Is your property at risk from fraudster tenants?

Tue 10 Jul 2018

There is a lot of crime about and as a landlord you need to protect yourself. For example, one of the things fraudster tenants can do is raise a loan on a property by pretending it belongs to them. This will in due course be registered at the Land Registry.

However if the address the Land Registry have for you is the property address - you will never find out about the fraudulent loan - as the fraudster will be the person who receives the warning!

If this happens it can cause you massive problems and you could lose a lot (usually an awful lot) of money. Plus your insurers may refuse to pay out.

You should check this right now:

• If you own more than one rental property make a list of them.
• For each property, check with the Land Registry (see the link below) to ensure that they have your proper contact details
• If it has not already been done, arrange for property alerts to be sent to you if someone tries to change the register of your property (for example by registering a fraudulent mortgage or sale)
• Do this every time you invest in a new rental property - and make sure the alert is set up before you hand the keys over to a new tenant

If you have a large portfolio I suggest you also have a list somewhere where you can specifically keep a record of the fact that this been done and the date it was done for each of your properties.

Just taking this simple step will make it considerably more difficult for fraudsters to deal with your property