02/18/25

Our teams have upped our efforts regarding fraud awareness for the last couple of years. After all, cybercriminals and other scammers remain one of the biggest threats to our real estate customers and their transactions.

We hope these messages – including the ones posted here on our blog –  have positively affected you and your clients. We work hard to make sure you’re protected and secure. However, a new survey from CertifIID, one of the leaders in this area, says that despite our collective efforts, the warnings aren’t getting through as much as they should.

That’s why we’re here again to sound the alarms regarding the threat of wire fraud – even if it seems like we keep repeating ourselves. Here are four findings that we found particularly noteworthy.

Buyers and sellers still don’t know fraud is a ‘real thing’ to worry about. That’s the conclusion researchers made after this year’s survey showed that only half (48%) of recent buyers said they were “very aware” of wire fraud before buying a home. That figure was about the same as the 2024 report. Twelve percent of buyers said they weren’t aware of the problem, and 40% of respondents said they were somewhat aware of the issue.

Suspicious messages are very common for buyers. We know most people don’t think wire fraud could happen to them, but more than 1 in 4 buyers believed they got a message that could’ve come from a scammer during the closing process. That, too, is around the same figure as last year’s survey. The most impersonated person in the transaction? REALTORS®, according to the survey, with almost 60% of suspicious emails appearing to impersonate an agent involved in a transaction. About a third of the scam messages appeared to come from a loan officer. This underscores the need for all of us to talk about how the home closing process should work with our clients.  

First-time homebuyers are especially at risk. No surprise here – this survey reinforced that fraud awareness is especially important for those who have never bought or sold a home before and are at a higher risk for fraud. How much higher? According to this report, three times! Another interesting finding: “35% of first-time home buyers and sellers expect their real estate agent to be responsible for protecting them against real estate wire fraud, compared to only 20% of experienced buyers and sellers.”

Education should be a team effort. As we’ve said before, no one can fight fraud alone. There are so many people involved in a real estate transaction, and all of us should be committed to keeping our buyers and sellers secure. In fact, when asked who should be in charge of protection from fraud, the answers were pretty split. Thirty percent said the bank, 30% said the title company and 27% of recent buyers said it should be the REALTOR®, but the real answer is that it should be all of us. No matter how many times we think a client has been warned about wire fraud, one more reminder is always worth it!  

What else can we do to fight fraud? Here are six suggestions from CertifID: Educate consumers, train employees, implement identity verification practices, invest in anti-fraud tools and have insurance and recovery services available if needed.

If you want help having these types of conversations with your clients, let us know. We’d love to work together to devise a strategy that keeps scammers at bay!