How easily could your home be taken from you?

[Allen]

Property tax has already been discussed here with no limits on what the gov't can charge. All they need do is increase your taxes to the point your can't afford it. You lose what you paid for with taxed dollars.

What comes to mind now is the recent happening at Graceland. Riley Keough, Elvis' grand daughter has inherited the estate along with her 2 underage half sisters.

An investment firm claimed that Elvis' late daughter Lisa Marie had taken out loans totaling $3.8M with Graceland as collateral. They were pushing for a forecloser sale on the estate THIS week to get their money back.

It went to court and it was decided that there were too many red flags involved and legal involvement across 3 states. The investment firm quickly backed out and stated it was "too complicated" for them to continue.

One of the "red flags" was a notarized signature of Lisa Marie on the loan contract from Florida. When the Florida officials were contacted who allegedly notarized the contract they stated they had never met Lisa Marie.

Now, the sale was stopped but look how close it came.

Could the same be done to us? ID is required for a signature to be notarized but that didn't prevent this fraud from happening.

Would a judge fight for us or could they be part of the scam themself? What proof could we present to defend ourselves?

No, I don't sit up all night thinking of things to worry about but as our population continues to explode, corruption increasing, land values skyrocketing, and virtually no laws being enforced (except those that generate revenue) this may become commonplace.

It almost happened to Graceland. No one knows all the details but I assume the grand daughter had to pay the court cost.

[Oyaji]

It's a fooked up country we're living in these days........

[Allen]

If anyone is interested in the Graceland case there's this followup.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/company-tried-force-sale-elvis-222703342.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/entity-seeking-sell-graceland-didn-233412942.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-reportedly-contacts-riley-keoughs-213654411.html

[Mark in Ottawa]

There was a scam going on in Canada a few years ago where fraudsters would search property titles looking for houses that had no mortgage. They would then steal or create identity documents allowing them to pass as the property owner. This would be followed by an application to the bank for a large mortgage after which the thieves would transfer the funds offshore. There were a few very upsetting aspects to this. In several cases, the thieves were from Africa (Nigeria as I recall) and took on names that could not reasonably be presumed to be theirs and got the mortgage without the banks making an effort to check their identity. That was followed by the banks going to court to get the (victim) owners to pay the mortgage. The scam came to a stop when the government told the banks to eat the loss themselves and real estate lawyers and banks started to get very serious about checking the identities of anybody involved in a real estate transaction.

[Allen]

There was a scam going on in Canada a few years ago where fraudsters would search property titles looking for houses that had no mortgage. They would then steal or create identity documents allowing them to pass as the property owner. This would be followed by an application to the bank for a large mortgage after which the thieves would transfer the funds offshore. There were a few very upsetting aspects to this. In several cases, the thieves were from Africa (Nigeria as I recall) and took on names that could not reasonably be presumed to be theirs and got the mortgage without the banks making an effort to check their identity. That was followed by the banks going to court to get the (victim) owners to pay the mortgage. The scam came to a stop when the government told the banks to eat the loss themselves and real estate lawyers and banks started to get very serious about checking the identities of anybody involved in a real estate transaction.

Thanks Mark. I've read about similar cases.

Recently there's been a rash of squatters moving into vacant homes and presenting paperwork stating they own or rent the home. It takes a lot of court action, $, and time to get them evicted. Most often they inflict damage when being forced out. The homeowners end up paying for the repairs, loss of rent, and court cost.

As far as banks go they SHOULD eat the cost. THEY are the ones who have brought us into the past recessions due to easy money and lending way beyond home values. Look at what is happening right now and it has to collapse soon. How many night shift managers at "Wendy's" making $40K a year can afford these $350K homes?

The gov't most always bails the banks out with our money, the very ones who may have been refused a loan by them in the first place. What little banks "eat" I feel they make up over time with higher interest rates (for some of us), fines
and all types of hidden fees.

The notion of owning rental property has interested me in the past but there aren't enough laws favoring the landlords. During the Covid "times" renters were told (by "our" gov't) that they could postpone paying rent. Many just stopped and never made another payment forcing the owners to have to sell the houses to get their $ back out of them.