Stealing Homes Is Way Too Easy

I just read an article in the recent edition of AARP Bulletin entitled “Home, Stolen Home” by Sid Kirchheimer. The article begins with the story of Teresa Bidwell, who discovered that someone had stolen her home “when the contractors she hired to make minor repairs found another crew already there.”

In Protect Yourself from Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud: Preserving the American Dream of Homeownership, a book I co-authored with Rachel Dollar and Ralph Roberts, we devote and entire chapter to this topic – Chapter 14, “Stealing Houses with Tax Deeds and Phony Deeds,” which begins with a section on how con artists use deeds to steal homes.

The trouble is that in some areas, it’s far too easy to steal a home. All you have to do is trick the owners into signing a quit claim deed that transfers ownership of the property to you and then file the document with the county register of deeds. If the homeowners won’t cooperate, con artists simply forge the signatures. If they can pass off the documents at the register of deeds office, they become the proud new owners of the property… at least until the legitimate owners can convince the courts otherwise.

I think it should be at least as difficult to transfer the ownership of property as it is to change your mailing address. When you submit change of address forms, the U.S. Postal service mails you notification of the change in address request, so you have an opportunity to cancel the change if you were not the one who initiated it. Why not use the same or a similar system to verify transfer of ownership? All it would require is a call or letter to the homeowner.