Deed Theft / Title Conversion / Signing Over Your Deed
Whether you call it "Deed Theft", "Title Conversion", or simply "signing over your deed", this is considered by many as one of the most common and most disasterous scams that can be committed against an unsuspecting homeowner and can result in the complete loss of a person's home.
If you are having trouble paying your mortgage, missed at least one payment, and the lender has threatened to foreclose and take your home, you may feel desperate. You may be approached by someone referring to him/herself as a so-called "foreclosure assistance counselor" (or some other similar sounding name) offering to provide "foreclosure rescue" or "mortgage rescue" services. This "counselor" may offer to lend you money or he may offer to help you get a new loan to help you catch up on the house payments that you haven't made in order to save your home.
Sometimes, this so-called "counselor" may tell you that before he can help you, he wants you to transfer ownership of your property to him, claiming that it's a temporary measure to prevent foreclosure. Then, he will break all the promises he made to you and never transfer back the ownership of your home to you.
Other times, he may simply give you papers to sign, telling you that they are "standard loan papers" for a loan he may have promised to give you, when, in fact, the papers are actually "ownership papers." He then gets you to "sign the papers", without ever telling you that the papers you signed actually transferred ownership of your home to him.
In a variation of this scheme, this "counselor" will ask you to "sell" your house to him. He won't give you much, if any, cash up front, but will agree to catch up on your house payments with the bank. In exchange, he will let you rent the house back from him with the promise that you can buy the house back from in at some point in the future. However, either by charging you a very high rent, by setting a very high "buy back" price, or by otherwise making it difficult for you to follow through with your end of the arrangement, he puts you in a position where you can't complete the "buy back" and, if you stop paying the rent, he will evict you, since now, you are only a tenant and no longer the owner of your home.
You have now lost your home and the scam artist is free to do with the home as he wishes.
If you are having trouble paying your mortgage, missed at least one payment, and the lender has threatened to foreclose and take your home, you may feel desperate. You may be approached by someone referring to him/herself as a so-called "foreclosure assistance counselor" (or some other similar sounding name) offering to provide "foreclosure rescue" or "mortgage rescue" services. This "counselor" may offer to lend you money or he may offer to help you get a new loan to help you catch up on the house payments that you haven't made in order to save your home.
Sometimes, this so-called "counselor" may tell you that before he can help you, he wants you to transfer ownership of your property to him, claiming that it's a temporary measure to prevent foreclosure. Then, he will break all the promises he made to you and never transfer back the ownership of your home to you.
Other times, he may simply give you papers to sign, telling you that they are "standard loan papers" for a loan he may have promised to give you, when, in fact, the papers are actually "ownership papers." He then gets you to "sign the papers", without ever telling you that the papers you signed actually transferred ownership of your home to him.
In a variation of this scheme, this "counselor" will ask you to "sell" your house to him. He won't give you much, if any, cash up front, but will agree to catch up on your house payments with the bank. In exchange, he will let you rent the house back from him with the promise that you can buy the house back from in at some point in the future. However, either by charging you a very high rent, by setting a very high "buy back" price, or by otherwise making it difficult for you to follow through with your end of the arrangement, he puts you in a position where you can't complete the "buy back" and, if you stop paying the rent, he will evict you, since now, you are only a tenant and no longer the owner of your home.
You have now lost your home and the scam artist is free to do with the home as he wishes.
posted by Home Equity Theft Reporter at 9:28 PM
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