Orlando-Area Court Clerk Begins Crackdown On F'closure Auction Buyer Doc Stamp Overpayment Scam Designed To Artificially Inflate Recorded Sale Prices

In Orlando, Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports:

• The Orange County Clerk of Courts office took a definitive step Tuesday in preventing investors buying up foreclosure properties from overpaying documentary stamp taxes on their new properties and artificially inflating the sale prices of the real estate.
• The inflation of foreclosure auction purchase prices appeared to be a common practice among a small group of investors. But the short-term fix seems simple enough: Clerk of Courts Lydia Gardner's office started writing the winning bid amounts on property title certificates Tuesday.
• That action came after the Orlando Sentinel identified dozens of cases in which the clerk's office listed one foreclosure sale price while the Orange County Property Appraiser's Office listed a higher price – often tens of thousands of dollars more than the high bidders actually paid.

For more, see Clerk's Office aims to stop bogus foreclosure sale prices.