How Do I Avoid Wire Fraud When Closing My House? (Subscribe to Patrice’s YouTube Channel here.)
Hi, everyone. Just want to talk to you guys a few minutes about wire fraud. Whether you’re purchasing a home or you are selling your home and you have to bring money to the table, I just wanted to let you know that wire fraud is very real. It does happen, and it could be very costly to you. The realtor should go over this with you, but I just want to make a video about it because I hate to see people lose money that is theirs and they can’t get back in most cases.
So what can happen a lot of times is a hacker will see your communication between you and your realtor. And when it comes time for getting close to closing, they will duplicate an email account that looks just like your realtor’s. One word may be off and it’s something that you wouldn’t easily recognize. And they may be even as detailed as they’ve been seeing your communication back and forth, so they are aware of what you discussed. And so they may start the conversation like, “how is your daughter doing?”
Because you were just talking about your daughter and you’re thinking that it’s your realtor. And so your realtor should be letting you know that if you get an email indicating that you need to start changing the wire instructions, you need to wire to this account, things like that, be very wary of that. Your realtor should never be discussing, be telling you where to wire the money to. It should come from the title company. And if you are leery or I even tell my clients that if they are even thinking about that something is wrong, or if they want to be sure, just speak with Title Company, speak with me just to make sure that you don’t make that error.
You could lose thousands of dollars and more just for that one issue. And then you have the problem where you can’t sell, you can’t close, you can’t buy the home, because that money is gone. That’s money that you’ve worked for, that you’ve earned. So just be very wary of that. You just want to make sure that when it comes to wiring that you make sure you follow the correct instructions.
You don’t see your money somewhere it doesn’t need to go, because the likelihood of you getting that money back is very slim to none. Now, there are some title companies who begin going back to cashiers checks because of this, but not all tile companies do this. So just be with your realtor and your title company and go from there. If you have any questions, just leave a comment below or leave an email at [email protected] all right, thanks.
Have a good day. Bye.
This has been “How Do I Avoid Wire Fraud When Closing My House?” by Patrice Henderson of Designed Living Real Estate. Be sure to subscribe to her YouTube channel for all your real estate tips, home tours and advice. Get your FREE listing consultation or buyer’s consultation to learn more about the buying and selling processes.