06/22/2025
~HOUSE SCAM~
https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-woman-allegedly-caught-trying-153000934.html
This is the sort of thing we used to obsess over when we were doing closings. Someone fakes a deed from you to them, and then sells or mortgages your house.
There are two things you can do to help prevent or minimize this situation. Almost every County Clerk has an alert system set up where you will get a notice if someone files anything regarding your house. It will be a done deal by the time you get the alert, but it’s much easier to deal with the situation the day something is filed, rather than a year or two later when you get a foreclosure notice.
In Jefferson County, you can set that alert here: https://jeffersoncountyclerk.org/recording-indexing/
The second thing you can do is to set a Google Alert on your address. If you suddenly see a lot of activity regarding your house address, you should be on alert. The odds of this happening to you are infinitesimal, so it’s not something to lose sleep over. It usually happens in large cities or counties. But setting these alerts won’t take you 5 minutes.
The couple are accused of fraudulently transferring over 30 properties in Harris County to their names.
