- The thief steals sensitive details, such as full name, phone number, email address, social security number, and deed information. This could have been perpetrated in several ways, such as spam phone calls or emails (phishing), backdoor access to devices via malware, unsecured Wi-Fi network, data breach, or burgling/trash-can digging.
- Once the thief gets a hold of your information, such a person creates a fraudulent contract to pose as the owner of the property.
- Next, they apply for a credit or home equity loan with the forged deed documents. In another case, they sell or rent out an unoccupied home to someone else without permission.
- When they fail to make payments on the credit or loan, the real identity of the homeowner becomes exposed.
So, while you know this, you must keep your home title safe.
Who Is at Risk for Home Title Fraud?
Usually, homeowners who don’t monitor their properties closely are at risk of deed fraud. In this case, the people who suffer most are seniors and those with vacation homes and secondary residences. Foreign real estate investors are also likely targets of scammers in this title fraud.
Scammers always look for ways to steal personal information from individuals with real estate interests. According to the FBI, this real estate fraud has been categorized with broad strokes and rental scams, with nearly 12,000 cases reported in 2022.
How to Prevent Home Title Theft
With an understanding of how serious this situation is, learning how to prevent home title theft is ideal. Fortunately, this article discusses a number of ways to prevent deed fraud, and they include;
Keep an Eye On Bills And Mail
One of the most effective home title theft protection tips is to always keep an eye on utility bills and mail. You shouldn’t disregard any theft because, as simple as mail, you could become a victim of identity fraud. So, what you should do is account for every bill or mail you get. If you’ve received a bill that you never initiated, you should contact the corresponding company and complain. Always keep track of these things because you certainly will need them even against foreclosure.
Check Your Credit Report
Another home title fraud protection strategy is to always check your credit report. You need to make this a habit so that you can keep track of inconsistencies or irregularities in your finances. So that means missed payments or fraudulent fees on your account will not go past you. When you start seeing these charges, you can contact the appropriate authorities about it to investigate fraud.
Additionally, you can use free, reliable credit monitoring software services to provide good protection and track your credit card history. This proactive strategy will prevent you from becoming a victim of a home title scam.
Get Title Insurance
Getting title insurance is also an effective home title fraud prevention technique. Generally, this offers some protection over your property so that when scammers get a hold of your personally identifiable information, they are unable to use it to forge deeds and resell to another person. It comes in two forms – Lender and Owner title insurance. Mortgage companies use the former to clear the sale, while the latter protects the owner after buying the property.
This one-time title insurance policy protects against claims or liens filed after you have bought your home and also against fraud.
Use Secure Wi-Fi Network
One of the ways criminals often commit house title fraud is by accessing sensitive data over an unsecured network. It becomes easy to steal personal information using unsecured public Wi-Fi. So, to avoid this from happening, you should always use a secure Wi-Fi home network and never share login details with anyone.
What to Do If You Experience Home Title Theft
If you experience house title fraud, you should take some steps to recover whatever is lost and protect your line of credit. Take the following steps immediately;
- File a report to the appropriate authorities, i.e., the Federal Trade Commission, significant credit bureaus/reporting agencies, and the local police department.
- Freeze your credit and put a fraud alert on your account.
- Close all unauthorized accounts before the thief decides to use them unlawfully or open more credit cards using your details.
- Reach out to your mortgage lender and title insurance company to avoid foreclosure.
- Get an attorney with experience in real estate theft.
How Can Radaris Help?
Having control over your sensitive information is important more than anything else to prevent identity theft and property title fraud. That is why utilizing effective software tools is highly recommended, and Radaris.com is a good one to start with. It is a must-have for homeowners based on its working principle.
Radaris is an open-source site developed to help people find consequential details online. It can help find someone’s online info and also serve as a home title protection tool. All you have to do is enter your details on the site and allow it to create your profile based on your digital footprint. With Radaris, you can find out if you have sensitive data that could be stolen and used against you to forge deeds.
Conclusion
Naturally, you may think no one is capable of stealing your home. However, thieves have a different opinion about that, as their deed forging technique helps them get access to your personal finances and home. Luckily, if you can protect home title, you won’t have to worry about this – but this starts by ensuring that your personal information isn’t accessible to scammers. As explained in this article, the tips above will help you stay in control and, more importantly, use Radaris to check out your online details or activity for prevention and protection.
FAQ
How Frequent Is Home Title Fraud?
Home title theft is on the rise, even though it is classified alongside other real estate fraud, including property rental scams. In 2021, it was reported that nearly 12,000 cases of real estate fraud were reported in the US.
What Red Flags Exist for House Title Fraud?
Some common red flags that may describe your home is/is becoming a victim of real estate fraud include:
- Getting unnecessary bills and unfamiliar payments regularly;
- A credit denial based on suspicious activity on your line of credit;
- Constant calls from individuals claiming to be debt collectors;
- An IRS notification about unpaid taxes.
How Can I Report a Stolen Home Title?
You can report a stolen home title to the Federal Trade Commission at identitytheft.gov or file a report to the local police department.
Is Home Title Theft Real?
Yes, it is real.
In different cities in the United States, such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, etc., there have been reports of stolen home titles.
Is Insurance Against Home Title Theft Required?
Yes, it is if you want to protect your home. You should consider buying title insurance on all your properties, including secondary and vacation homes. This one-time fee will protect you and your real estate investment against thieves.
