Could ID Theft Cost You Your Home?

You have worked hard your whole life. You have paid off your house. Retirement looks comfortable and you are thinking of using some of your home equity to buy a second home. You go to the bank to apply for your loan and the loan officer cannot seem to confirm that you actually own your home. In addition, the tax records reveal someone else not only owns the home you have lived in all of these years but that they have taken out a large mortgage against the house. Suddenly, your net worth has dropped by thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands.

Identity Theft...whether it is your social security number or other personally identifying information that is stolen, it is traumatic.  Personally, it was a huge concern when someone stole my identity and purchased 4 cell phones from a Best Buy in Washington state and set up AT&T service!  No, I do not have AT&T, I do not live in Washington and I do not have an account with Best Buy. This was an issue I had to take seriously BUT, what if it was my house they took or if they purchased another in my name?

While it is not as common as SS# scams and Tax ID-Fraud, it can occur and can be much more devastating than other types of identity theft for many reasons.

How does it happen?

There a couple ways that mortgage identity fraud can happen:

1. Identity Thief gains access to enough Personal Identifiable information to purchase a home in your name.  You find out when you eventually look at your credit report, usually when after the damage has been done and you are late on a mortgage you didn't know existed in your name.
2. Even more painful is the when the theft occurs on the home you already live in!  In this scenario, the thief will obtain your information in order to transfer the deed of your home to either themselves or a third party without your knowledge.  You move on, unknowingly, paying the mortgage for a house you technically do not own anymore.  The thief will then either try and sell the property as if it were theirs in order to get the buyers money.

There are many ways to protect yourself from identity theft, but many of you are professionals working with clients/borrowers and many of you have employees.  Because we are interested and concerned with the ability to protect each of those groups, we need to be serious about how we are approaching their protection.

So it is imperative to educate them and show them the ways they need to handle information and how to conduct themselves at work and in their personal lives.  Additionally, there are providers who have created amazing group programs that will protect your employees and clients alike and you have the power to provide the same benefits you see on TV at a much greater discount than you may know.  

Let us show you how, email ([email protected]) or message me and we can set up a call so that we can guide you through the industry to the provider and product mix that best suits your needs, employees needs and the needs of your clients/borrowers.

by Brian Thompson on March 29th