3 Common Real Estate Scams
Purchasing a house involves a lot of stress. In a highly competitive market environment, the impulse to react hastily when you locate the perfect property is always present. Where there are fast acting people, or a need to speed things up, there are people willing to take advantage of that.
Sadly, real estate scams have advanced dramatically. Because of the high amounts of cash associated in deals, as well as the exchange of sensitive data among various parties, real estate is a popular target for thieves. As a result, scammers usually reap the benefits of this and either lure prospective house buyers into investments that do not exist, or they falsify the conditions of the contract.
Partnering with a well-known real estate agent will prevent you from getting most real estate scams, but there are other measures you could take to protect yourself. We’ll begin by outlining the most frequent real estate scams you can encounter when looking to buy a home, rent a house, or even purchase an investment property.
3 Common Real Estate Scams
- Title or Deed Scam – People are deceived when a scammer poses as the owner of a property and hands them fake paperwork to transfer ownership of the estate to people. Once you paid, you can check to see whether the property is mortgaged at a bank or if it is not registered at all.
- Wire Fraud Scam – Using a wire fraud is a way for scammers to pretend to be your real estate agent and get you to wire money to a phoney account. Scammers use phishing to steal money from people who use mortgage wires. A phishing scam is when a hacker pretends to be someone you know and sends you spoofed information, phone calls, or websites. These can be quite advanced these days.
- Rental scams – The majority of these schemes take place online, making it nearly impossible to apprehend the perpetrator. In this scam, the fraudster will target out-of-town tenants like college students completing their residencies or families wishing for a new beginning. Bogus rental adverts are a typical rental hoax. A fraudster publishes an ad for an apartment and aims to get a deposit or lease money from a prospective renter.
