Ok, so it sounds silly doesn’t it? How could someone steal your house? Well actually, this article alludes to a serious risk in both home ownership and particularly property investment – and that’s equity theft.

Your home is not only a place of refuge but also a valuable asset. Unfortunately, in today’s world, homeowners face the risk of equity theft, where cunning individuals attempt to fraudulently strip away the equity built up in your property.

Equity theft can occur through various means, including identity theft, property fraud, and other deceptive schemes. Fraudsters may forge documents to transfer ownership of your property, take out loans against your home without your knowledge, or manipulate you into signing over ownership rights.

So it’s essentially where somebody living (or not) in your property secures a mortgage against your property without your knowledge – and receives a huge cash payout in the form of released equity.

If you just sat-up in your chair, then you get how damaging this could be.

Thankfully it’s not that common, but it can happen.

Here are some steps you can take to make sure it never happens to you;

Have a mortgage on the property. This is probably one of the biggest things you can do to protect yourself from fraud. It’s far easier for somebody to take out a mortgage on a property that has been bought outright. It’s more complicated to take out a second charge. Having a mortgage gives them far more hoops to jump through – exponentially reducing the risk.

Buy in Scotland? In Scotland, because of the way the conveyancing and re-mortgaging process is setup, it’s far harder for equity theft to occur.

Register all of your properties with the Property Alert Service (England and Wales only). This service notifies you of various types of activity to do with your property. I have received occasional alerts from them before (related to legitimate activity thankfully) so can vouch that it does have a use.

Protect your personal data. Think about your footprint online – how easy would it be for someone to put all of that information together? Protect your personal data and don’t share it easily.

Ensure all your correspondence addresses are correct and kept up to date in a systemised way. This is a really important one. They (various companies) really shouldn’t use post to communicate about properties let by a Landlord, but the reality is they do. Is your mortgage company, the council, utility provider etc send all your personal information, details and correspondence to the property address or to you? Setup a tracker to manage addresses – yes, it’s an complete and utter nause to setup, but once you get on top of it, it’s relatively easy to keep up to date.

Setup a separate physical correspondence address. Related to the above – you can use many different online services to setup a separate address for correspondence. This is useful to do whether you are a normal home owner or own several investment properties. It means everything goes to the same address and gets either shredded, scanned or re-directed to you based on your choices when you view items on an online portal. This also means that if you move house, you only have to change one address.

Stay Informed. Educate yourself about common scams and fraud tactics used in equity theft. Be wary of unsolicited offers or requests for personal or financial information.

Maintain Communication. Stay in regular contact with your mortgage lender, solicitor, broker, and other relevant parties to ensure that you are informed of any changes or activities related to your property.

Married2Property Partners are a property company that aims to create social good through property.

These articles are written by Darren de Wal based on his 12 years of experience as an active Property Investor, and 16 years getting to a senior leadership position as an Officer in the Royal Air Force. They are for the benefit of those with a general interest in Property, as well as those wishing to start out investing themselves.