HI All!

You know, My local paper today headlined a major stories about a  real estate scam . The story showed that Foreclosures are exposing more cases of Fraud.   Not the Fraud of lying on your mortgage application, but  planned fraud of multiple parties including real estate agents and mortgage people who are getting a straw buyer- buying properties, with no intention of keeping them, and letting them go to foreclosure.

They are stealing  people's identities, and buying homes, renting them out, and not paying a cent to paying the mortgage payment, and they just letting it go to foreclosure.   This has had the effect, they say, of increasing property values when they buy- since they want a high price to get more commission and Decreasing property values when it then goes into foreclosure. So, the effect is to make our market crash statistics seem that much more exaggerated. Now I am a REALTOR, and I believe that most REALTORS are professional, honest and ethical. However, these scams unfortunately, are being done by real estate agents, in conjunction with some unsavory mortgage people, buying the properties with a fraudulent buyer;  the mortgage person and the real estate agent get their commissions, the fraudulent gets a fee, and then they rent out the property, ruin the credit of the person they stole the identity of, and collect the money from the rents while paying NOTHING towards the mortgage payments.  This is why in today's world, we really need to keep up with our identity and check frequently our credit profiles.  The buyer in one case, didn't even know his identity had been stolen and used to buy one of these properties, until he went to buy a home of his own, and found that his credit was red flagged, because of a foreclosure of a property he knew nothing about.

So Please, within the next 24 hours, Go Check your credit profile, and maybe think about joining one of those identity theft programs.

Gerard Maher (G-Man) is a REALTOR in the San Diego area. Specializing in Scripps Ranch Real Estate, Poway Real Estate, Rancho Penasquitos Real Estate,and Mira Mesa Real Estate. You can reach him at G@CallGman.com or phone him at 619-481-0882.