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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'

#281

Post by jve »

lazide wrote: post #230
koonsolo wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you use a driver's license when everyone can have a digital ID card? In Belgium the notary will always ask for your digital ID card.

Plenty of folks haven’t updated, or don’t like dealing with it, or ‘lost it’ or whatever. Most people doing notary/certification on stuff like this are used to that kind of situation, so someone having an acceptable but not ideal ID method isn’t going to slow this process down.

In Latvia, nowdays you cant visit restaurant without a covid certificate verified by ID card or passport. Or to receive parcel at post office. Or when dealing with bank or gov. Etc.

However I can do the following: use digital identification, that uses multiple factors along with an app, that requires using digital certificate from id card to setup. Afterwards its just my device and that app PIN that is required to impersonate me (well and semi-public national personal identification number)… this applies to almost all gov services with few exceptions like operations with property…

Drivers license has been invalidated years ago as an identification mechanism. Let alone for dealing with property - notary is mandatory along with proper identification.

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

#282

Post by fy20 »

koonsolo wrote: post #195
lbriner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the same with a Solicitor but if they followed the correct process and the problem was actually with, say, the DVLA who issued a driving licence in the wrong name, I'm not sure who is liable for the error.

Why would you use a driver's license when everyone can have a digital ID card? In Belgium the notary will always ask for your digital ID card.

In the UK there is no official single form of ID. The way these things work is that you need a few letters confirming your address, then that's taken as gospel. A few years ago I was a "victim" of identify theft which happened as follows:

Somebody ordered satellite TV to be installed at my house. A few days later they went to a phone shop and walked out with an iPhone in my name, using (I assume) the invoice from the TV service as proof of identity. They then did the same with a few other phone companies. The only way I found out about these was when they sent me bills demanding payment a month or so later :-)

They also opened a bank account in my name, which I found out via a credit search, but the bank would not confirm or deny it as I was not the person who opened it.

This last bit is more interesting as I believe it had a different address, but was in my name. Technically that is not fraud, as in the UK names are freely changeable without needing any official registration. I could go into a bank tomorrow and ask to open an account, saying my name is "Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson" (the Prime Minister's full name) and that would be legal. The bank would probably send me away as I don't have any supporting evidence to prove that's my name, but there's ways around that.

You can easily see how you could use this to have enough evidence to back up the claim that you are the owner of the property - especially if the property was vacant and you broke in so you could get the post (I assume the buyer was shown around before they bought it?).

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

#283

Post by blitzar »

anonporridge wrote: post #151
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."

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.

It was 150k, the word house in the title should be in quotation marks not the word stolen

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

#284

Post by closeparen »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #267
closeparen wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://sftu.org/justcauses/

That doesn't seem to say the landlord can only evict if they themselves are going to personally reside there. The listed causes for eviction all seem fairly typical - like non-payment.

That requires the tenant to have done something wrong. The landlord can’t just decide on his own initiative to empty the unit.

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

#285

Post by blitzar »

martyvis wrote: post #192
spzb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. We completed over the summer and even had to provide our marriage certificate to the bank (no idea why, are single people not allowed mortgages?). Sounds very much like the conveyancers (lawyers) screwed up massively. There still some bits of this story I don't understand. Like, how did the fraudster get access to the house in the first place? Did he break in then fix the damage and replace the locks so he…

>no idea why, are single people not allowed mortgages? The bank needs to know the status of the relationship because in the terrible event of it breaking up, your partner would have equity in the asset.

The mortgage lists the equity, joint implies 50-50 unless you were to specify otherwise.

There is zero difference if you are married, best friends, siblings, co habitating, two people who had never met before etc. In all likelyhood a divorce would change the equity, not keep it 50-50.

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

#286

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

bubblethink wrote: post #275
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ).

Rent controlled tenancies are a whole different animal. A conversation about them probably ought to begin by clarifying it's a RC'd property.

I expect that SF's non-rent controlled property is evictable like any other.

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

#287

Post by closeparen »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #276
xyzzyz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

A lease has a a duration; absent rent control, the landlord can let it expire. It’s specifically under a rent control regime that the landlord is obliged to offer indefinite renewals.

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

#288

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

closeparen wrote: post #284
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem to say the landlord can only evict if they themselves are going to personally reside there. The listed causes for eviction all seem fairly typical - like non-payment.

That requires the tenant to have done something wrong. The landlord can’t just decide on his own initiative to empty the unit.

Correct.

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

#289

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

closeparen wrote: post #287
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (…

A lease has a a duration; absent rent control, the landlord can let it expire. It’s specifically under a rent control regime that the landlord is obliged to offer indefinite renewals.

All correct.

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

#290

Post by dragonwriter »

spzb wrote: post #26
cameronh90 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Same here. We completed over the summer and even had to provide our marriage certificate to the bank (no idea why, are single people not allowed mortgages?). Sounds very much like the conveyancers (lawyers) screwed up massively. There still some bits of this story I don't understand. Like, how did the fraudster get access to the house in the first place? Did he break in then fix the damage and replace the locks so he…

> We completed over the summer and even had to provide our marriage certificate to the bank (no idea why, are single people not allowed mortgages?).

Single people are allowed mortgages. Certain property ownership forms are only available to married couples, and anything recorded in that form incorrectly will revert to a different form with different consequences if the owners were not qualified; there are also different provisions that might affect other interests in the property that apply based on the presence of absence of a marital relationship among the owners.

So, a lienholder is going to want to be as certain as possible about the actual relation of the parties.

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