Not seeing the problem here. The consequences happen to the parties defrauded, not to me the owner.
The article about Toronto says this is costing title insurers money, not homeowners.
A two year old article in Forbes agrees with me. The Home Title Theft Baloney
I keep thinking that I’m missing something about how having a credit freeze is insufficient.
I think the idea is that there are situations that don’t involve loans or mortgages. Some of those situations might not even be fraud. For example, some of the programs will notify you if a lien is put on your property. If the plumber who my neighbor didn’t pay accidentally puts the lien on my house * , it will probably be easier to fix now rather than ten years from now when I want to sell the house. If my kid transfers my deed into his name, it will be easier for me to fix it now than for my other kids to fix it after my death. And credit freezes or alerts won’t stop that sort of thing or even let you know thy happened
Which is not to say that those paid moniitoring services are worth it - they probably aren’t since they don’t usually cover the cost of fixing the problem. But the free government programs are definitely worth signing up for.
The way addresses go where I live, if my address is 68-10 70 st , there might be a 68-10 on 70 Avenue, Court, Lane, Place , Road , Terrace and so on.
Social media means that if e.g. Walmart is having a give-away sale on turkeys, everyone in town knows about it immediately and there’ll be a line out the door by 8am and they’ll be sold out by 8:45. The secret fishing hole is fished out, that out of the way beach is now crowded, etc.
Social media also means that if a scam or crime works well, the entire universe of dishonest and semi-honest people will know about it quickly. if it’s easy to copycat, it will be. En masse.
I encountered this recent thread on Reddit where a similar scam was run on some vacant land. It certainly seems more plausible than being done in an actively-being-lived-in primary residence where people would notice potential buyers poking around.
They didn’t seem to actually do a fraudulent title transfer, they just pretended to be the owner. There was also a suggested defense of putting a lien on your own property so the title can’t be transferred without clearing the lien.
Or that roofer that leaves your roof half undone, abandons the project and files a lien because you didn’t pay him in full. Yeah, that a “deal with it right away” sort of thing.
I remember reading an article suggesting vacant condos in Toronto owned by overseas (e.g. Chinese) investors were being targeted.
Lotta unoccupied properties in many major cities that are essentially money laundering or at least money parking for wealthy folks from lesser countries. Russians in London, Latins in Miami, Chinese in Vancouver and I suspect in the SF bay area also, etc.
They’d be ideal targets. The owners aren’t skilled in the language or law of the jurisdiction of the property, etc.