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Buying your very first home is one of the most exciting times of your life. Unfortunately, the joy of reaching this milestone can blind you and make you vulnerable to real estate scams. Learn more about the three most common scams first-time homebuyers are subject to in this RealEstate.com article by Casey Fleming.
You’ve done it! You decided to pursue the American Dream. You’ve saved up and are ready to buy your first home. Congratulations! You are now a ripe target for real estate fraud.
Why? Because you are excited and inexperienced, you are particularly vulnerable to fraudsters. They know that you don’t have the experience to spot fraud, and you’re so excited that you may not be vigilant. And, you have cash. Maybe not a lot (in your mind), but it’s enough to make you a very attractive target to a fraudster.
The most common fraud these days is wire fraud. Once you go into contract on a purchase, you will be asked to send money to the escrow company at least twice — once for your earnest money deposit and once for your down payment and closing costs. You may be asked to wire money by your escrow agent, real estate agent, mortgage advisor, processor, transaction coordinator or even the escrow officer’s assistant. And because you’re excited, you tend to do as instructed.
But wait. Say fraudsters hack the real estate agent’s computer networks and look through pending transactions. If they see your file, they know exactly how much money you have to put into escrow and when, where your escrow is being held, what your escrow number is and all of your contact information, including your email address. That’s all they need.
Knowing that the big money isn’t deposited until right before close of escrow, they wait patiently for the right moment. Then, just before close of escrow, they send you an urgent email that appears to be from your escrow agent or real estate agent that says, “We need you to wire the rest of your money now!” The email includes wiring instructions, which, of course, don’t route to the escrow company’s bank.
Once your money is wired, it’s gone. There goes your down payment, your closing costs, your savings … and, of course, your new home. And since by now you’ve released contingencies, the seller can claim your earnest money deposit because you can’t close. Yep. You can lose that, too.
To protect yourself, ask all involved agents what steps they take to keep your information secure. Then, when you’re asked to send money, don’t make a move until you’ve confirmed the authenticity of the email by calling the person who appears to have sent it. Pick up the phone. Don’t email.
Wayne Bell, the California real estate commissioner, says that most complaints today involve unlicensed individuals. In every state, a real estate broker’s license is required to sell, rent or manage real estate. Brokers may hire licensed salespeople, who perform these duties under the broker’s supervision, but an unlicensed person may not perform these duties under any situation.
A common scam occurs when your money is not deposited into a trust account, and of course, disappears. When you make an offer on a home, you typically give the broker a check for the earnest money deposit. This money must go into the broker’s trust account or directly to escrow if the offer is accepted. But sometimes – especially when an individual is not licensed – it doesn’t.
How bad could it be? In October 2017, a New Jersey resident, Peter Live, was arrested for doing this. He took more than $75,000 from five buyers, which he then deposited directly into his own business accounts and then withdrew for personal expenses.
Your state’s real estate commissioner oversees licensing and is an excellent resource to protect yourself. In California, you can check licensing status at DRE.CA.gov.
Another very common scam involves selling you a copy of your deed. When you buy your home, the grant deed is recorded at the county recorder’s office and becomes public record, so anyone can see that you’ve just bought your home.
Shortly after closing, you receive an official-looking statement from a company with an official-sounding name telling you that you need a copy of your deed and property assessment profile. It might say “RECORDED DEED NOTICE” or something to that effect. The notice has your county’s name all over it and tells you that for $86 (give or take) the company will send you a copy of these documents.
The thing is, the county will send you a copy of the deed anyway, it just takes some time to get it. And the assessment profile is public record, available in most counties online for free.
Granted, this scam will only set you back $86, but it’s still a scam.
There are more, so be vigilant and aware. Work only with trusted professionals with verifiable licenses. Don’t send money without verifying the request as authentic, and double-check the validity of any request for money, no matter how small an amount.
As a Florida resident, you may experience natural disasters, such as a hurricane. Eagle Home Mortgage, a Lennar affiliate, would like to inform you of a loan program that is specific for those recovering from the long-lasting effects of a natural disaster. The FHA 203(h) loan is a great option for those who have become a displaced owner or renter due to a recent disaster. This home loan is applicable to qualified buyers when their primary residence is lost or deemed “unlivable.” This would give you and your family the support needed to move on from such overwhelming loss and get your life back on track. One of the major advantages of this program is that it allows for 100% financing, which means that it does not require a down payment. The FHA 203(h) loan will provide needed assistance as disasters are not planned for and can come at the worst possible moment.
The FHA 203(h) program is designed for those who require assistance if their property falls under a presidentially – declared disaster area and owners/renters have either lost their homes or had extensive damage making their home an unsafe place to live. This loan can be used for a new purchase or reconstruction of their home as long as individuals apply within one year of the major disaster declaration.
Be at peace knowing that Eagle Home Mortgage, Lennar Orlando, and the FHA 203(h) Loan are all looking out for your family’s best interests and needs. We know that we cannot fix what the disasters have crated however, we can help start the healing process by giving you the opportunity for a fresh start.
Disclaimer:
Limited Time Only, the availability of FHA 203(h) assistance is limited. Offer available on qualifying purchasers/borrowers. You are NOT required to use EHM as a condition for purchase of a Lennar home. This offer is subject to borrower meeting approval guidelines. The FHA 203(h) loan program and seller contribution limits are subject to certain FHA terms, conditions and restrictions. Rates and terms are subject to change without notice. Contact your loan officer for FHA 203(h) program details and your new home consultant for home purchase details. You are free to shop around to determine that you are receiving the best services and the best rate for these services. Lennar and EHM have business relationships with each other. Lennar and EHM are, directly or indirectly, wholly owned by Lennar Corporation. For additional information please visit their websites www.Lennar.com and www.eaglehm.com. This offer is subject to change and may be withdrawn or discontinued at any time without notice.” This statement is based on currently available information, current market conditions and should never be relied upon. Market rates are based on market trends, other factors and they involve risks, variables and uncertainties that can cause predictive statements to differ materially. This statement is no guarantee of the present or future market conditions and market values. Each prospective purchaser should conduct their own independent analysis, consult your own accountant, legal and tax advisor, to evaluate risks, consequences and suitability of this home purchase. Visit Lennar.com or see a Lennar New Home Consultant for further details and important legal disclaimers. This is not an offer in states where prior registration is required. Void where prohibited by law. Copyright © 2017 Lennar Corporation Lennar, the Lennar logo, Everything’s Included, the Everything’s Included logo, and Eagle Home Mortgage are U.S. registered service marks or service marks of Lennar Corporation and/or its subsidiaries. CBC 1260831 11/17
Tucson, Ariz. – November 2017 – Lennar is excited to be the first to offer a Student Loan Mortgage Program, created by their preferred lender Eagle Home Mortgage. The program works by allowing homebuyers to receive up to 3 percent of the purchase price of their new Lennar home to pay off student loans.
“We are so thrilled to offer this program because we know that student loan can be a huge barrier to individuals who want to become a first-time homebuyer,” said Tom Gansheimer, Division President for Lennar Tucson. “It’s great to be able to expand even further on what we do best, making the dream of homeownership a reality!”
In the U.S., 41 percent of college educated Americans have postponed trying to buy their first home directly because of their student loan debt. Now, with our Student Loan Debt Mortgage Program, student loan debt no longer has to be a barrier.
Lennar has always distinguished themselves through other builders in part through their signature Everything’s Included® program, which also helps simplify the new homebuying process while adding tremendous value. It works by including today’s popular features and upgrades as standard, instead of charging extra to the purchase price of the home, which in turn allows homebuyers to get the home of their dreams without having to watch the price tag climb.
Because of Lennar’s national purchasing power, they are able to include today’s hottest features in their new homes in an affordable way. Lennar Tucson offers Everything’s Included® features in all their new homes such as granite countertops, beautiful kitchen cabinetry, the latest in home automation technology, commercial strength Wi-Fi and so much more, with specific features varying per community.
It’s a great time to enter the new home market and the Student Loan Mortgage Program is making it easier for many homebuyers than ever before. Start your search today or learn more by visiting www.lennar.com/tucson or calling 800-864-1058.
With hundreds of communities nationwide and homes designed for first-time, move-up and luxury homebuyers, Lennar has grown to become one of the nation’s leading and most respected homebuilders. Lennar has a longstanding history of building homes of enduring quality in only the most well planned and desirable locations throughout the country.
Are you spending too much time at work waiting for your kids to let you know they’re safely home from school? Do you wonder what they’re doing while unsupervised? Or maybe you forgot to lock up before dropping the kids at school and heading to work. Enter the smart home. Though existing homes were not designed for today’s connected world, some new home builders are embracing smart homes by integrating the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Design program founded by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a non-profit organization that’s standardizing connectivity. Ease your working parent anxieties by turning your smart home into your own personal assistant.
Your Peace of Mind
You may be a parent to one of the 7 million children out of 38 million children ages 5 to 14 who the most recent U.S. Census report says are regularly left home alone. If so, a smart home gives you plenty of remote parental control and peace of mind. A Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Design lets you keep an eye on your tweens and teens from afar or limit access with door codes and remote sensors. If your child needs emergency medical care, you can also remotely dispatch help as soon as possible.
Your Personal Doorman
A smart home lets you know who goes in and out of your home. Use your devices to keep tabs on the comings and goings of tutors, caregivers, babysitters and nannies or other service providers while your child is home. A smart home’s video surveillance system keeps watch, letting you view remotely.
Your Personal Housekeeper
A smart home assists you with cooking and cleaning tasks so you don’t have to be interrupted while helping your kids with homework. Just ask Alexa, part of the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Design program, to turn on lights or close the shades so you don’t have to multitask.
Your Personal Locksmith
A smart home forgives you if you forget to lock up on busy mornings. From work or car, rest assured that with the click of your smartphone, your Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Design smart home is locked up and snug as a bug. Or, unlock it from afar if your kids forgot their keys or code.
Your Personal Money Manager
A smart home keeps your thermostats in check while you’re away. Kids love keeping the heat high during the winter and the air conditioner blasting during summer. Now you can remotely monitor thermostats and turn down those energy bills.
Your Personal IT Department
A Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Design connects wirelessly at every possible point and works from the second you enter your home. Because of its peak performance, it’s always ready for new technologies that come to market. No more setting up or keeping up with new networks. For that, you’ll have the happiest kids on the block.
Reno, Nev. – November 2017 – Finding a new Lennar home is a perfect way to embrace the holiday season for the whole family. Lennar offers two great communities in the award-winning Somersett masterplan that provide a variety of floorplans, great Everything’s Included® features and access to incredible amenities.
“Somerset has become a highly-desirable place for families to live,” said Dustin Barker, Division President for Lennar Reno. “We have a few homes available for quick move-in at both our Plateau and Wintercreek communities but we encourage interested buyers to act quickly because these homes won’t last long!”
Plateau at Somerset offers four distinctive floorplans in total, three of which are available as a quick move-in home. The Santa Maria plan is a Next Gen® home and offers 2,675 square feet of living space with four bedrooms, three-and-a-half bathrooms and a two-bay garage. The attached private suite comes with its own separate entrance, living room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette. The other two quick move-in home designs available are the single-story Juniper and the two-story Silverado plans which provide approximately between 1,950 and 2,247 square feet.
At Wintercreek, five more distinctive Lennar floorplans are offered with two available for quick move-in. The Lucchese plan is a two-story home that offers 2,759 square feet, three bedrooms, a loft, two-and-a-half bathrooms and a three-bay tandem garage. The Kensington, another Next Gen® home with the full suite, provides two-stories with 3,055 square feet, four bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms.
The Somersett masterplan offers its residents plenty of ways to stay busy. The Club, Somersett’s community center, is a 24,000-square foot, $9 million-dollar facility that is the heart of community’s amenity program. It includes a media room for watching games or movies, an aerobics studio, cardio-weights studio, a multipurpose sports courts room with three basketball hoops, arts and craft studio, kid’s corner, teen club, massage room, locker rooms and more.
The Club serves residents as well as Somersett Country Club members, many of whom are avid golfers and enjoy Somersett’s Canyon Nine par-3 golf course. Residents also gain access to two swimming pools — a Jr. Olympic three-lane pool and another pool that features a 98-foot waterslide and poolside cabanas, two spas, an outdoor fire pit and over 27 miles of paved and natural hiking and biking trails.
Don’t miss your chance to give your family the ultimate gift and take advantage of these limited quick move-in homes at Somersett today! For more information visit www.lennar.com/reno or call 877-828-1331.
With hundreds of communities nationwide and homes designed for first-time, move-up and luxury homebuyers, Lennar has grown to become one of the nation’s leading and most respected homebuilders. Lennar has a longstanding history of building homes of enduring quality in only the most well planned and desirable locations throughout the country.
Why live in South Austin? The southern Austin metro area is home to a large variety of restaurants, entertainment venues and recreation options. From the very casual to the very formal, south Austin has something for everyone, including music every night of the week if that’s your choice!
Located just minutes from downtown Austin, commuters will find easy access via I-35 and toll 130. Cities such as Kyle, and Buda offer nearby small town living with access to big city resources. Everything is minutes away!
New Lennar communities in the heart of South Austin include Cool Springs and Sun Chase.
Each community is master planned with amenities such as parks, playscapes and hike and bike trails.
Cool Springs located just off of I-35 and FM 150 in Kyle Texas, will be home to Lennar’s Highlands Collection. These homes will feature 1 and 2 story homes ranging from 1,622 to 3,031 square feet. Open floorplans with 3 and 4 bedrooms and options such as a study, garage extensions, and master bath additions offer buyers the opportunity to customize floorplans with a variety of options to fit their needs.
There is plenty of shopping and local venues in the area such as Kyle Crossing as well as a short drive to the San Marcos Premium Outlets. This community’s features will include hike and bike trails as well as a community greenbelt area.
Sun Chase located in the heart of Del Valle right off of 130 toll and highway 71.
The community is situated within minutes of the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and downtown Austin where buyers can find plenty of entertainment waiting.
The amenity park in this community will include a basketball court, community gardens, hike and bike trails, a future pool, large playscape area and a pavilion to use for BBQs and other events.
One and two-story plans ranging from 1,279 to 2,399 square feet offer buyers the opportunity to choose from a variety of options with the most up to date finishes and fixtures.
For more information on these new communities please contact one of our Internet Sales Consultants at 512.596.7703.
Las Vegas, Nev. – November 2017 – Lennar is hosting a special event at the Chelsea Estates community this Saturday, December 2 from 10 a.m. to noon to celebrate and showcase the world’s first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Design which includes smart home products that can all be voice controlled through Amazon Alexa. Attendees will be able to tour model homes, test out the latest in home automation technology, get neighborhood safety tips from the local Metropolitan Police and learn how to save on the latest home security systems from Sting Alarms.
“We are so excited to show today’s home shoppers just how connected and easy it is to live in one of our Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ homes,” said Ashley Max, Marketing Manager for Lennar Las Vegas. “Lennar is the only builder to offer this type of guaranteed coverage in a new home.”
Lennar is the first builder to offer Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ homes, which meet the standards for strong, consistent connectivity throughout the entire home set by the Wi-Fi alliance, a global network. The process for creating these homes starts from the design process, where a series of commercial-strength Ruckus Unleashed access points are mapped throughout the home and then built in during the construction process. The result is reliable coverage throughout every square foot of the home.
Adding to the significant value that Lennar’s Everything’s Included® approach to homebuilding already offers — such as beautiful granite countertops, upgraded cabinetry and gourmet kitchen appliances – buyers will now also receive a wide range of smart products from top manufacturers at no additional cost. These include smart climate control from Honeywell’s programmable thermostats, home security with the Ring Video Doorbell, reliable lighting control straight from your smart phone from Lutron, wireless music with a Sonos speaker, connectivity through Amazon’s Alexa, hands-free front door locks from Baldwin and Kwikset, commercial strength Wi-Fi from Ruckus, and seamless integrated control with Samsung SmartThings.
The event will take place at the Chelsea Estates Welcome Home Center located at 8872 White Harbor Avenue in Southwest Las Vegas. Those who would like to attend are encouraged to RSVP to LennarLasVegas@Lennar.com and visit www.lennar.com/lasvegas for more details.
With hundreds of communities nationwide and homes designed for first-time, move-up and luxury homebuyers, Lennar has grown to become one of the nation’s leading and most respected homebuilders. Lennar has a longstanding history of building homes of enduring quality in only the most well planned and desirable locations throughout the country.
If you’re deciding between purchasing a traditional non-automated newly built home or a network-ready new construction smart home, consider what life might be like living in each type of home. If your family has multiple devices continuously grabbing bandwidth, and you’re used to living with spotty wireless coverage, living with whole home coverage greatly impacts how you experience the average day. But the benefits go beyond personal devices. Here’s what it looks like in a day in the life of a home built with complete connectivity.
An Average Family
“We estimated that the average family of four with two children have about five wireless devices – each,” says Randy Ryder with the Wi-Fi Alliance, one of the most influential global non-profit organizations you may have never heard of until today. It founded the Wi-Fi Certified Home Design program for new construction homes as part of its mission to standardize Wi-Fi usage, networks, and connected products. “Those devices also include TVs that stream, streaming devices, and gaming systems, but do not include other built-in products that also rely on a wireless network, such as music systems, lighting, appliances, or the HVAC system that may all need to wirelessly communicate, putting a huge demand on the network.”
A Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Design program accommodates this enormous demand by building into the home’s infrastructure a network with the capacity to seamlessly handle present and future connectivity needs. “The days are gone where we had one laptop per family,” adds Ryder, who cites research indicating that at least 50 percent of U.S. households now rely on cell phones. The research also shows that 90 percent of U.S. households have at least one device, with the typical American household containing five, and that number will continue to grow.
An Average Day
Your family most likely feels the need to do a text check-in before leaving home. With all devices on and various news shows streaming, that’s a lot of necessary bandwidth that often leads to dead spots and other connectivity problems.
Fast forward to late afternoon when the kids and their friends are online for homework and exchanging data on the cloud. Meanwhile you’re on a recipe site. You may be kicked offline before you’re finished reading the ingredients list thanks to a full capacity wireless network. But that won’t happen when you have robust, reliable whole-home coverage, and you can even ask Amazon’s Alexa to play your favorite dinner music while you continue chopping the vegetables.
An Average Night
A home with a Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Design program is properly designed from the foundation up with high-performance gear for uninterrupted wireless service during the evening when families are home together. “We have laptops, TVs streaming, online gaming, devices all over the home, plus new wearables and all of that strains a normal network,” says Ryder. “We’ve already considered the inevitability that families increase their usage with more wireless products, and we built in those capacity needs so that the network works as seamlessly in the future as it did the first day they moved in.”
The prime evening time when your entire family, and neighborhood, is online, should be relaxing, not a time where you have to apply time-sapping fixes like snagging a better signal or resetting the router to unfreeze apps. There is a better way. A home with full built-in coverage to handle those evening hours of heavy streaming, gaming, and working time is time-saving and brings infinitely more peace of mind when you can ask Alexa to lock the doors and control the thermostat while you sleep.
An Average Weekend
Buffering most likely causes issues while you’re in the basement, garage or yard, where walls separate your device from signals. Though glitches inevitably happen when you’re streaming a weekend DIY video tutorial at the same time your kids are all online, these issues are kept to a minimum in a smart home. Living in a well-connected home with Wi-Fi systems built into the design phase of the home adds value to everyday life by giving you back all the time used troubleshooting your connectivity needs.
