Many companies these days are promoting title lock services, claiming to offer protection against scammers who commit title fraud — a crime that involves fraudulently transferring a property title or deed from the rightful owners to the scammer.

Sadly, committing title fraud is easy — the scammer simply forges or tricks the owners of the property into signing a quit claim deed or other document to relinquish ownership of the property. The scammer files the document with the county clerk to record a change of ownership — to the scammer. The scammer can then try to evict the rightful owners, claim ownership of the property for themselves, and then sell it or (more commonly) borrow money against the home and leave the homeowners and lender to battle over the mortgage payments.

Scary, yes, but does a title lock service provide sufficient protection to warrant its cost? In this post, we explain what a title lock service is and help you decide whether it’s something you want to spend money on.

What Is a Title Lock Service?

First things first — a title lock service doesn’t lock your title. It doesn’t prevent someone from filing a quit claim deed or using some other method to fraudulently claim that you transferred ownership of your property to them. All it does is notify you, after the fact, when someone succeeds in filing a document that shows a transfer of ownership. It’s sort of like when you receive a notification from an online service that someone changed the username, password, or contact information for your account and letting you know that if you didn’t do it, then something suspicious is going on, and you need to look into it.

Many counties in the U.S. are starting to offer this same service for free. All you need to do, in most cases, is fill out a form to register for the service, provide proof of identity, list the properties you own that you want to be notified about, and specify your preferred contact information — email address, phone number, or mailing address. Whenever someone tries to transfer ownership of your property or change the name on the deed, the county notifies you, so that you can take legal action to protect what’s yours.

Title Insurance Versus a Title Lock

Don’t confuse title insurance with a title lock. Title insurance is a Continue reading…