How the scam works:

You've never been so stressed out in your life. The bank is on the verge of foreclosing on your home and you're frantically searching for ways to refinance so the payments are affordable and they're off your back.

Luckily, you stumble upon a foreclosure expert company on the Internet. You contact them and they say they're willing to help save your house, for a fee: a few hundred, or thousand, dollars.

They tell you they can help you, but first, the property needs to be in their control to get you through the process. They ask you to sign over the deed to the house with the promise of future financial stability - something you've been struggling for years to achieve.

What you don’t know and certainly don’t expect is that you will lose your house for good. By signing over the deed, you have no legal claim on the property. Worse yet, you paid these crooks to steal your house. This isn't specific only to scammers - "friends" and acquaintances could also try to pull this over on you.

How to avoid:

Never sign over the deed to your house. No good will come of it and you only stand to lose.

On the other hand, if you are from the United States you might might want to subscribe to RealtyTrac, to keep yourself out of trouble and educated about the industry. RealtyTrac is a real estate information company that publishes over 1 Million properties from nearly 2,500 counties nationwide, and is the foreclosure data provider to Yahoo! Real Estate and The Wall Street Journal’s Real Estate Journal. It has more than 1,000,000 current foreclosure and pre-foreclosure properties, daily e-mail alerts and property updates,  24/7 Support Center and educational tools, and a wide range of property valuation, transfer and title reports. They even have a 7-day free trial, worth checking it out. You can access RealtyTrac's website HERE.

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