Yet Another Thing to Worry About (Or is it?)

[Bicycle Bill]

I've been seeing a lot of ads on TV for something called a "title lock service", which supposedly will monitor your home's title to make sure that scammers don't transfer the title of your home to their name, and then try to sell it or borrow against its equity, leaving you holding the bag for the debt... or, in a worst-case scenario, homeless.  The question I had was is this really enough of a thing that there would be a need for such a service, or is this a case of where someone created a product and is now creating a 'need' for it by these fear-mongering tactics.

So, I did a Google search... and I found that while this is in fact possible (provided someone has obtained your personal information such as SSN, date of birth, and other sensitive details), it ain't all that common.  According to this information from the FBI, there has been a rash of rental and real-estate scams ... but in 2021, there were fewer than 12000 reports of losses reported by victims of real estate/rental scams with a total dollar amount of around $350.3 million reportedly lost.  And remember ... that is 1) across the entire nation, and 2) includes losses due to ALL forms of real estate fraud, not just title transfer.

So while it can and undoubtedly does happen under specific circumstances, it seems to me that paying someone else to monitor your title is money that can be put to better use.  Just follow good common sense with regard to your personal information, and keep checking your credit records and history for anything that seems out of the ordinary.

-"BB"-

[MajGenl.Meade]

Don't bother worrying. https://www.rrpg-law.com/post/is-home-t ... e-of-money

It does not protect you in any way from a scammer fraudulently transferring your title. It is more of a deed monitoring service that periodically checks in to see if your title has been transferred OUT of your name.

If it has, they notify you and then provide ZERO assistance in helping. So, AFTER the fraud has taken place, they alert you. The time at which they alert you is based upon when they decide to do a random check. So, it could take days, weeks even months to find out about it. And then they don’t even help you solve any problems that may have been created as a result.

The illegal (and false) transfer of your title could happen, but it is very rare. Title fraud occurs when a scammer forges your name on a deed and then files it at the county courthouse and takes out a loan against the home. Title Lock claims to protect you against this, but it’s not a legitimate representation of what it actually does at all. Anybody can fill out a blank deed and forge your name to it, then file that deed at the courthouse. If that happens, the law assumes you will act eventually to protect your ownership, and charge the scammer with FRAUD.

If the scammer has used your home as collateral and taken a loan out against your property, it is important to know that you are not responsible to pay it back. The scammer never legally owned your house, so the lender has no legal claim on your property. If they tried to foreclose, that would be considered “wrongful foreclosure.” The lender probably required the scam borrower to pay for Lender's Title Insurance to protect the lender against fraud just like this. The title insurance company would probably have to eat the loss, then try to recover against the scam borrower.

In most counties in Ohio, you can access the county property ownership records online free of charge and “monitor” your deed yourself.

[Burning Petard]

The more typical scam is to move into a home while the legal occupants are away on an extended vacation (announced on social media) and then claim al kinds of legal stalls to get free roof over their head while the owner is tied up in paying to set up an eviction order.

snailgate.