Home Loans And Mortgages – Beware Of Deed Theft Scam

Home Loans And Mortgages – Beware Of Deed Theft Scam
By Charles Essmeier

The average home in the United States has a value of $206,000,
a record amount. Real estate prices have been rising throughout
the country during the last five years, and homeowners have seen
the value of their property skyrocket. In California alone, the
equity in private homes has increased by more than one trillion
dollars in the last five years alone. Many homeowners do not
even realize that their home may be worth hundreds of thousands
of dollars more than they know. Unfortunately for them, a new
breed of thieves is well aware of the value of home equity, and
a scam known as “deed theft” has allowed them to steal homes
from thousands of people.

Deed theft is simple in principle. The perpetrators of deed
theft post flyers around town offering “foreclosure help.” They
seek homeowners with mortgages who may be experiencing some
temporary financial setback that threatens them with
foreclosure. It’s not uncommon for people who have been living
in their homes for years to have a sudden financial emergency
that prevents them from making their house payments. Perhaps a
job loss or illness is to blame. The economic downturn of the
last five years has left a lot of people struggling to pay
their bills, and these are the people that the deed thieves
seek. Their flyers promise to help those in danger of having
their homes taken through foreclosure. The thieves meet with
the homeowners and ask to have the title to the home
transferred to them. In exchange, the “rescuer” will promise to
pay the delinquent bills and rent the home to the victim for a
year or so at a fair price. During this time, they say, the
homeowner can save their money or pay off other bills. At the
end of that year, the victim can buy the house back from the
“rescuer.”

This seems like a friendly gesture, except that the “rescuer”
has no intention of selling the home back to the victim. Once
the title is signed over to them, they legally own the home.
They may evict the victim, sell the home, or borrow against it,
and there is little recourse for the victim, who is now nothing
more than a squatter. Many of these victims fail to realize
that they may have had hundreds of thousands of dollars in
equity in their home or that their mortgage company may have
been willing to either refinance their home or assist them in
some other way with making their payments.

This scam is currently popular across the country and
homeowners could easily avoid being victimized by simply
calling their mortgage company at the first sign of financial
struggle. Mortgage companies aren’t really interested in
foreclosure; they’d much rather get paid if at all possible.
Before accepting the “help” of strangers who post signs on
streetcorners, homeowners should start by asking help from
those with whom they are already doing business. Doing so could
not only save the homeowner money, it could save the homeowner’s
house.

About the Author: ©Copyright 2005 by Retro Marketing. Charles
Essmeier is the owner of Retro Marketing, a firm devoted to
informational Websites, including http://www.End-Your-Debt.com,
a Website devoted to debt consolidation information and
http://www.HomeEquityHelp.net, a site devoted to information on
home equity loans.

Source: http://www.isnare.com