111–120 of 360 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. But as a distant second place after having somewhere to live, I would also want the fraudster to go to prison. Assuming this article is correct, he was "told by the police they didn't believe a criminal offence had been committed here" which seems dumb.
The home owner has not been scammed. The land registry and the buyer have been scammed.
Is it roughly the same to "prove" your identity in the US as it is in the UK? In the US, at least for most credit checks, you just need your SSN, some public record data about where you've lived, and personal data (name, DOB, etc). It's largely because there is no "National ID" system in the US (due to political reasons). That makes it hard for companies to track people, and the SSN is the only number that people con…
Currently buying a house in the UK and it involved rather a lot of ID verification. I had to provide, to the bank, estate agent, mortgage broker and lawyers, the following: passport, driving license, utility bills, payslips, source of funds, bank statements, app-based liveness verification and more. However, in the event of an off-market cash transaction, a lot fewer parties are involved - potentially just a conveyan…
I am baffled by the fact that a complete house can be had for the little sum of £131,000. That's about €150.000 in real money... I guess where I live that would get me a garage, maybe.
I'm in the US. What I see is that stolen+sold property tends to belong to the original owner, not the purchaser. Is it different in the UK?
They were shocked by the reluctance of the police to enforce their property rights simply on their say-so. They were shocked by it because they hadn't really thought through how the system works. It is not the role of the police to evict someone who is the registered owner merely on the say-so of someone else who claims to have been defrauded. Clearly there are good reasons for this.
The article presents the facts as though they will never get their house back (with some creative ambiguity about what 'legal owner' means - does it mean the legally registered owner, regardless of any past fraud? or the actual rightful owner) because it makes a more interesting article than 'Man left annoyed after a painstaking legal process restores him his property rights'.
It’s odd that in the UK a person who buys stolen property legally owns it.
They do not legally own it in the sense that the original owner will not be able to eventually recover it after the fraud is unravelled.
Your instinct that this is odd is correct. It is odd because it isn't actually true. The statement of a police officer made while standing on the street outside someone's house deciding whose story to believe is not the final legal verdict on this case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are confusing who actually owned it, or who morally owned it, with who legally owned it. The claim is not that, once the legal issues and the fraud get untangled, the buyer will be held to be the rightful owner. The claim is that AT THE MOMENT, while the 'new owner' is listed in the Land Registry as owning it, and the 'old owner' isn't, the 'new owner' temporarily legally owns it. They have written this article a…
> AT THE MOMENT, while the 'new owner' is listed in the Land Registry as owning it, and the 'old owner' isn't, the 'new owner' temporarily legally owns it Not an expert on British law, but I don't think this is the case. The new owner owns it. Not temporarily. Fully, permanently and properly. The previous owner was fraudulently deprived of it, and can likely get damages from the parties who signed off on the conveyan…
For what it's worth. If you own Real Property in England, even if only a Leasehold (Long Lease e.g. 99 years) you can get the Land Registry to email you about activity or, once per year, the lack of activity for your property records. https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ Land Registry records have a sort of poor man's locking. The buyers (or in practice their solicitor) need to first perform a "Search" which wo…
Is it roughly the same to "prove" your identity in the US as it is in the UK? In the US, at least for most credit checks, you just need your SSN, some public record data about where you've lived, and personal data (name, DOB, etc). It's largely because there is no "National ID" system in the US (due to political reasons). That makes it hard for companies to track people, and the SSN is the only number that people con…
"Real ID" is now a thing. It's a "National ID". https://www.dhs.gov/real-id
If there is a mortgage on the property, the bank holds the title. The bank has a relationship with the owner. How did the bank sign off on the transfer of funds and title? They'd have to verify the identity of the seller.
If there was no mortgage, at least in the US some bank normally holds onto the title on behalf of the owner so the same applies.
There would need to be a settlement process where the sale proceeds (minus mortgage repayment) needs to be paid to the seller. What happened here?
Being aware of the possibility of fraud, banks can and do make simple checks in my experience. A simple phone call with the contact details on record would've probably prevented this.
In addition the Land Registry authorizing title transfer, the bank would have to be on the hook here too. It's a colossal screw up and a huge nightmare for the owner to deal with but I imagine restitution will be made.
It sounds like he probably won't get his house back. I assume the buyer acted in good faith. It sure does suck though.