Most professions get credit for what people can see them do. A surgeon\u2019s skill is visible in the outcome. The engineer\u2019s work shows up in the bridge that holds. In real estate, the closing table tends to get all the attention, from the signatures and the handshakes to the transfer of keys. What doesn\u2019t get nearly enough attention is everything that happened before that moment to make sure the transaction was legitimate in the first place.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the part of a title agent\u2019s job that almost nobody talks about.<\/p>\n
Real estate closings look, from the outside, like a documentation and logistics exercise. Paperwork is compiled, funds are moved, signatures are gathered, and the deed changes hands. That\u2019s the visible part of the job, but it\u2019s genuinely not the most important part. What most buyers, sellers, and even lending partners never see is the parallel process running underneath every transaction: a trained, systematic effort to detect fraud before it can do damage.<\/p>\n
Although the industry doesn\u2019t talk enough about this, it probably should.<\/p>\n
Forged documents have been part of real estate fraud for as long as real estate has existed. What\u2019s changed is the form. One of the more brazen schemes involves the forging of a deed\u2014recording it at the county courthouse and then attempting to sell a property the fraudster doesn\u2019t own. Vacant land and unoccupied homes are particularly attractive targets because the real owner is less likely to notice until significant damage has already been done.<\/p>\n
Escrow agents are trained to catch this kind of fraud<\/a> and the training is more granular than it sounds. They\u2019re taught to examine signatures across multiple documents within a transaction and compare them for consistency, to identify transaction profiles that match known fraud patterns, and to dig into chain-of-title records when something doesn\u2019t track logically. It\u2019s painstaking work, and it doesn\u2019t announce itself. When it succeeds, the closing simply proceeds normally. When it\u2019s skipped or rushed, a buyer may end up holding a worthless deed to a property they don\u2019t legally own.<\/p>\n A variation on this involves family members such as adult children attempting to act on behalf of an elderly parent through forged power of attorney documents, or in more direct cases, by attempting to impersonate the owner outright. Agents encountering high-risk scenarios will often obtain and verify the power of attorney themselves rather than rely on what\u2019s been presented, which is exactly the kind of friction that deters opportunistic fraud.<\/p>\n If forgery represents the older, more analog strain of real estate fraud, wire fraud<\/a> is the version that emerged when the industry moved away from checks and physical cash. Business Email Compromise (BEC) involves fraudsters intercepting or impersonating email communications to redirect wire transfers to accounts they control, typically targeting the buyer\u2019s down payment or closing funds. The losses, when these schemes work, tend to be large and extremely difficult to recover.<\/p>\n The defense against BEC isn\u2019t a single tool but rather, a layered approach. Title professionals now routinely use encrypted communications and multi-factor authentication as baseline protections, but the more important work is behavioral. Agents train every party in a transaction on what legitimate fund-transfer instructions look like, when those instructions will and won\u2019t change, and how to verify any deviation from the established process through a channel that doesn\u2019t involve email. That last piece is critical. A fraudster who has already compromised an email thread can mimic a legitimate message convincingly. An out-of-band phone call to a verified number is considerably harder to fake.<\/p>\n Some firms have also moved to insure funds held in and disbursed from escrow as an additional layer of protection, a backstop that may help create a measure of recovery if a scheme does succeed despite best efforts.<\/p>\n Most people who close on a home come away thinking their title<\/a> agent\u2019s job was to gather paperwork, manage the escrow account and conduct the signing. While that\u2019s an accurate description of the visible work it\u2019s also an incomplete description of the job.<\/p>\n The fraud prevention function runs concurrently with all of it, largely invisible to everyone at the table: the signature analysis, the chain-of-title review, the BEC training, the wire verification protocols. It\u2019s not glamorous work. It rarely produces a dramatic moment. Usually, the outcome is simply that nothing bad happened, which is the best possible result and the hardest one to get credit for.<\/p>\n For an industry<\/a> that spends considerable energy communicating its value, the protective function of title<\/a> professionals is probably the most underexplained. There\u2019s a real conversation to be had with consumers, lenders and real estate partners about what title agents actually prevent, not just what they facilitate. The work is already happening. It just needs the audience to understand it.<\/p>\n Jay Roberts is the Chief Technology Officer of Florida Agency Network and Premier Data Services.\u00a0<\/em> Most professions get credit for what people can see them do. A surgeon\u2019s skill is visible in the outcome. The engineer\u2019s work shows up in the bridge that holds. In real estate, the closing table tends to get all the attention, from the signatures and the handshakes to the transfer of keys. What doesn\u2019t get…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mk.gen.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mk.gen.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mk.gen.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mk.gen.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mk.gen.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mk.gen.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mk.gen.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mk.gen.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Wire fraud is now the bigger threat<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The gap between perception and reality<\/strong><\/h2>\n
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire\u2019s editorial department and its owners. To contact the editor responsible for this piece: <\/em>zeb@hwmedia.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"