AZ Dept. of Real Estate Creates New System to Protect Homeowners
ERAS
The Arizona Department of Real Estate has recently created ERAS, or the Early Real Estate Sales Alert System. This is a free service. With this service you get to register not only the homeowners’ names, but the actual properties. With this system you will be notified whenever an escrow officer enters your property’s information for a pending sale. Click on the following link to sign-up: ERAS.
AZ County title Alerts
Ideally, you would sign-up for both the county title alert and ERAS since ERAS only notifies you of a pending sale of your property, while a county title alert would also notify you when deeds, deeds of trust, liens, etc. are recorded. A deed of trust means someone has taken out a loan with your property as the collateral. If that person or entity defaults on that loan, your property may be in danger of foreclosure, which may ultimately lead to your eviction.
You should sign-up for title alerts in each Arizona county in which you own real property. This is a free service offered by the county recorder’s office. Just Google “________________ County Title Alert,” and a link should show up. The website should end in “az.gov”; if it tries to charge you a fee or asks for your credit card info, you are on the wrong website. Some of the counties’ title alert pages are harder to find; you just have to look through the county recorder’s website to find it or call their office for assistance. When you sign-up, pay attention to how your names are listed on your deed and use as many variations as needed.
Here are links to a few Arizona County Title Alerts:
Who’s being targeted?
I learned about the dangers of deed fraud when it happened to one of my clients. Some of these scammers seem to target real property owned by someone who has died. They must somehow monitor death notices. Scammers also target people with a lot of equity in their properties, so if your property is paid off it may attract some unwanted attention.
I hope this information is helpful to my readers. Stay alert and stay safe!
The information on this website is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice.
