Protecting your property from fraud

General Discussion

There have been cases recently of properties being the subject of Land Registry fraud. This is a particular problem when there is no mortgage on the property. It goes like this = someone changes the land registry entry of your property to their name, the name may well be an alias ie they got into the property on fake id, they then raise a mortgage on the property, pocket the cash, Rio here we come ! As I say the main target would likely be properties with no mortgage but I am sure that fraudsters could find a variety of ways of extracting cash from your property eg security for a business loan. The reason that this works is that you don't live there so you don't see the correspondence. You can however download a form from the Land Registry site ( form RQ ) which means that if anyone tries to change the registry entry this must be certified by a conveyencer ie a solicitor. Well worth doing as it is currently free. Just make sure that you are on the real Land Registry site ie www.landregistry.gov.uk not one of the fake sites that will charge you and then get it done by the Land Registry for free !