Imagine that you are travelling to a different country for work or education and when you return to your home, you find out that your home is no longer your home! And somebody else is residing in your house for months! shocking right!?
You may find it hard to believe. But if you are in Canada that is your harsh reality. Your homes are not safe. And who knows your home may be next in line to be sold!
So, what has led to this situation that you cannot leave your own house in Canada?
Canadian housing fraud cases are on the rise significantly.
False identification documents are being used by fraudsters to obtain a second mortgage on a home they do not own, typically after the first mortgage has been paid off in full or almost so. In other cases, tenants of an empty house may pretend to be the owner and market the property to serious buyers. As a result, the property’s whole title is transferred.
A Canadian couple recently discovered that while they were out from town, a fraudster sold their house behind their back. A few months later, when they noticed that their mortgage payments had stopped showing up in their bank accounts, the out-of-town couple discovered that their home had been sold without their knowledge.
In Ontario, where at least 30 residences in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) have either been sold or mortgaged without the owners’ knowledge since 2019–20, according to a CBC News investigation, this form of crime looks to be on the rise.
Brian King of King Advisory International Group, a Toronto-based firm that investigates white-collar crimes added that he and his company had also observed a rise in the number of total title fraud cases in the Greater Toronto Area.
Real estate fraud in Canada seems to be reaching worrisome new heights lately. Let me tell you that frauds like these were quite uncommon prior to 2019. In fact, John Rider, a vice-president of Chicago Title Insurance Company, stated that the company’s Canadian branch has only encountered two instances of fraud between the 1960s and 2019 involving title and mortgages.
What is the cause of this sudden and significant increase, then?
As everyone is aware, Canada is experiencing a severe housing crisis. Almost more than 235,000 Canadians are homeless. And these are merely government statistics. Sadly, this number has been steadily increasing over time.
And Canada’s efforts to attract in a record number of immigrants, which are needed to fill job openings and spur economic growth, have made the country’s housing crisis worse.
Demand for homes is increasing along with the population. Houses on sale are out there rarely. As a result, when individuals are searching for a home, they want to close the deal as soon as they can. They don’t thoroughly check and verify each and every document because of the rush. Also, during the pandemic, virtual real estate transactions might have made it more challenging to spot forged identification documents.
Additionally, fraudsters are making a fortune out of this scam due to the skyrocketing housing prices brought on by the acute housing crisis. Therefore, there has been a surge in fraud cases.
Trudeau’s lack of ability to tackle the housing crises of Canada is directly responsible to the housing scams the Canadian citizens are facing today.
Till now the situation was such that the homeless were unable to buy or rent a house in Canada but thanks to Trudeau, the ones who already have a house are also becoming homeless.
