Across the country, Recorders of Deeds manage land records and real estate ownership documents for their constituents, providing public access to documents. Since these offices are responsible for recording transactions, they are a key player in preventing fraud and helping homeowners avoid losing the title to their house.
Home title theft is a big deal, as it can result in bad actors selling a property or taking out loans in your name. These are the kind of scams that can have long-lasting consequences to your credit and can require costly legal help to untangle.
Over the past several years, instances of real estate fraud have been on the rise. Numbers have been reported on real estate fraud as a whole, but many Pennsylvania recorders have reported receiving an uptick in calls from residents who are specifically expressing concern that their home titles could be in danger.
The solution in York County, and many other counties in Pennsylvania, has been to create a notification service. While there are companies that offer title protection services, they’re rarely more substantive than the monitoring services that counties are introducing for free. Some people assume that their title insurance policy might protect them from this sort of scam, but it really only applies to remedying errors or defects in a title from before you purchased the property.
The notification service that York County offers requires only your tax ID number and an email address and can be set up in about five minutes. The service will notify you any time a document is filed related to that particular tax ID number.
Other counties in Pennsylvania that either have a monitoring system in place or are looking to implement one include Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lancaster, and Lebanon. Programs like this are a relatively easy way of keeping constituents aware of changes to their property, particularly since the Recorder’s office is already documenting these transactions.
These are the types of services that a modern constituency expects from its government. Counties have been drastically increasing the availability of land records by making them available online and a logical next step is to ensure none of this information can be used to harm residents. This isn’t to say recorders aren’t taking precautions out of the gate, as they will ensure any personally identifiable information (PII), like birthdays or social security numbers, is redacted. Oftentimes, rather than going through all of the recorded documents manually, they will use an automated redaction solution to immediately identify and redact any PII.
Regardless of the safeguards that government puts in place, it’s important for citizens to do whatever they can to protect themselves. Signing up for a monitoring service is a great start, but it’s also important to be aware of anything that seems out of the ordinary. This could include a letter or email that could appear to be a sales or phishing attempt but may actually contain important information regarding your home.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.