If you have properties sitting vacant, be sure to check on them regularly. Otherwise, you might swing by one day to a happy, well-tended home with new locks and a new owner, particularly if you live in Harris County in Texas[1]. For at least six years, con artists have been forging deeds to vacant properties in the area, delivering the deeds to the local courthouse and then seizing and selling the properties. At least 70 houses – and probably more – were affected by the scheme. Many property owners have not been able to recover their properties.
Authorities are calling it “the largest deed scam in Harris County history,” and only one man has, as yet, been convicted despite $6 million in penalties and three years of civil litigation on the part of the Texas attorney general. “Most of the houses are still in limbo,” says Nick Abaza, an attorney who represents many of the victims of the scam. Furthermore, many of the buyers paid cash, which means they are unlikely to ever recoup their losses.
This is a huge mess for the Houston area with many victims involved on both sides of each transaction. How do you think that the problem should be resolved?
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[1] http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7555824.html
It’s simple, if you own property, you or someone you appoint, should be managing the property, which includes going by the property regularly. The other thing that me and some of my investors that I work with here in the Bay Area are doing is offerring discounted rents to tenants in properties we find hard to rent and or sell. In this market you just can’t leave propeties shitting vacant, too many crooks and thieves out there. The other thing that the situation in Harris county shows, is that you can’t look to the courts to recover your property for you, and if they do, how long is it going to take and how much money is it going to cost you?