The deed thieves want is the one with no lender watching. Put your name in their way.
Two in five American homes carry no mortgage1. The FBI says forgers comb public records for exactly those homes, because no lender is at the closing to notice a stranger selling your house3. A recorded Notice of Interest changes that closing. Before any sale or loan is insured, the title examiner has to reach you by certified mail and get your notarized say-so.
- On the public record within days of filing
- $99.00 once. County recording fee paid separately.
- Florida today. Arizona, Nevada, Utah next.
For most of us, the house is the biggest investment we will ever own. The simplest step to protect it is one letter on your title.
You file it once. It costs less than a year of title monitoring and stays on record until you sell.
More houses with no lender watching, and more fraudsters who have noticed
- Reported real estate fraud losses, 2025
- $275M
- up from $173 million in 2024, across 12,368 complaints
- FBI IC3 2025 report2
- Title companies that faced a seller-impersonation attempt in 2025
- 59%
- it was 28% the year before
- ALTA 2026 study4
- Losses reported to the FBI by Americans 60 and older, 2025
- $7.75B
- up 59% in a year, across 201,266 complaints
- FBI IC3 2025 report9
The shopping list is already public, or already stolen
The identity half comes from breaches. The 2024 National Public Data leak put roughly 2.9 billion records on the market, with names, past addresses, and Social Security numbers7. The Identity Theft Resource Center counted a record 3,322 more breaches in 20256. The FBI's June 2026 alert on owner impersonation lists where the forger gets your details: "county or state public websites, data brokers, stolen account information, phishing schemes, or purchased from the dark web" 8.
The property half is not even stolen; it is published. Your county appraiser lists the owner's name, mailing address, and assessed value. The official records show whether any mortgage is on file. Zillow puts a market value next to the street address. A mailing address in another state says the owner is not home, a short-term-rental listing says when, and in Florida the tax roll even marks the senior exemption. None of that requires a hacker.
What used to take a crew a week of cross-referencing now takes a script. An AI model can join breach data to tax rolls, valuations, obituaries, and rental listings, then rank thousands of parcels by equity, missing lender, and the owner's age and distance. Two groups land at the top of that list: older owners9, and second homes and vacant lots, where nobody is around to notice a sale until it has closed8.
The FBI's own advice in that alert, aimed at buyers, is to send a certified letter to the address of record on the tax roll before trusting a seller8. A recorded notice turns that from advice a careful buyer might follow into a step the title examiner has to take.
Why your paid-off house, and why now
The forger does not need your keys. They pull your name and parcel from public records, then record a deed or mortgage in your name using a fake ID and a notary who is fooled or paid. Then they sell to a buyer who never meets you, or borrow against the house and vanish with the money. The FBI's Boston office put it plainly in 2025: scammers "comb through public records to find vacant parcels of land and properties that don't have a mortgage" 3. Between 2019 and 2023 its complaint center logged 58,141 real estate fraud victims and $1.3 billion in losses3.
A house with a mortgage has a lender whose payoff must be cleared at closing, which is where a stranger's sale tends to come apart. A house with no mortgage has nobody in that seat. That is the gap the notice fills.
Two things are making forgery cheaper. Remote online notarization, now legal in most states, moves the signing onto a video call. And AI can fake the person on the call. In April 2026 a title technology firm reported catching a deepfake posing as a Maryland landowner during a remote notarization for a roughly $100,000 sale. Its product manager said it was built with "commercial, off-the-shelf software that you can get"5. The FBI counted 22,364 complaints involving AI in 2025, with $893 million in losses2.
What the notice does, and what it does not
It does
- Put a notice in the county's official records, indexed under your name and parcel.
- Show up in every later title search on the property.
- Require the title examiner to address it before insuring a sale or loan, by reaching you at your address of record.
It does not
- Keep a recorder from accepting a forged document. Recorders file what is presented.
- Catch a cash sale with no title search.
- Replace your county's free recording alert. Step 3 of the kit enrolls you in it.
Four steps, one of them at a notary
Look up the parcel
Enter the address. We pull the parcel number, the legal description, and the names on the last deed, and fill the notice in.
Sign in front of a notary
Print it. Every owner on the deed signs in front of a local notary, with ID. A notary costs about ten dollars, and you keep the stamped original.
Record it with the county
Mail it or walk it in with the exact fee, payee, address, and a cover letter from your kit. The county stamps it and sends the original back.
We watch for the stamp
Your tracker listens for the county's recording alert and reads the stamp off a photo. When it is on record, you get one email saying so.
Why a title examiner has to address it
Nearly every sale and mortgage in the United States is title-insured. Before the underwriter will insure, the examiner searches the parcel, lists everything recorded against it, and clears each item. A forged deed on a free-and-clear house works because nothing in the record says "check with the owner first." The notice puts that instruction into the record, in the recorder's own format, with your mailing address of record.
Order is what makes it work. The examiner reads the county index in the order things were recorded. Once your notice is there, any later deed or mortgage, however it was notarized, sits behind an instruction to write to you first. A forged deed cannot release it, and no video call can answer a certified letter for you. File after a forgery has already recorded and the notice still flags it, but by then you are cleaning up instead of stopping a closing.
I spent my career investigating fraud and defending companies against it. This is the simplest fix I know.
As an FBI Special Agent I saw how fraud cases actually end: not with the forgery being caught, but with a paper trail someone did or did not leave. As a Chief Information Security Officer at several leading US companies and institutions, I spent years watching attackers walk past expensive alarms because nobody had put a checkpoint where the money moves. After the National Public Data leak alone, a name, a Social Security number, and every address a person has lived at sell for a few dollars7, and there were 3,322 more breaches last year6. A forger no longer has to steal your identity. It is already for sale, sorted by ZIP code. And co-founding an AI company, AI StackOps, taught me how cheap a convincing fake ID, voice, or video call has become on top of it.
Deed fraud sits at the intersection of all three. The document is easy to forge, the owner is the last to know, and the closing has no one whose job is to ask the owner. A recorded notice puts that checkpoint in the one place every insured sale or loan has to pass through, and the checkpoint is a letter to your physical mailbox and your reply. A deepfake can get a forged deed notarized. It cannot answer your mail. In the age of AI, this was the first thing I told my own family to do. One page, on the record, before you need it.
Alex Borhani
Founder, Zone Shield LLC
Compared with the alternatives
| Option | Cost | On the record? | When it acts |
|---|---|---|---|
| County fraud alert | Free | No | Emails you after something records. The kit enrolls you. |
| Title monitoring subscription | Monthly, ongoing | No | Also after the fact. |
| Notice of Interest kit | $99.00 once, plus the county fee | Yes | At the next title search, before a sale or loan is insured. |
One payment, and it stays on record until you release it
$99.00
Your county charges its own recording fee when you file, about $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after that in Florida. The notary charges you directly; Florida caps it at $10 per signature.
Buying it for a parent? Gift a notice. They get a code by email on the day you choose, they do the signing, and the code never expires.
The kit includes
- The notice, pre-filled from the county record and rendered to your state's recording format
- Notary instructions: who signs, what ID to bring, the state fee cap
- Enrollment in your county's free recording alert
- Exact fee, payee, mailing and walk-in address, cover letter, checked by our staff and dated
- Recording detection and one email when it is on record
- A free regenerated notice if the clerk sends it back
Before you start
Does this stop deed fraud?
No single thing does. A recorder can still accept a forged deed. What the notice changes is the next step: before any sale or loan is insured, the examiner has to address your notice, and clearing it means reaching you. A forger who cannot get past that step does not get paid. It works best when it is already on record before a forged deed arrives.
Will my county record it?
The notice is rendered to your state's statutory recording format (in Florida, section 695.26), and each state's template is reviewed by counsel before we sell it there. Fee, payee, and addresses come from the clerk's own site and show the date our staff last checked them. If a clerk rejects it, we regenerate it free.
The county alert is free. Why pay?
Enroll in it; step 3 of the kit walks you through it. The alert tells you after a document records, which is the point at which you are already hiring a lawyer. The notice acts before a sale or loan is insured.
I still have a mortgage. Is this for me?
Yes, if you have real equity. Forgers prefer paid-off homes because there is no lender in the way, but a home-equity loan taken out in your name works the same way, and the FBI's figures include both. If you are close to paying off, filing now means the notice is already on record on the day the lender's lien comes off.
What becomes public?
Your names exactly as they appear on the deed, the legal description, and a mailing address, which the tax roll already publishes. Never a phone number, an email, or a date of birth. Your email is used for the kit and tracker only.
Do I need a lawyer?
We prepare a document; we do not give legal advice. In states where attorneys customarily handle recordings, the kit says so and suggests a review. Every state we sell in has had its template reviewed by counsel first.
I do not live in the house. Can I still file?
Yes, and those are the houses that need it most: a vacation home, a rental, one you inherited, or one you moved out of and kept. Forgers look for owners who are not around. The notice goes on the parcel, so it works wherever you live. Print the address where you actually get mail, since that is where the title examiner's letter will go. One notice covers one parcel. If the house belongs to a parent, they sign it, but you can pay for it as a gift.
My home is in a trust or an LLC.
Supported. The trustee or manager signs for it. The kit lists what to bring to the notary and the clerk: a certification of trust, or the state filing and the resolution naming the signer.
Does this affect my will, trust, or estate plan?
No. The notice is not a lien, it does not transfer or restrict ownership, and it does not change who inherits. You can still put the home in a trust, leave it in a will, refinance, or sell. It asks anyone examining title to confirm with the owner first. If you move the home into a trust after recording the notice, the trustee handles that confirmation from then on.
What happens to the notice after I die?
It stays on record. Whoever handles your estate answers the title examiner's letter with a notarized confirmation, just as you would, plus the paper that shows their authority. Under a will that is your personal representative; under a trust, your successor trustee. It does not slow probate. Tell that person the notice exists, and keep the recorded original with your deed.
Will a Notice of Interest affect my credit score?
No. It is recorded with the county, not reported to Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion, and it is not a loan, a lien, or a judgment. If you later borrow against the house, the lender's title examiner sends you the certified letter, and your reply clears it.
What happens when I sell or refinance?
Tell the title company up front that a Notice of Interest is recorded and where to send the certified inquiry. You reply with the notarized confirmation. At closing, a recorded release takes the notice off; the tracker gives you the release kit.
Your biggest investment deserves one page on the record to decrease the risk of it being stolen.
$99.00 once. Available in Florida; Arizona, Nevada, Utah next.
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau, "Nearly 40% of U.S. Homeowners Did Not Have a Mortgage in 2024", January 2026 (2024 ACS 5-year estimates)
- FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Internet Crime Report, April 2026
- FBI Boston Division, "FBI Boston Warns Quit Claim Deed Fraud is on the Rise", April 10, 2025
- American Land Title Association, Critical Issues Study: Seller Impersonation Fraud, 2026
- HousingWire, "How real estate pros can stay ahead of deepfake fraudsters", April 10, 2026
- Identity Theft Resource Center, 2025 Annual Data Breach Report, January 2026
- IBM, "National Public Data breach publishes private data of 2.9B US citizens", August 2024
- FBI IC3 Public Service Announcement I-061626, "Protect Your Property from Illegal Sales Through Parcel Owner Impersonation", June 16, 2026
- HousingWire, "FBI: Seniors lost $7.75B to cybercrime in 2025, a 59% jump", April 13, 2026 (from the IC3 2025 report)