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Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#91

Post by vmception »

gruez wrote: post #80
vmception wrote: post #43

Another reason to use an anonymous LLC/entity. The owning entity gets a new state identification number which won't have appeared in as many leaks to be impersonated. While the individual owner of the LLC isn't known to impersonate.

1. doesn't that shift the problem to impersonating the LLC? If anything that seems easier than impersonating a person? 2. does this work with financing? how do mortgages work?

Social engineering is always a threat to anyone. What occurred in this article would not have been available if the entity was the owner.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#92

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dmoy wrote: post #24
Androider wrote: post #15

> Once the house was sold to the new owner for £131,000 by the person impersonating Mr Hall, they legally owned it. That's nuts. Why isn't it the case that the person who failed to properly vet the seller is out of £131,000 and the house? So I can "buy" a local mansion and then say "oops, I didn't know this random guy didn't own it. Oh well."

It depends on how Title law works in the jurisdiction. I don't know how it works in this part of the UK, but in many states in the US, the buyer would left holding the bag - the original homeowner would keep the property. It's one reason in the US that most property sales include a purchase of title insurance.

> I don't know how it works in this part of the UK, but in many states in the US, the buyer would left holding the bag - the original homeowner would keep the property

Different ways of dealing with the problem of fraudulent transfer and property records. In the U.S., the risk is the buyer's. If the property was fraudulently transferred, the transaction is mutable. This makes the sureness of ownership, as well as the record, less reliable, while making ownership per se more.

The U.K. flips that assessment. If the Land Registry says you own the property, you can rest assured you own it. No re-litigating whether that transfer two sales back was done correctly. In exchange, this shit.

If you consider each country's history with respect to property and power, it makes sense.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#93

Post by bellyfullofbac »

Aulig wrote: post #77

Something similar happened in Germany recently. A house worth millions was fraudulently sold like this. The original owners got it back luckily. German video about it: https://youtu.be/TolvzYzk64c

At least here the thieves were known (or even well-known). What if the buyer transferred money to some Nigerian prince who showed up with fake ID and disappeared after the sale? Would the buyer end up with no money and no house?

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#94

Post by cstross »

implements wrote: post #25

Any UK reader can avoid this by signing up to: https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ It’s the Land Registry itself, it’s free, and: “Once you have signed up to the service, you will receive email alerts when certain activity occurs on your monitored properties, allowing you to take action if necessary.”

Only covers England and Wales -- not Scotland and Northern Ireland. So not actually UK wide.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#95

Post by ensignavenger »

My grandfather was rather fond of telling a story about a neighbor when he was younger who came home from vacation to find that their house had been stolen... like someone had brought a wagon and team of horses in, jacked up the house, and pulled it away. Being in a rather rural area, no one apparently noticed the heist!

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#97

Post by tialaramex »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #82
yupper32 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in the USA, this year we both sold our previous home and purchased our new home without the use of signage, open houses, tours, realtors, etc. We found the house we bought and found the buyers of our old house through our network of friends. We filled out all the paperwork from forms we printed off online. Surely you left a massive amount of money on the table then, right?

Sounds like they avoided the 4-7% realtor commissions.

Yeah, here in the UK one of my friends bought his home off another of my friends. A third friend practices commercial property law, so she's insured to buy and sell property and did all their paperwork at mates rates. (Her employer buys her insurance, but it's personal insurance, so it covers her off-the-clock work too)

Big saving all round.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#98

Post by philpem »

kybernetyk wrote: post #78

Police: “not my problem, lol”. The joy of paying taxes.

It is pretty much how policing works in the UK. Declare it a civil matter, get it off the books as soon as possible... and that's not mentioning the mountain of police misconduct court cases that have popped up recently.

Sadly the only chance of getting anything out of them is if the media get involved and hold their feet in the fire a bit.

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