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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'

#271

Post by Seattle3503 »

chongli wrote: post #137
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If the Land Registry says you own the property, you can rest assured you own it. Sounds to me like you can only rest assured at the moment the Land Registry tells you. After that, it’s only a matter of time before some scammer sells your house out from under you. Not a great system.

Seems like you should be able to lock your title just like domain names.

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

#272

Post by pintxo »

Really interesting, a very similar case has recently been reported in Berlin, Germany [1]. Here the fraudsters tried to get legal ownership of a whole apartment building in Berlin. It seems they nearly made it, but then some insurance company sent a letter to the actual owners who could successfully blocked the transaction from committing.

[1] (in German) https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/berlin-wie-ein-rentne...

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

#273

Post by blitzar »

lazide wrote: post #216
wins32767 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general that's true, but in this particular case I'm not sure it follows. This is a very infrequent occurrence, which is why it made the news. From a societal perspective, further investment in security here is probably a net drag since all those security measures will also apply to every valid sale and there are vastly more of those. The pot of money that pays out to victims of fraud doesn't make those people who…

It is a infrequent yet catastrophic risk however for everyone that owns any land or property in the UK - and it would definitely keep me up at night if I had any property there!

> it would definitely keep me up at night if I had any property there

If that would keep you up at night, then given all the actual dangers in the world you have never slept.

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

#274

Post by anonporridge »

koonsolo wrote: post #197
anonporridge wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, how does the seller disappear with that much money without being able to be IDed? That seems like a severe failure of the state. It almost makes me wonder if this is a semi common scam wealthy folks use to take poor people's desirable homes.

Banks offer very little protection for scams like this. Basically "the money seems to be gone".

I mean, it's probably hard for bankers to turn in their distant cousins.

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

#275

Post by bubblethink »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #221
closeparen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems backwards. To evict someone you have to swear up and down that you're going to occupy the place yourself. People get prosecuted for e.g. doing an owner-move-in eviction and then selling to a developer. The old owner doesn't have a legal basis to get rid of the tenant, but the new owner does.

> To evict someone you have to swear up and down that you're going to occupy the place yourself. Where do you get this from? It's not like any US law I've ever heard of. For the evictions I've worked on, the homeowner simply wanted the tenants out (non-payment, etc) so they could re-rent or sell the property. They didn't ever have to live there.

That's very city/state dependent. SF has a lot of tenant protections, which is probably what the parent was referring to. In a lot of SF apartments, the landlord can only evict a tenant under specific conditions, one of which is owner moving in (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Act).

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

#276

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

xyzzyz wrote: post #135
closeparen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems backwards. To evict someone you have to swear up and down that you're going to occupy the place yourself. People get prosecuted for e.g. doing an owner-move-in eviction and then selling to a developer. The old owner doesn't have a legal basis to get rid of the tenant, but the new owner does.

From the perspective of the buyer, I don’t care how exactly the owner removes the tenant. It is immaterial to me. What I care about is that no tenant occupies the property I am purchasing. If the owner cannot guarantee that, eg. they cannot legally evict a tenant, that’s fine, I simply wont buy the property, it is the owner’s problem, not mine.

> I don’t care how exactly the owner removes the tenant. It is immaterial to me. What I care about is that no tenant occupies the property I am purchasing.

Landlords can't legally evict a leased tenant who hasn't violated their lease.

That there are tenants in the home would be part of the MLS listing, along with bed/bath. If you've gotten as far as inquiring about the property, you would know you're buying tenants (at least until their lease is up or they accept your offer to break it).

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

#277

Post by White_Wolf »

pydry wrote: post #131
White_Wolf wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second that. If I'd end up losing my house to something like this... Let's just say nobody would get it by the end of it.

If you're implying what I think you're implying it would probably end with you in prison.

mate.. it's a matter of perspective. for people that have nothing left... prison doesn't sound that bad. If I have to choose between ending up on the streets again or prison... I'm pretty sure I'd chose prison this time around. I was young and lucky the first time. Now...

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

#278

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

drfuchs wrote: post #236
conductr wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, title insurance is a single premium but gives the owner forever coverage. This is essentially the purpose, to give the buyer confidence that they are protected for anything that may have happened that they wouldn't know about, because the seller may not even know about it and potentially it happened 100s of years ago. Where this gets kind of crazy is if you own a property and have title insurance on it from when…

But what if I'm not the owner anymore? Specifically, I buy a house and purchase title insurance on it. Later, I sell the house to you. You trust me completely, so figure you don't need to buy title insurance. Later, unexpected to all of us, it turns out that my original purchase was somehow flawed, and someone else actually owns the house. You now ask me to now invoke my title insurance, and (since I'm such a nice gu…

It's not rare for crap to come out after a sale, often w/o knowledge of the seller. Liens are the most common (HOA, contractor, tax).

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

#279

Post by blitzar »

aqsalose wrote: post #222
ska wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cant truly own land if the government can just This is mostly how private property works in practice, everywhere.

In civilized countries, it requires a specific decree or order by some government body, possibly after appeals. Not just random clerk writing a line in a book when random stranger comes and tells they own a piece of land and are going to sell it.

> it requires a specific decree or order by some government body

That person is a random clerk

> possibly after appeals

I can 100% gaurantee that this case goes to court (if it is not settled to the now previous owners satisfaction).

I also suspect that the original owner will come out on top, by likely more than the 150k that their 'house' was worth.

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

#280

Post by bradleyjg »

pmyteh wrote: post #145
zarzavat wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I expect that, if pressed, the courts would void the entire transaction and restore the property. The land registry may be the arbiter of who currently owns what, but the courts are the arbiter of what "happened" according to the law. Otherwise it sets an absurd precedent. If it was not some man's house but a critical piece of infrastructure, the courts are not going to stand idly by and let some random person ta…

No, the courts wouldn't. A genuine innocent purchaser, properly registered at the Land Registry, has good title. (Note: not the fraudster - their downstream victim). The original victim's options for recompense are the scammer, the solicitors who did the conveyance for the fraudster (if negligent), or the Land Registry itself. Nobody is going to end up as the accidental innocent purchaser of a stolen Sellafield, so t…

That’s a bad rule. The purchaser had the ability to thwart the fraud and the true owner did not. The better rule is that an individual cannot pass a better title than he has.
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