OP, there is so much to be anxious about already, it's scary to think someone may take all your property. I would think that for people whose entire NW or most of it is their house or other RE would lose literally everything and would be practically homeless and broke. I am guessing in such dire catastrophic circumstances where some thieves or government makes people destitute people would start taking drastic measures given nothing to lose. Which could make squatting or title stealing a dangerous enterprise.

there are apparently people/companies whose business is to kick out squatters by various means.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
This seems like doom fantasy to me - how common in title theft? It would seem that it would have to be paired with identity theft, which I know is now not uncommon, but I'm curious to know if title theft is now "a thing".

title theft is now a thing, but more often in unencumbered land. a fully paid-off house could also be vulnerable, whether you live there or not, but you would be more likely to notice folks driving by/trying to see a fake listing if you are occupying the house.

a property with a lien is less likely to be targeted because the folks running these scams don't want to deal with a real title search/paying off a lien.

so, i guess 1) keep a large mortgage in place 2) if not, make sure you have enhanced title insurance that protects against post transaction fraud

or you could put in place your own lien against your property i guess. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Interesting. What do you mean by putting your own lien against your property? Getting a second mortgage, HELOC? Is it cheaper to pay interest vs Title insurance?

We're baby Gen X but we'd be fine without the equity we have in our home.

Anonymous wrote:
This seems like doom fantasy to me - how common in title theft? It would seem that it would have to be paired with identity theft, which I know is now not uncommon, but I'm curious to know if title theft is now "a thing".

title theft is now a thing, but more often in unencumbered land. a fully paid-off house could also be vulnerable, whether you live there or not, but you would be more likely to notice folks driving by/trying to see a fake listing if you are occupying the house.

a property with a lien is less likely to be targeted because the folks running these scams don't want to deal with a real title search/paying off a lien.

so, i guess 1) keep a large mortgage in place 2) if not, make sure you have enhanced title insurance that protects against post transaction fraud

or you could put in place your own lien against your property i guess. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Anonymous wrote:Our problem would be having to pay rent. House is paid off.

Affordable housing options would be an issue for us as well unless we moved to the Midwest (eg, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis).

Anonymous wrote: I have one and only one primary property. I will never buy a house I am not living in. No vacation home for me. I prefer to keep cash liquid.

I also don't want rental property. I do not mind flipping properties but when I am doing it, someone from the family needs to stay there. I will never have squatters, my situation if someone comes to occupy my home will always be home invasion.

What question were you answering?

Anonymous wrote:Our problem would be having to pay rent. House is paid off.

+1 and also rethinking options for long-term care. We only factor in our home equity ($1.5M home, will be paid off in two years, just before we retire) as a future source of funding for long-term care. Otherwise, our retirement plan is based on our retirement savings of $3M.

Our problem would be having to pay rent. House is paid off.

I have one and only one primary property. I will never buy a house I am not living in. No vacation home for me. I prefer to keep cash liquid.

I also don't want rental property. I do not mind flipping properties but when I am doing it, someone from the family needs to stay there. I will never have squatters, my situation if someone comes to occupy my home will always be home invasion.

I have $20 M in a non-401K stock account, so I think I’d be ok if I had to move. But if the government seized my house I’d probably have bigger issues to worry about and hopefully would have already fled the country.

It's such a weird question to ask and a very complicated way of saying if you lost $500k to $1MM (which I assume is maybe the average home equity for DCUM folks) for any reason, would you have to significantly alter your lifestyle.

Why the bizarre scenario where you take a trip for 3 months and squatters take over your house and now own it?

This seems like doom fantasy to me - how common in title theft? It would seem that it would have to be paired with identity theft, which I know is now not uncommon, but I'm curious to know if title theft is now "a thing".

I would be fine and don’t really calculate primary residence in NW

We could survive I guess but the way our net worth is set up it's

RETIREMENT
Equity
Taxable brokerage
cash equivalents

We'd have to use up pretty much all of our liquid NW to buy a new house, and we'd be stuck with a much, much worse interest rate which would impair our ability to rebuild those numbers.

Let’s say squatters successfully took possession while you off on a long vacation, or the government confiscated it — this is all hypothetical— how bad off would you be?

I’m looking for input from the 50+, mostly GenX crowd. Younger people have faced different economic circumstances including housing prices and pay.

This is a different question than what is your NW excluding home.

We bought a year before the 2008 crash, but it still took a long time to recover from that. In the 2000s we were told by so-called experts to get a $1.5-2.0 million house. We scoffed at that and bought one at $500k which we considered a stretch. So glad we did that.

We are mostly liquid at almost 60. Our retirement funds like our house is very modest outside the beltway VA (1900 sqft).

If our house and the land it sits on was taken away from us without compensation it would be a gut punch but we could survive but would probably have to move to a lower COL place. Our kids are in HS FWIW.

Wondering how many other DMV GenX DCUM couples are like us.

What prompted this? Stories about stolen property titles.