Squatter Scourge – How Squatters Can Steal YOUR Property

George, welcome to the show.

Hey, Marco, thanks for having me.

It is great having you on. We were having a little conversation before I started recording here, and it’s just funny to hear, you know, the stories of squatters and how they can take advantage of you. And, you know, just relating back to my personal experience years ago with squatters, I’m excited to dive into this stuff. So I never thought I’d ever do a podcast interview about squatters <laugh>. It’s like, just not something you think about.

And I never thought I’d be here talking about it either Marco, but but here we are. It’s, it’s a thing now.

It is definitely a thing. Well, tell us about a little bit about you. Like, you know, what, what is your story? How did you get involved in real estate investing and the whole thing about squatters?

So, yeah, I’ll take you way back. This was the early mid two thousands. I, I got a banking job outta college, and I didn’t like it. And so I quit and decided to focus full-time on real estate and became a broker. And then eventually an investor bought a duplex and I triplex and just kept accumulating properties and doing business in a liberal jurisdiction, had its share of challenges with landlord tenant law. And so the whole time I’m thinking to myself like, Hey don’t love these laws, but you know, I’m still making money. I’m doing okay. And then one day I make a video. This is February, 2024. I make a video about basically the ease with which squatters can steal a house in Portland. And they’ve got a whole playbook where they forge a lease break into the house and then tell the cops, Hey, you know, I got a lease.

And the cops say, okay, you guys go sort this out. And then they have free housing for a year or more in some cases. And I was just really disgusted by this having heard about this from several of my colleagues. And so I made a video about it and it exploded. Conservative media, got ahold of it, it got passed around Twitter or X and it got taken put up and taken down over and over again by several different creators on TikTok on Instagram. And by the time all the dust was settled, I’d had tens of millions of views had gone on several news programs Dr. Phil. And so, and in the course of doing that, I just heard a million stories about how people dealt with their squatter situations and became inadvertently kind of a PhD on the subject. And so, and then also very passionate about it. So that about brings us to today I am on a mission to protect people from squatters and title fraud, formed a company around it. And I’m here to educate the public on how they can protect themselves. That is

Yeah, interesting. Definitely a niche or niche, however you want to call it Sure. Is, you know, for those, I think most people who are listening to this podcast or educated enough to know what a squatter is. But I guess let’s just break this down to those who may not fully understand what the heck is a squatter? Sure. Can you explain what a squatter is? <Laugh>?

Yeah for sure. And it often gets conflated with a holdover tenant. So if you got a tenant and they stop paying and they just refuse to leave, you don’t technically have a squatter. You’ve got a tenant that’s a non-paying tenant or a holdover tenant. A squatter is somebody who never had a contract to be there to begin with. They just enter into the property either by entering, you know, with breaking and entering, or someone leaves a door window unlocked and they establish themselves and basically pretend that they do have a contract to be there, either by way of statute, by them being there by a certain length of time. And that grants them tenancy rights or pretending either by way of forgery or just, you know, stating that they have a contract, they have a lease to be there. So yeah, the squatters are the guys that are willfully committing a crime, not just the down on their luck, Hey, I can’t afford the rent, so I’m gonna stick this out. They’re willfully committing a crime.

All right. So that almost begs the question of how common is this? I mean, I personally don’t hear about it happening very often, but then again, maybe I’m in a sheltered world or something, but, you know, I’ve kind of shifted over the years from starting out in investing in lower income, what I’ll call, you know, your very basic c class neighborhoods and then, you know, migrated through to the B class and even the lower a a minus type of grade, if you will, for a neighborhood. So to me, that’s a better demographic. You know, it’s, it’s just a different area to invest in. Yeah. But my experience, my personal experience with with squatters has been in like these sketchier neighborhoods.

Sketchier areas. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Like, you know, the CC minus type neighborhoods is what I would describe them as. But how prevalent or common is this?

Well, just like you said, in nicer areas, it’s a whole lot less common. But the thing is, it’s actually getting more common in those really nice areas. And the reason that it’s gotten so prevalent these days is because a few different reasons, but number one real estate and housing is now more valuable than it’s ever been in the history of time. And so if you’re able to to get housing and to, to steal your housing, then you can rack up tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of value from that theft and not pay the price for it. The squatters are almo rarely, if ever actually prosecuted for the crime. And so it became a very low risk, high reward crime for the squatters. And so there’s communities online devoted to this and then just, you know, derelict societies among us that sort of trade tips on this, on this stuff.

And it’s not just your drug adult you know, career criminals. They’re just opportunists who think like, huh, you know what? That place rents for four grand a month and I can just post up there as a squatter, not be charged with a crime, stay there for a year, and how much does that earn me? Plus if I rent the bedrooms out to my friends, like, boy, I just made off with like 80 grand just like that, and I’m not gonna be charged. The way I put it to people is like this. If, if suddenly the penalty for robbing a bank was like a week’s probation or something really low, do you think we’d have more bank robberies? Probably quite a bit. So it just became low risk, high reward, and people talk on the internet and we have the scour that we have today, unfortunately.

Interesting. So, I mean, why are squatters squatting? I mean, this sounds almost like a, a question with an obvious answer, but is it just because they’re looking for a roof over their head? Or is there some bigger, larger nefarious reason to squat? I mean, can, can they literally steal a house, you know, figuratively or literally <laugh>?

Well, I use house stealing in a couple different ways. In the video that went viral, that was house stealing for squatting. And the, the way to actually steal a house is is through deed fraud, AKA title fraud. And we’ll get into that in a minute. But why they do it is just for the reasons that, that you were saying, it’s because they can get something for nothing. And that’s something that’s increased in value, but it’s not a part of any sort of like ne nefarious or political ideology that they’re following. They’re just trying to get something for nothing. And they can do so without having to take a big risk.

So makes me wonder, especially with particular counties and states, what I’ll call blue states. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, do squatters have legal protections? I mean, I’ve heard the term you know, I’ve heard the term professional tenants, which are often like tenants that have a contract and then their lease expires and they somehow figure out a way to game the system and take advantage of, of you and live rent free as, as a prior tenant. But do squatters have certain rights or protections where they can like, get into a property, stay there, and then have the ability to stay there and prevent you from kicking them out?

Yeah. So basically the scam for the squatters or what they’re trying to get is they’re trying to get the bundle of rights afforded to tenants. And there’s landlord tenant law in every single state. And so if you enter into a house and you convince a, a police officer, like, yeah, I do have a lease. I do have the right to be here. And then the homeowner, of course, you know, goes to a lawyer, goes to a judge and and says like, Hey, this guy doesn’t have the right to be there. They say, okay, well, you can either evict them like they’re a tenant, or you can go through ejectment and ejectment is what you do to get rid of somebody who never had a contract to be there in the first place. But the problem is this, 99% of the time, ejectment is a long form, a long docket process that takes longer than eviction.

So most of the time, if you’re gonna go this route, like through the court system to get rid of your squatter, then you’re gonna be at the mercy of how long it takes to get a tenant out by way of eviction. And so you’re essentially calling them a tenant at that point that has, that has the rights of a tenant that actually was paying. But you go that route as the landlord often because you find out from your lawyer that that is the, that’s the simplest, easiest way to go through the courts to get rid of ’em, because ejectment, you know, it could take like 12 months, Hey, maybe you can get ’em out with an eviction in six months or maybe even less than that. But there’s a lot of different ways that these the squatters and then also these, there’s lawyers that help them pro bono and they ask for continuances.

There’s you know, these are tax and these are tax funded taxpayer funded agencies that advise the squatters on how they, how, how to, how to get in there, earn that bundle of rights, afford to tenants and stick around for as long as possible. And you mentioned red states and blue states before. Some red states still have jurisdictions that are just have a big backlog of evictions. And so you can’t get a court date for five months, even if it’s the reddest place in the world, you gotta wait in line. And if it’s the bluest place in the world, you might have a really short line, but there might be statutory periods between those court dates. So you’re stuck with somebody who’s not a tenant being a tenant if you end up going that route. But in my squatter defender training course, I talk about, you know, ways that you can avoid that. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> it gives you like a full picture of kinda what your options are, but ultimately there’s conventional methods and there’s unconventional methods for removing your squatters if you’re stuck with them.

So did I understand you correctly, are you saying that there are attorneys that will take on a client, a squatter as a client and then get compensated? Not by the squatter, but by the state?

Yeah, by the state. So the state’s paying their way, but they also try and squeeze money out of the landlord also. ’cause If there’s anything wrong with your contract, they’ll say like, Hey, this is, they’re, they’re like, you know, your rental agreement’s not an enforceable contract. And you know, you should your, you know, it could be subject to fines from the state. ’cause If you have anything wrong, especially in a place like Oregon or California, then the, they can, the state can find and can find you for it. And so yeah, they’re they’re real bottom feeders and blood suckers in my opinion. But <laugh>, they’re there with the atten with the intention of helping tenants to, to not get taken advantage of by bad acting landlords, but instead it’s kind of turned into a like a criminal syndicate.

Yeah, it sounds like it. Well, may, I don’t know if this is like such an obvious question, but I would imagine that if a squatter is claiming to have a lease that they clearly don’t have and doesn’t exist, isn’t the onus on them to produce a lease agreement to prove to whoever it may be that they actually have a legal right to stay there, even though they don’t, but isn’t, isn’t it up to them to prove that they are or have been a tenant?

It should be. In fact, that’s the way it is now in Florida with a house bill, oh, was it 6 21? Something like that, where you can just call up the sheriff and say, Hey, I got a squatter. And then the sheriff’s shows up and says, Hey, you gotta prove that you have the right to be here. And if in fact, you know, not everybody has a copy of their lease agreement handy. So, you know they might not be able to produce it, but in, in case they actually do have a lease, like, you know, the landlord will get in trouble for, you know, getting rid of them like this. But there’s a couple stages of the game where a, a lease can be produced, but they’re not required to show a police officer a lease or show one to a judge because there’s not like a statutory requirement that you as a tenant, like just hang onto your lease or provide a copy that you’re re required to keep for any length of time. So you would think that the honest would be on the tenant, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Wow. Except for in Florida it would’ve, it would’ve, it would appear. Wow.

That, that’s crazy <laugh>. That’s just crazy. Alright, so, so we own property, we’re a landlord and we happen to get a squatter showing up, you know, during a turnover or something. Like what steps can, you know, you can just be as general as you want to be with this, or as specific as you want to be, but what steps would someone take in order to get rid of a squatter in their property? It sounds like it could be easy. It sounds like it could be complicated depending on how knowledgeable your squatter is.

So I get into my training course, basically the, the list of things that you can do when you have a squatter, and that was one kind of a bonus for going viral, is I heard every story in the book about how people got rid of their squatters. And the conventional means by which you get rid of a squatter is to just go through the courts. And that’s when you’ve got the ejection or ejectment versus eviction. And then the other way you can get ’em out is to bribe them. Essentially. That’s cash for keys. You’ve probably heard of that. Yeah. And tenants or squatters rather, are wise to this. And so they will, they’ll set up shop and they’ll basically demand a sum of money that’s, you know, basically commensurate with what they think they can actually drag this thing out for.

Sometimes they’ll take more, sometimes they’ll take less, but that’s, that’s the scam for ’em. There was a lady actually down in California that demanded a $100,000 cash for keys because the property value she was squatting in was so high and the court wasn’t going to be kicking her out anytime soon. So she made that request. I don’t know whether they, she got it or not. Hopefully she didn’t. But then the, the best thing you can do by far is to call me because <laugh>, every single situation is different. And I can, I can advise you. I’ve got, you know, I do a low cost consultation or I can tell you, you know, what I think of the situation. But then there’s the unconventional means. The unconventional means have arranged for everybody. There is a guy who told me that, like he that he put snakes down the, the chimney of his house to get rid of the squatters, and they really didn’t like the snakes.

So they moved out. And then another guy did the same thing, like with roaches, then they’re with stink bombs. It’s basically and I don’t really recommend a lot of these unconventional methods because if the squatter gets hurt or killed, then you know, you could be held liable ’cause you’re not technically allowed to do that. But then the best I’d say unconventional method that I’ve heard with and that I’m now currently offering is called squatting on the squatter. And that’s where you or some contractors, and it’s better to have contractors because if it’s you, you could be hurt. Yeah. And so it’s best left to the professionals. You basically go in there and become roommates with the squatter and you mount a bunch of cameras and you move in, say like, yep, this is my place now. And hey, by the way, look at this. I got a lease from the owner. So then you were talking before about the honest is who the honest is on to prove that they have the right to be there. Suddenly you got some guys who say that, you know, they have the right to be there. Then the squatter says, oh no, you don’t. So then they call the cops and the the the tables have been turned. That’s awesome. At that point.

I love that. Yeah, that’s a great idea.

Squat.

It’s great. Yeah. Squat on the squatter. <Laugh>

You squat on the squatter, but you gotta be careful because there’s been instances that I studied one in New York in particular where the homeowner went to confront the squatter and entered her unit. And she was shot and killed. So that’s not good. That’s not what you want. And so she went there when they were there, you want to go when they’re not there. And that’s when you get in, you move your stuff in, you mount your cameras, turn their life into a reality show, and they’re, most of the time they’re gonna go quietly. They’re gonna think, all right, you know, the jig is up. Let’s get outta here. Just like before we started the podcast and I was telling you about you know, squatters really low grade that I’ve had where they were just asleep in there. And I said like, all right, it’s time to get outta here.

And they, you know, they did with, they did. So within like 20 minutes or so, it’s going to take a very like, high grade level of squatter that’s going to, that is going to really stick it out once they’re faced with resistance of that caliber where somebody’s actually like in the space. ’cause Remember, what are they trying to do? They’re just trying to get free housing. They just wanna live there and go about their business. But if the four Wallace that they’re occupying are no longer hospitable, then there’s a pretty decent chance. And that if they can’t get rid of the the, the news, the new squatters, they’re squatting on them, they’re, they’re going to leave.

Yeah. Interesting. You know, that makes me think that the best way to deal with the situation of having squatters is to prevent it in the first place. I mean, it’s, you know, prevention is, you know, they say what a prevention of pound of prevention.

Or an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure, pound cure. Yeah.

So what measures can landlords take to prevent squatters in the first place? I mean, it seems like that’s the best solution to this problem is not have the problem at all.

Oh, yeah. And I’m glad you mentioned that because that’s the whole first unit, the first like three units of the squatter defender training course is the whole course is prevention, detection and ejection. So we talked for a minute about the ejection part of it, but prevention and the detection, man, it’s so low cost and low hassle and it’s so easy to implement that you can basically squatter proof your entire portfolio for very, very inexpensively. You don’t have to hire any contractors or anything. But the simplest piece of equipment, and this is not a big secret and it’s gonna seem super obvious, but the simplest thing you can do is to have an alarm system, just a regular home security system, but specifically, not like a big $5,000 installation with permanent parts, but just the base tower that you plug into the wall and a motion sensor and maybe a camera.

It’s portable. You can take it anywhere. It’ll provide you with alerts on your phone. And it’s not just about having an like an alert that somebody is entered your property, but you’ve got a siren that’s going to let them know that they’re not welcome there. And not a whole lot of squatters are gonna stick it out in the face of the siren. But moreover, you’ve got an image of them ent entering the property and having it be vacant so that when you alert the law enforcement, you have an image of a person entering in with no, with no belongings there. ’cause That’s how they convince them that, how they convince law enforcement that they have the right to be there. ’cause By the time you’ve discovered them, they’ve already moved in like a couple buddies, a couch, a tv, you know, their cats are there.

Like it’s, it’s, it starts to become a lot more plausible. So you remove the plausibility element and there’s other things that you can do apart from the alarm system to just not make yourself a target. And I get into them in the, in the training course, but like the biggest one, and I say it in the course, like if you take away one thing from this entire thing, other than call me if you have a squatter, is get an alarm system. And I offer a, a SimpliSafe coupon for 50% off. So it ends up being like less than a hundred bucks all in.

Yeah. Sounds like a great preventative measure to take. Okay. So what can be the financial impact squatters have on rental property owners? I mean, it sounds like it could be all over the place. It could be from zero, you know, they’re sitting or sleeping there, they leave in 20 minutes, no harm, no foul to someone who’s trying to extort you for a hundred thousand dollars <laugh>.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s it, it varies greatly. But the, the cases that I’ve heard about that are, I guess the most like the worst case scenarios, it’s upwards of about a hundred thousand dollars and the way it, that breaks down, ’cause that seems like a crazy number. Like how could it get that high? Right? But the way it breaks down is, so you got the number of months when you can’t rent the place out because there’s a squatter there. And then you’ve got the damage that squatters do to your place because almost invariably they’re going to trash the place. And then finally you’ve got paying a lawyer, and I don’t know how many lawyers you’ve hired, but there monthly, monthly fees will range from anywhere from like a thousand bucks all the way up to $15,000 bills. I’ve gotten some lawyer bills that have just brought tears to my eyes because of how many zeroes were on the end of these things.

So by this. And then you’ve got court costs filing fees. So when you add up everything, if we got a place that’s renting for a couple grand a month, they’re out for an entire year. Plus you, you’re in, you’re gonna be into your lawyer for like a low of like $10,000 a high of like, I’ve heard about paying guys like 50 grand for like protracted multiple year battles. And then you’ve got the damage to completely redo a unit. It gets over 50 grand practically every single time. And then I’ve heard about many cases that break a hundred grand because they were there for 18 months, it rents for four grand a month, and they completely trashed the place and there was a lawyer working on it the entire time. So the financial damage, it can be, it’s basically a low of just like you said, like zero. Like, hey, get the heck outta here. And they say, okay. Or they stick it out and lawyer up, get a like a housing justice project type outfit to represent them and push back and then they lather, rinse or repeat and do it again. There’s a guy in Seattle that just goes from house to house in in neighborhoods squatting in $2 million homes. And he is, he’s a professional, but he just doesn’t care. He’s just doing it. That’s

Just crazy to me.

It’s wild. Yeah. But the financial damages so the chance of it’s happened to you are not super high, but if it does, it can be an absolute ship sinker.

So you mentioned damage a couple times. You’re, I mean, can, can squatters cause long-term damage to a property? I mean, what, what would be typical of squatter damage?

A lot of times they’re going to have pets and friends who like to party and not in the good way, <laugh>. And so I have a friend up in Seattle lake a Davida, and she had some squatters that luckily she was able to get out quickly thanks to the thanks to the police and her social media presence, really creating a big stir, like hundreds of thousands of views about what was happened to her and how she was being taken advantage of. But but just within that short, I think that she managed to get them out within about like five weeks or so with all the money that she paid to her lawyer. I think she was into her lawyer for like, I don’t know, like 15 or 20 grand. And then the unit she actually just rehabbed. But this is in a nice neighborhood.

It was 3000 some dollars a month per per month for the unit. And they managed to do about $70,000 worth of damage in just one month. They had a litter of puppies in the place and they destroyed not just the carpet, but like the subfloor, the tenants like tore out the carpet ’cause it was urine soaked and they put in a stripper pole into the place permanently affixed a stripper pole as one does when moves one moves into an apartment <laugh>. And they just, they set up a DJ booth and just made it a debt of inequity and just absolutely thrashed the place. That’s crazy. And so, even though they were only in there for, I dunno, like five or six weeks or something, or maybe it was longer, I can’t remember, but they managed to do tens of thousands. I think she was out like grand total of like, I think with the 70 grand and like over a hundred thousand dollars with having to redo the unit.

That’s crazy. Stripper pole, huh?

Totally wild. Yeah.

Sounds like wild.

Yeah.  And that’s with the police actually cooperating. She, she didn’t have to pay like a squatter squads to get ’em out or anything.

That’s just nuts. Okay. So a lot of property owners, landlords have property managers, you know, like a lot of our clients end up investing in turnkey rental properties that they don’t self-manage. Many do, but most don’t. And they have property managers. So is anything different when a squatter moves in to to a property, to your property, but you’re working with property management? I mean, is the property manager typically the one who’s gonna handle removing ejecting that squatter? You don’t, you as a landlord don’t need to necessarily get involved at that point, right?

You might not, but there’s a pretty decent chance that your property manager is gonna want a CYA they’re not gonna want to do anything other than what is completely conventional in the, in this situation because they don’t want to be, you know, held liable for anything that you know, that that goes wrong with getting the squatter out. They’re not gonna go put a bear trap out in the, on the squatter’s front door, right? <Laugh>, they’re, they’re going to go through the courts. And so if you’re a property manager any property manager’s listening out there, like take the squatter defender course because you gotta be able to provide this value to your clients so you can understand what your options are in any one given situation. And if you got a property manager it’s still valuable knowledge because you gotta know how to manage the manager.

‘Cause Even if you’re managing hundreds of units as a property manager, not every property manager has dealt with a, like a career like criminal squatter. They might have had somebody kind of wander in there ’cause they were high on drugs and got rid of them. But it’s only a matter of time. And so if you’re, if you’re an owner, it’s good to get educated on what your options are and what to do. And if you’re a property manager, yeah, you’re probably gonna be tasked with it because if you’re a landlord and you’ve got hundreds of units, you don’t want to deal with this stuff. And so it’s, they’re gonna put it on the property manager. And if you’re the property manager, you gotta do what’s right for your clients and get those guys out of their asap.

So if you can’t get the squatter out and your property manager can’t get the squatter out, does this flow up or down to law enforcement? I mean, who, who’s your line of defense if you can’t negotiate or successfully get a squatter out of your property? Does does it fall on law enforcement or, or is, is there some, someone else that’s helping you with this?

Well, the first thing you do is always call the cops because you know, the cops deal with, you know, these people, you know, every day. And there a let, a lot of times in any one given neighborhood, there’s known bad actors. And so, you know, if it’s you know Frankie, the Steeler that’s in, that’s inside the house, when the cop opens the door, the cop’s gonna be like, all right, Frankie, let’s let, let get, get the heck outta here. You don’t live here. But if they can convince the, the law enforcement that they have the right to be there, then yeah, you’ve got a real problem on your hands. But yeah, to answer your question, the first line of defense is law enforcement. And ultimately if you go through the courts, that’s who ends up taking them out. Just like, it’s like a, a non-paying tenant.

Eventually it is law enforcement that comes and locks them out, specifically the sheriff’s department. So you can call the sheriff’s department, you can call local law enforcement. I am an advocate of calling everybody the sheriff’s department, police department the DA’s office, your own lawyer, get everything, all hands on deck right away, because time is just so incredibly crucial. If they’ve been there an hour, it’s so much better than if they’ve been there. A day, A day is better than a week, than a month, than six months. Time is time is of the essence every single time. But but yes law enforcement is, is where you want to go until you’re, until they say, no, we’re not going to help. And then, then you got a choice to make.

Right. Sounds like prevention is the best thing to do when it comes to squatters. Like you’re just gonna save yourself a ton of time and headache if you just prevent it from happening in the first place, right?

Oh, yeah. Without a doubt. By, by a long shot. It’s an insurance policy. So there’s not, so actually there’s no insurance policy against squatters. Well, actually I take that back. There is one, but it only covers like the first $10,000 and it costs like a decent amount of money into wow. But hey, you know, rounded up, it’ll, it, it could help you out. But there’s no like title insurance policy. There’s no way that that you’re actually protected from this, from, from happening. So yeah, you, you’re on your own to protect yourself. It’s one of those things.

Yeah. Wild. Well, last question then you can tell us about your program and whatnot. You know, the whole idea of, of a squatter stealing your property, how common is that in reality and how much truth is there in that? ’cause You know, I’ve heard that before. I just have never met anybody that literally had their property stolen <laugh> from it.

Well, you, Marco, you live in Orange County, that’s probably not gonna be as quite a big a problem, right? <Laugh>. But yeah, so, so stealing the house with a squatter versus stealing a house with a, a title fraud. So the true stealing of a house is done through a deed fraud, AKA title fraud. And so that’s when you forge a deed to the house and you put it in your name or the name of an alias that you have a fake ID for, and you file it with the county, and then suddenly the property is retitled to somebody else. And that person can then take out loans against the property, or they can sell it either on the retail market or with a realtor for sale by owner or often with a wholesaler. And so what happens there is if you own your property wholly, especially those, that’s especially a big target is that person will steal the house and then steal all the equity and make off with it and put it into a Russian bank account and you’re left holding the bag and title insurance mo like 90 some percent of the time does not cover this because title insurance, most of the policies are an owner’s policy and the owner’s policy covers from the date you bought it back in time.

So, you know, five years from now, you know, a painter can go back with a lien that was before you bought it, and title insurance will cover that. But in the case of fraud and impersonation that occurs after you bought the property, then title insurance, unless you get a specific policy called a homeowner’s policy, right? It gets confusing ’cause it’s an owner policy versus a homeowner’s policy, it costs more money. But most of the title agents that I’ve spoken to have never even heard about this even as an option. So they’re, so they’re not really selling a whole lot of those homeowner policies. And that’s who covers you in the event of a title fraud. And if the title fraud does occur and and you’ve, you basically, you gotta get, there’s a whole program to to, to fix it, but essentially you gotta get the right lawyer.

And so that’s another instance where you call me and I can tell you what your options are and what you should do, but essentially you gotta get a lawyer to do an action to quiet title. And it sounds complicated because unfortunately it is. But the software as part of the program that I’m pitching, thanks for letting me pitch this <laugh>. I got a software called title Fraud Defender. And it’s really simple. It just, you put in the, the addresses of your properties and it monitors the title and if anything changes, it just sends you a text and an email saying like, Hey, Marco, did you did you put this into, did you retitle this property? Did you sell this property? And if you didn’t, you’ll know right away so that if you can go, you can say, oh my gosh, something’s wrong. And that’ll happen before they’ve stolen your equity, taken out loans, sold the house, or anything like that. So it’s, it’s title monitoring, didn’t invent it. There’s companies that already do it, but we’re just, we’re just less than half the cost because I wanna bring people into my ecosystem to help as many people as possible. And but yeah, title Fraud Defender is the name of that product and it’s kind of runs concurrent with the Squatter Defender.

Yeah. Very cool. So how can people learn more, follow you, find out about what you’re up to?

So I’ll give Marco all my socials, but it’s Mrd_Portland – McCleary Realty and Development on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok,  squatterdefender.com  and  titlefrauddefender.com is where you can get the squatter course and the title Fraud Defender software. But just contact me, shoot me a message. If you have any concerns or problems with your property with squatters or title fraud, I’ll help you. I’m a very abundance mindset. Help every, everybody type of guy not gonna charge you. And yeah, that’s probably the best way to reach me is out on, on social and those websites.

Very cool. Awesome, George. Very interesting subject. So I’m glad, I’m glad we did this. I never thought I’d do a squatter episode. <Laugh>. It’s fun.

You know what, here we are. Here we are, man. And I hope, I hope it never happens to you if, but if it does, then gimme a ring.

Definitely. Cool. Well, George, thanks for coming on. Stay on for a minute here as I wrap up.

That is it for today. Thank you for listening. Download our free report, The Ultimate Guide to Passive Real Estate investing available on our website at noradarealestate.com. If you’re interested in real estate investing and expanding your portfolio, we’re in about 25 different markets, just contact an investment counselor here. There’s no cost. Just get a free strategy session and we’ll help you out. And if you have a question for me about real estate investing or finance, just let me know. Shoot me a text or an email or just go to the website at passiverealestateinvesting.com. Click Ask Marco and I can help you out with that. And if you haven’t done so already, remember to subscribe, takes you three seconds, click that button and that way you never miss an episode. That is it for today, that you for listening, and we will see you all on our next episode.

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