Real Estate Fraud - A Form Of Identity Theft

Having your identity stolen may be as likely as winning the lottery

, but as we know, there's always a lottery winner. With millions of transactions occurring in real property every year, real estate fraud is rare but it happens, and it can cause a world of misery on a unsuspecting homeowner.

Even with new government-implemented rules, it is still difficult to regain ownership title once it has been pilfered out from under you. As well, recovering your homeowner title will come with a large abundance of legal fees.

Title fraud is something the average person should watch out for. It occurs when a fraudulent person changes the ownership title of a property into a different name in order to either sell the property or refinance it. This type of fraud occurs when your personal identity is stolen or foraged documents are used to transfer the registered owners's title to themselves, which secures the mortgage to their name. These people know enough of your details to go to the land title registry and pull title. They can then find out if there are any encumbrances on your property. If not, they basically have a ticket to sell the property so they change the home title, which, in turn, allows them to disappear with the mortgage proceeds.

Mortgage fraud is the other type of real estate fraud that people should be aware of. However, this type of fraud causes more trouble for the lenders than it does for the homeowners. This one involves fraudulent people leaving the title of home ownership to the rightful owner but instead, mortgaging it without the homeowner's knowledge. This is achieved by fraudulently wiping out the existing mortgage and falsifying information to obtain another mortgage on the same home.

It may sound simple to assume you would know immediately if you had been scammed or not, but that's not the case. These people have gone through great lengths to do what they can to ensure delays before the homeowners and banks find out. They get the information they need to change ownership of the property, then either sell it or they go to the bank for a homeowner's line of credit for their own purposes. They then make payments for the first two or three months. In the meantime, the homeowner receives their bills and the bank receives their payments; everything looks fine. It's when the following months come and there are suddenly no payments. For this reason, it can take up to six months to discover you or your bank has been scammed.

If you have been the victim of real estate fraud and are suffering a bad credit score because of it, there are many private lending institutions that can help.

by: Molly Wider

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