I first wrote about real estate fraud on this website in January 2007. Almost twenty years later, the warning still stands, and the news got worse before it got better.

In 2022 and 2023, CBC News investigations, building on Toronto police case reports, documented an organized-crime wave in which at least 30 GTA homes were sold or mortgaged without their owners’ knowledge. One couple working abroad discovered from overseas that their Toronto house had been sold out from under them. In another case, a condo was stolen and sold for $970,000 while its owner was away.

So the question my clients ask me now is the right one: can someone really sell my home without me knowing? The honest answer is yes, it has happened here. The better news: the law is on the true owner’s side, the owners in the reported cases recovered their titles or were on the way to doing so, and the habits that protect you are simple and inexpensive. Let me walk you through it the same way I did in 2007, updated for what we have learned since.

What is the difference between mortgage fraud and title fraud?

Real estate fraud is a broad term, but two kinds matter most, and they hurt different people.

Mortgage fraud most often hurts the financial institutions that lend money. The common form: fraudsters acquire a property and artificially inflate its value through a series of sales and resales between cooperating parties, then secure a mortgage against the inflated price. If you are a homeowner, this one is mostly the lender’s problem, not yours.

Title fraud is the one that hurts individual homeowners. Fraudsters use stolen identities or forged documents to transfer your title to themselves, or to register a new mortgage against your home, without your knowledge. Then they take the money and disappear, leaving you to untangle the registry.

That two-part distinction is the same one I drew in 2007. What changed is the scale and the method.

So what has changed since 2007?

Three things, and they explain why this went from a niche warning to a front-page story.

First, the criminals got organized. Investigators describe crime groups that search public property records for homes that are mortgage-free, or close to it, because that is where the equity is. They recruit “stand-ins” with fake identification to impersonate the true owners at listing appointments and closings.

Second, the most attractive targets are specific: homes without a mortgage, owners who are away for long stretches (working abroad, wintering elsewhere, in long-term care), and tenanted or vacant properties where a stranger at the door raises no alarm.

Third, the system tightened in response. Real estate lawyers in Ontario now apply stricter identity-verification requirements at closing, and the industry has put fraud screening higher on its checklist. However, the first line of defence is still you.

Your protection checklist

The 2007 advice still holds; here is the 2026 version. None of these items costs more than a few hundred dollars for most homes, and most cost nothing.

  • Know what your title says. You can search your own parcel register through Ontario’s online land registry (ONLand) for a small fee, or ask your lawyer to pull it. If your home is mortgage-free, consider checking once a year.
  • Get an owner’s title insurance policy. This is the single strongest protection. It typically covers the legal cost of restoring your title after a fraud, up to the policy limit. If you bought before title insurance became routine, you can still buy an existing-homeowner policy today from providers such as FCT or TitlePLUS. One-time premium, no renewal.
  • Watch your credit reports. A mortgage you did not take out shows up there first. Both Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada provide free access to your own credit report.
  • Guard the documents fraudsters need. Identity theft is the raw material of title fraud: driver’s licence numbers, SIN, banking details, passports. Shred, do not toss. Be slow with anyone who contacts you first and asks you to verify who you are.
  • Watch for small warning signs. Mail that stops arriving, a property-tax bill that does not come, a “your mortgage application” letter for a mortgage you never applied for. Each of these deserves a phone call the same week.

If you are buying right now: your lawyer will almost certainly include a lender’s title policy because the bank requires it. Ask one question at that meeting: “Does my owner’s policy cover title fraud after closing, and to what limit?” It is a small question, and the answer buys you real peace of mind.

What if it happens anyway?

Move on four fronts at once. Report to your local police. Report to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Call a real estate lawyer about removing the fraudulent registration; Ontario’s victims of real estate fraud page explains the process, and the province’s Land Titles Assurance Fund exists to compensate eligible victims. And if you have title insurance, notify your insurer immediately so their lawyers carry the file instead of you.

Under Ontario’s land titles law, a forged transfer does not extinguish the true owner’s rights, and in the reported GTA cases the owners recovered their titles or were on track to. However, the correction took months of stress that a title policy and an early phone call would have shortened considerably.

The teacher’s summary

Title fraud is rare. Set against the roughly two million documents registered in Ontario’s land registry each year, it remains the exception, and I am not telling you this to frighten you. I am telling you because the protections are cheap and a little boring, and almost nobody puts them in place until something has already gone wrong.

Check your title. Buy the owner’s policy. Watch your credit report. The rest is just being careful with your documents.

If you want a second opinion before your next purchase, or help pulling your parcel register for the first time, ask me. And if you are unsure what your title policy covers, I will help you write down the right questions to take to your insurer or lawyer. No cost, no obligation.