Protect Yourself Against Deed Fraud!

 

What is Deed Fraud? It's when a bad actor STEALS YOUR REAL ESTATE PROPERTY. Starting this year, Realtors in Arizona are now required to complete 1 hour covering Deed Fraud per period of continuing education to renew their license. That's how important the Commissioner thinks this problem is.

Who's most at risk for Deed Fraud? Vacant Land Owners, first and foremost. Secondly, residential owners who have no mortgage against their property, especially vacation homes or people who travel a lot. These properties are more at risk because there's no lien to release through the deed transfer process.

What can property owners do about it? This varies county by county across the nation. My rural Mohave County was a very early adopter with two programs. One is the Address Protection Program with the Assessor's Office (see graphic above). This 'locks' the tax address for the property. A defrauder's first step is usually to change the address so that the property owner does not see any transactional information about the sale of their property. The second program the Mohave County Recorder's office offers is A Recorded Document Alert against your name or Tax Parcel number. It's free. All you have to do is create a log-in and enter the information you'd like to be alerted about. Both of these steps can help prevent Deed Fraud. I applaud Mohave County for taking this problem seriously and being one of the first counties in Arizona to have a strategy to combat it.

Those of you who don't live in Mohave County can contact the Assessor's office in your county first to inquire about deed fraud prevention mechanism, and then contact your Recorder's office to see if they offer any sort of notification program. Thwart those bad actors, everyone!!