Detroit homeowners are losing their houses to deed fraud. Here is how the crime works.

A Detroit resident fought for her home. Scammers stole the title.

Kim Page saved $15,000 and spent $3,800 in cash to buy a house on Britain Street on Detroit's far east side in 2021. She invested another $27,000 in repairs over the next few years. She moved in. She was a homeowner.

Then scammers forged her signature and transferred the deed to someone else. Page did not realize she had been locked out of her own property until she came home in April 2024 to find the locks changed. She broke down the back door to get inside.

"I just was in shock. I can't believe somebody really did this to me."

Page called the Wayne County Register of Deeds' Mortgage and Deed Fraud Unit. Staff confirmed she was a victim of deed fraud, a crime in which scammers forge signatures to record a false transfer of property ownership. Once criminals control the title, they can sell the property, rent it out, or drain its equity with mortgages, according to Donovan McCarty, a housing attorney and assistant professor at Michigan State University College of Law.

How deed fraud works

A deed is the legal document that transfers ownership of real property. When a home is bought or sold, the deed is recorded with the county register of deeds. That public record shows who legally owns the property.

Fraudsters forge the signature of the real owner. They file a deed that meets formatting requirements like margin and font size. The county recording office is required to accept and file the document. The office does not verify whether the person signing actually had the right to transfer the property, according to McCarty.

The fraudulent deed enters the public record. It looks legitimate to buyers, investors, and financial institutions. The crime can go undetected for months or years.

McCarty has represented dozens of deed fraud victims. He has seen fraudsters secure as much as $50,000 from a single deal by obtaining a mortgage on a stolen property.

Why Detroit is vulnerable

The Wayne County Mortgage and Deed Fraud Unit has tracked more than 13,000 inquiries regarding deed fraud. The unit has opened over 2,300 cases throughout Wayne County since 2005, according to McCarty's reporting in The Conversation.

Detroit faces unique risks. The city is about 73 percent Black, with a median household income of roughly $39,000 and a poverty rate exceeding 30 percent, according to data cited by McCarty. Homes in Black neighborhoods are systematically undervalued compared to similar homes in white neighborhoods. Black borrowers are more likely to be denied conventional mortgage loans.

Cash sales accounted for 4 in 10 home sales in Detroit in February 2024, according to McCarty. When a home is purchased with a mortgage, lenders, brokers, and title companies act as gatekeepers. Those actors are absent in cash sales. Fewer eyes mean fewer chances to detect fraud.

Property tax distress also attracts scammers. Fraudsters use publicly available tax foreclosure lists to identify properties that appear abandoned. They pay the past-due taxes to remove the property from foreclosure. They then attempt to sell or mortgage the property using their fraudulent deed, McCarty said.

The national toll

The FBI does not track deed fraud as a separate crime. It groups deed fraud into a larger category of real estate crimes. From 2019 through 2023, 58,141 victims in the United States reported $1.3 billion in losses related to real estate crime, according to FBI data cited by McCarty.

That number is likely an undercount. Many victims do not know where to report the crime. Some are embarrassed. Others do not yet know they have been targeted.

What homeowners can do

Wayne County District Attorney Kym Worthy Howell warned residents of an increase in deed and real estate thefts. She suggested homeowners check real estate websites like Zillow to see if their property is listed for sale without their knowledge, according to a report in The Wayne Pioneer.

Seasonal residents should check for "For Sale" signs on their property, Howell said. Anyone who believes they are a victim of deed or real estate theft should contact local police or Wayne County Detectives at 570-253-4912.

For victims like Page, the damage is already done. She reached out to McCarty for legal help in March 2025. Recovering a stolen title requires a prolonged legal fight. Many victims lack the resources to wage that battle.

"I accomplished something that I always wanted to do," Page said. "I always wanted to buy my own home since I was like 18. I never wanted to rent from anyone."

Now she is fighting to keep it.