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Updated over 4 years ago on . Most recent reply

User Stats

238
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168
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Dani Beit-Or
  • Investor
  • Irvine, CA
168
Votes |
238
Posts

How Easy/Hard to Steal a House

Dani Beit-Or
  • Investor
  • Irvine, CA
Posted

I have two goals for this post:

  1. Increase awareness of the issue
  2. Find ways to decrease the chances of this happening

Note: I'm not an attorney. Just an investor. 

Several weeks ago I read a post on FB about someone who got their house stolen . . . as in a form or result of ID theft. Unfortunately, I don't have the details.

When I read it, it struck a nerve. For approx. 15 years I have always wondered how relatively easy or not complicated it is to steal property. Honestly, I'm shocked it is not more common. 

The next thing I did is to speak to two attornies and one title guy. I'm still looking to speak w/ more such functions.

Do you want to guess what was the attorney's first answer? talk to the title.

Guess what title says . . . you got it . . . talk to an attorney.

LOL would be sarcstic.

The first att. I spoke to had no clue. She kept getting back to how I should protect my identity from theft. When I told her that ID theft has nothing to do w/ property theft and that you don't need a SSN to steal a house  . . . she kept circling back to ID theft and protecting it. I was not impressed . . . at all.

The second att. was more helpful. First, he acknowledged it is rather not complicated to do/accomplish. Then he said that in the past counties would have (free or for cost) a mechanism that lets the owner know and seek approval before ANY changes are made to the title. BTW, while this is a good protection layer it is far from perfect. 

The title guy had no answer. And said about the county he knows well that they have no such notification service.

In the past, someone told me he adds on the deed something like "call Jim Smith at  ### or email at @@@ for any changes".   At the time I thought it was a great idea. But I don't think anyone regularly reads the deed.

Either title or one of the attornies said that the notary should review the deed before signing. After many hundreds of notarizations, I doubt any notary does so (I could be wrong).

Like protecting our house from break-in I guess we cannot have it 100% protected but if we add bars, alarm, lights, patrol, etc. it will make it harder/less attractive for someone to break-in.

Do you have any good ways we, owners, can have better protection of our title/properties? I'll take "better" than what we have today or more difficult than what we have now.

So what's your solution, suggestion, idea?

Most Popular Reply

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Ibrahim Hughes
  • Real Estate Consultant
  • Bloomfield, NJ
1,043
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2,082
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Ibrahim Hughes
  • Real Estate Consultant
  • Bloomfield, NJ
Replied

This is happened to about 3 properties I had under contract last year. There was a fourth that I was going to pursue until I saw the same type of deed I saw on the other three and alerted the owner. All four properties were pretty much boarded and abandoned as that's what I specialize in. All except the 4th which was very dilapidated and vacant but not boarded and abandoned. The bad part about it was that I saw the first fraudulent deed taking the property come through and confirmed with the grandson of the elderly owner that it was in fact fraudulent. He was slow in responding and doing anything about it and the next thing I know another deed where the property was resold for a six-figure sum was recorded. So the grandson had to go get an attorney and was going back and forth with the attorney.I'll have to check with him and see what the latest but I wouldn't be surprised if he decided not to pursue. Be seemed too laid-back to really be on top of things like he should have been.

But The first time I saw it, I was able to catch it quickly and respond immediately. Didn't have to get an attorney involved. The original owner was deceased and I was dealing with her son. He came out to New Jersey from Pennsylvania and I took him down to the police to file a report. Then we grabbed the surrogate paperwork already on file and I spoke to the County recorder and employees who all know me pretty well there. Based on the paperwork the county recorded quickly invalidated the fraudulent one.

The other two had already abandoned the property and had decided to not pursue. They didn't want to deal with the property anyway and I guess that experience just reminded them why they walked away from the property to begin with. 

But I actually have a picture of the guy doing it and shared it with County Police. You would be floored to find out how low on the priority pole these things sit. When you're dealing with a County that's already up to their eyeballs in murder and drug cases, fraudulent deeds Don't get too much of their attention. Plus the police can't really do anything unless the homeowner pursues it.  So this is much easier to do on abandoned properties but likely a lot harder on occupied ones. 

I think a good tutorial on showing people how to check their deeds online can probably go a long way in helping people protect themselves. In a couple of cases I noticed a notice of settlement filed and knew something was fraudulent going on. notice of settlements are filed here when someone orders title work. So unless it's my title company filing the notice under my company name, I know something fraudulent is going on. My thoughts is that if property owners you had to do this, a lot of them could protect themselves. But at the same time the county should definitely have an alert system that homeowners can sign up for. One of the owners in my cases actually saw the fraudulent sale take place via Zillow and alerted me about it.

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