If you ever bought real estate in the U.S. you probably paid title insurance. This is insurance that covers the value of the loan in the case faulty or fradulent documents are found making the chain of ownership invalid.<p>It costs like 1/2 of a percent of the property value.<p>That is how YOU pay because of shenanigans like in this article.
I live in a town that's a haven for hiding illicit funds in luxury homes (cryptocurrency fraud). There is a vacancy rate of about 5% - housing costs are up greater than 5% as the vacant homes' impact has a compounding effect.<p>I bring this up because it highlights an underlying trend shared between the article and my anecdote: fraud conducted in supply/demand markets hurts buyers and generally legal participants.<p>Even if your deal is 100% legal and proper, the supply/demand dynamics have been altered by those committing the fraud and you're getting screwed.
Apologies, but I can't let this go: "Adrian sold another property around this time, a big house in Flatbush with a driveway and a copula for $100,000 to another LLC."<p>Pretty sure that house had a cupola[0], not a copula[1].<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola</a>
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula</a>
Off topic, but can anybody explain why mobile scrolling is so weird on Outline articles? It's like there's way less friction when I swipe up and down.<p>I have javascript completely turned off. Is there something else that governs this behavior? Because I want to block it too.
I love stuff like this, I always assumed everyone lived normal lives and played by the rules but there is so much that is the wild west still.<p>In my friends building the largest penthouse's tenants were paying $6k/mo then the Chinese (mainland) owner disappeared - hasn't been seen for a few years now. Someone bought the tax lien so I guess they will get a huge condo for some token amount. (No mortgage)
The UK is about to deploy a measure against this kind of thing: <a href="https://www.fladgate.com/2017/06/register-of-beneficial-ownership/" rel="nofollow">https://www.fladgate.com/2017/06/register-of-beneficial-owne...</a><p>(Article says "UK" but the UK has two separate property law regimes and title registries, so they may not include Scotland)
The outline.com is almost a very readable site. But then I zoomed in slightly to make the text actually legible, and it fell apart. I could no longer scroll, and eventually some random ads appeared and blocked all access.
So he stayed for years in a below market house then received a nice wad of cash for the key. All courtesy of the US taxpayer who ended up on the hook for the massive Wall Street bankruptcies that made walking away from a $1 million dollar property a thing.<p>It reads like he was quite ready to undercut Rosa and Adrian and take up payments with the original lender, only that he was unable to untangle the mess, and Adrian beat him to the punch by essentially forging some documents.
Are deeds in the US still physical documents? They used to be in the UK, but not for a few decades (they are now electronic records held by the Land Registry).
We really should have locked up every single banker on Wall Street after 2007. The meme of private property has caused so much harm in the world. We have messes like this house sitting, rotting, festering, on society. We should excise the cancer of capitalism before it has fully matastisized and killed us all.
This was worth the read.<p>In stark contrast, one should walk into an econ forum, and see how people discuss the economy.<p>Its about jobs, or labor figures, and compliance and regulation are things which just "work", or are to be avoided due to additional costs.<p>I've come to the conclusion that<p>1) Economics is currently only as usfeul as the soundbite it generates<p>2) Economists are people with excellent working compasses, when people are looking for where they lost their keys
Do people in general understand how incredibly rotten, rigged, and broken everything is?<p>Imagine buying your dream house (a figurative one only coincidentally related to the article), turning the doorknob and it comes off in your hand. You flick the light switch but no lights, and it collapses into the panel. Touch the wall, and your finger pokes through. Completely broken, disintegrated, nested with termites and other creepy crawlers. The "inspectors" told you everything was fine.<p>That is our world, and this life.