This information is for educational purposes only. The writer is neither an attorney or accountant or realtor. For legal advice please consult your attorney. For tax advice please consult your tax adviser. For real estate advise please consult your realtor.
How do you avoid deed scams? Simple!
ALWAYS SPEAK TO YOUR ATTORNEY BEFORE ASSIGNING YOUR DEED TO ANYONE.
Few times are more stressful for families than when their home is facing foreclosure. Their challenge is to try to keep their wits about themselves and save their home or move on gracefully.
Sharks are the people who prey on other people because they think them to be vulnerable. And foreclosure makes homeowners vulnerable because of the stress associated with losing their home.
Do not sign the deed to your house over to anyone before speaking to your attorney.
When you are NOT in a desperate situation it seems obvious to you that you should never assign the deed to your home over to anyone else.
A deed is a document that conveys ownership. So when you assign your deed over to someone else, they become the (new) owner.
Yet people assign their deeds over to strangers everyday! I have heard of people bragging of how many deeds “they got in a day”.
Most people who demand you surrender your deed are not out to harm you!
The logical reason for the deed transfer is control. Homeowners have been known to sell their property to more than one person at the same time.
Imagine putting time and money into someone else’s property, based on what you thought was the agreement–and the other person completely ignores that agreement and does something different?
What happens if you have spent say, $10,000, on someone else’s property–and they do something unexpected? It is not your property, and therefore, you loss all your money and legally you have no say.
That is the logical reason an investor may demand a homeowner surrender their deed, if they are going to help them. The investor is protecting their interest in the homeowners property.
Does this mean I am suggestion you assign your deed to someone else? No! As I stated: do not assign your deed to anyone else without first speaking to your attorney.
But sharks are different. There intentions are to take advantage of tired, wary, and desperate souls. Sharks believe us to be suckers. There goal is to steal our money. So they do what is quick, fast, and easy.
Here are several examples of what a shark could do, if you willingly deed your home to them:
* Sell it on a lease-option with a cash down payment of 5-10%. On a $100,000 house that would be a $5000-$10,000 cash down payment.
* Sell it on a lease-option with a cash down payment of 5-10% along with a monthly payment. On a $100,000 house that would be a $5000-$10,000 cash down payment, plus, a monthly payment of say $1000-$1200 for several months; for a $500,000 house that’s $25,000-$50,000.
* Record the deed via a trust, set the house on fire and collect the insurance.
* Sell it for all cash, real cheap, at an auction. Then leave town before anyone could figure out what really happened. This would be more difficult to do. But in a 1 or 2 day auction with a pumped-up, greedy audience–and the house for sell at say 50% of its value–”one crowd member might just be persuaded to put cash in the hands of the shark–before they realized that hand was about to ‘bite some of their cash off’ .
* Do not sign any documents without first consulting with your advisers.
When you discuss solutions to your home a lot is at stake. So you should consult with those who advise you trust before signing anything. I have violated this rule before myself in the heat of a real estate transaction–so I know, first hand, how easy it is to violate this rule. But it is a mistake that can be costly.
This is easy to say and difficult to do.
Tags: deed scams, Foreclosure, foreclosures, scam, Scams
