People buying houses often want their transactions to close before the end of the year. It can be due to the encroachment of various holidays, professional transitions, or simply the desire to begin a new year in a new house. Regardless of the motivations, real estate agents are frequently overwhelmed with closing responsibilities at this time of year, creating a situation that is ripe for fraud.
NAR’s Warning About Real Estate Fraud
Year-end real estate fraud is not merely an anecdotal warning. The National Association of REALTORS has verified that email is a medium by which hackers steal money from would-be homebuyers.
If you think that email hacking must be high-tech, then think again. The most common way for a hacker to steal money during a real estate transaction is via email, which can be performed very simply. In some cases, hackers will crack or steal a real estate agent’s email password and then send requests for funds from that address to an active buyer’s address. When the funds are sent, the hacker moves the money to other accounts, where they are essentially irrecoverable.
Other hackers rely on an even more straightforward approach. Without even breaking into an agent’s account, a hacker might instead impersonate the account in a new form. The bad actor might create a new account with a new email provider in the name of the agent or might use the same email name as the agent with the addition of a single letter, number, or symbol. While the alert homebuyer might spot these fraud attempts, it is impossible for this kind of fraud to be eliminated without an entirely new system.
The Propy Difference in Fraud
Propy eliminates this fraud vector by totally supplanting third-party emails. With Propy, all communications take place within the blockchain-secured Propy Transaction Platform. There is no chance for an unrelated party to achieve access to the platform with permission from all other parties, thus making the email fraud method inapplicable. To have security on your next home purchase or sale, explore the possibility of using Propy.
