You probably have seen the ads. A young woman in a TikTokity video sternly warning you that scammers can download one fake document, file it with the recorder, and just like that, they take the property out of your name. Or the pair of shady thieves trolling your neighborhood with a laptop and a fake notary stamp and sucking out your home equity. Even a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives gravely warned that if you don’t check your title every 24 hours, that’s all the time criminals need to steal it. And you won’t even know until they come to evict you.
Companies peddling so-called title lock insurance rely on scare tactics to convince you pony up nearly $20 a month for a subscription service that purports to monitor the deed to your home and assist you in recovering the dwelling if you fall victim to what they ominously call “house stealing.” At best, these ads are misleading and dramatically overstate the risk of loss and overstate their ability to prevent it.
Title theft is a narrow example of identity fraud, where a scammer gains enough personal information to impersonate a homeowner and then file a fraudulent deed with the property recorder, placing the home in their name. They may secure a new mortgage to drain the equity or even attempt to sell the property to an unsuspecting legitimate buyer. Sounds terrifying. But what are the odds?
Pretty small as it turns out. Although one company states that the FBI has classified title fraud as the fastest growing white collar crime in America, there is no record of the agency making any such claim. In fact, the FBI’s IC3 cybercrime database does not even track title theft separately, lumping it into the broad category of real estate fraud. In 2024, there were 9,400 reported fraud claims related to real property and mortgage lending. Assuming that even half of those involved an attempt to forge a title, that puts the odds of being victimized at about 1 in 20,000. You have a better chance of being struck by lightning during your lifetime. Which suggests a new product idea: Lightning Lock. Paging Dr. Franklin.
Furthermore, according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors, two-thirds of the cases of which its members were aware involved vacant houses or property with little or no oversight. Another 12% pertained to non-owner occupied dwellings. And since a thief is generally looking to cash out equity, a mortgage of any consequence makes the family home a much less appealing prospect.
What is being marketed as title lock insurance does not lock or insure anything. It is always possible for a thief to file forged documents with the county recorder, and no subscription service can prevent it. They simply query the public property database in your county, searching for any changes in the recorded title to your home and alerting you to the filing. They may also provide some level of assistance in filing the legal paperwork to rectify a fraudulent filing and clear the title. One company touts “million dollar restoration coverage,” offering up to $1 million in legal costs and assistance, but does not represent you in court and will not reimburse you for any actual losses from fraudulent loans or transfer attempts. A spokesperson for the National Association of Consumer Advocates refers to title lock insurance as “a product in search of a problem to solve,” and at least two states have opened investigations into reports of exaggerated or misleading claims by one prominent purveyor.
It is important to know that forging a mortgage document does not create a real obligation and filing a fraudulent deed with the county recorder does not convey ownership. The perpetrator cannot steal your house as the fraudulent title is legally void. They could, however, create a major headache that might require potentially costly litigation if enough time passes without detection, even if the true risk is statistically minuscule. Some people are actually struck by lightning. It therefore makes sense to be proactive and invest a few minutes each year to pull up the drawbridge just in case the marauders attempt to cross the moat.
Many counties across the U.S. offer a free service to notify you of any changes to the official record of your property. In Hamilton County, the Register of Deeds has created a property fraud alert at Register.HamiltonTN.gov. It takes about a minute to sign up, after which you will receive an email or text notification any time a document is recorded under your name, along with instructions for contacting the register if you do not recognize the transaction.
Watch your mail or email for routine bills and notices like tax statements, looking for regular statements that stop coming or unexpected correspondence that suddenly appears. You should also search the county database for your property address and inspect the record to make sure nothing has changed.
Pretty much everyone should freeze their files with the major credit bureaus (Equifax, TransUnion and Experian) to prevent anyone from applying for a loan in their name. The process must be done separately for each bureau but can easily be done online once you have set up a login. You can easily unfreeze any time if you plan to apply for credit yourself, then button them back up. You should also inspect your credit reports at each bureau for unusual activity once a year, which you can do at no cost at AnnualCreditReport.com.
If you detect suspicious activity, report it immediately to local law enforcement and contact the Register of Deeds for a copy of the record. Swift action can generally defeat an attempt fairly easily if reported early.
Of course, one may choose to outsource the monitoring for a price. Just weigh the cost against the actual odds and clearly understand what these companies can do, and what they cannot do, no matter how minatory the commercial.
Christopher A. Hopkins, CFA, is a co-founder of Apogee Wealth Partners in Chattanooga.