Photo courtesy of PhillyHistory.org, a project of the City of Philadelphia Department of Records.
As if declining home sales, a credit squeeze and predatory lending practices were not enough, there has been a substantial rise in mortgage and deed fraud throughout the boom and bust of the real estate market. While this trend has been most apparent in the hottest real estate markets, Philadelphia’s homeowners have not been spared from this crime. The methods run the gamut from simple to complex, seemingly innocent to downright treacherous. But the outcome of what is known as ‘property conveyance fraud’ is often the same — a homeowner is bilked out of their equity or the deed to their home. The City of Philadelphia has been combating this phenomenon with a multi-agency task force organized by the Philadelphia Bar Association. The Property Conveyance Task Force is an ad hoc committee of City agencies, law enforcement officials, title insurance companies, non-profit legal assistance organizations, and the district attorney’s office. The group meets every few months to discuss and share information on fraud schemes and develop strategies for detecting and mitigating the damage.
The task force has made progress in terms of developing strategies, but the most serious impediment remains the lack of information available to all members of the group. Azavea was asked by the City’s Department of Records — where deeds and mortgages are recorded as legal documents — to help develop a GIS-enabled fraud tracking system. The result is a set of web-based tools that use ESRI’s ArcIMS map server and the City’s web services API’s to enable all members of the task force to register fraud reports, search the results, and subscribe to geographic alerts. While it will not be available to the general public, it will be an important new tool for the City, legal professionals and law enforcement to fight property fraud.
If you are interested in learning more about the effects of property conveyance fraud, there was a series of articles in the New York Times last year that may prove interesting:
“Mortgage Fraud Is Up, but Not in Their Backyards“
