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  • February 18, 2025
How homeowners in the Greater Houston area can protect their homes from theft

How homeowners in the Greater Houston area can protect their homes from theft

HOUSTON – It’s a nightmare scenario: discovering that your house has been stolen from you without any warning. KPRC 2 investigator Amy Davis has been digging into these types of cases for years, exposing the disturbing reality of property fraud.

Title fraud, also called deed fraud, occurs when someone else puts his or her name on your deed, essentially claiming your property as theirs. It sounds impossible, but it happens more often than you might think.

In a recent case that falls under KPRC 2a family’s house, which had been in their possession for sixty years, was transferred to a stranger without the homeowner’s knowledge.

County clerk offers tips to prevent title deed theft

This type of crime is increasing, creating a need for awareness and prevention measures.

To gather more information about how to protect your property, Amy Davis contacted the Harris County Clerk’s Office. They referred her to John Warren, Dallas County Clerkan expert in the field, who shared his insights on an episode of ‘Ask Amy’.

John Warren advises that the first step in protecting your assets is to set up a fraud alert with your local district office.

“You go there and register for the property fraud alert system that we have with our recording system,” Warren explains. “If a document is recorded with your name, you will receive a warning.”

Once you receive notice that a document is being recorded, you can contact the clerk’s office to verify the document’s legitimacy. This proactive measure can help you detect fraudulent activity early.

You can register not only your own property, but also that of elderly parents or relatives to ensure their protection as well. However, not every province has such a system. For example, Harris County does not currently offer a property alert system.

“For those counties that do not have a real estate fraud alert system, I would advise any citizen who owns property to go to their appraisal district website, to the appraisal district website list, to find out each piece of property and who owns it. And every time a document is recorded that transfers property or changes ownership of the property, they will update that within 72 hours, depending on volume. And so, if the county doesn’t have a real estate fraud alert system, go to your appraisal district website, enter your name or the address of your property and it will show if you use your name, it will show that if u If you still own the property, you will be shown as the owner. If you enter the address, you will see who owns the property. So there is something you can do. And in those cases where you see that the name of the property has been changed to someone else, while it actually belongs to you, then you should also contact the registry at that time if it concerns that change, if it concerns ownership according to appraisal district records.”

Warren says you should go in there occasionally, maybe at least quarterly.

Property Fraud Warning – Allows you to set alerts for your property data.

Counties in our region that have property fraud alert systems

These Houston-area counties do not offer real estate fraud alerts:

Harris

Rooms

Freedom

Waller

Wharton

Matagorda`

Hiker


Do you have a question for Amy? Email [email protected].

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