More than 97pc of homeowners are at risk of their properties being sold fraudulently without their knowledge.
The number of people signing up for property alerts with the Land Registry tripled between 2020 and 2021 in response to rising levels of “title fraud”, according to a Freedom of Information request by Thirdfort, a risk management website. Title fraud occurs when a criminal steals the homeowner’s identity and changes the property title into another name.
You can take steps to protect your property from being fraudulently sold or mortgaged.
Homeowners can sign up to the Land Registry title alert service, which sends email notifications as and when activity searches and applications are made using the monitored address. You can get alerts for up to 10 properties – there’s no fee.
Users do not need to own the property themselves to set up alerts. The same property can be monitored by different people.
Property Alert is a free property monitoring service for anyone who feels a registered property could be at risk from fraud.
You can sign up to get email alerts when certain activity occurs on your monitored properties, so you can take action if needed.