Detroit Landlords: How to Protect Your Rentals from Deed Fraud
A forged signature and a filing fee. That’s the whole toolkit.
With those two things, a stranger can walk into the Wayne County Register of Deeds, record a deed that says they own your rental, and start collecting rent on it. They could even feasibly sell it, or take out a loan against it — all while you’re none the wiser.
It sounds impossible, but frighteningly, it isn’t.
The Wayne County Mortgage and Deed Fraud Unit has logged more than 13,000 fraud inquiries and opened over 2,300 cases since 2005. And a recent BridgeDetroit report followed a Detroit homeowner who poured $27,000 into her east-side house, only to come home one day and find the locks changed and a forged deed filed against her property.
Two years later, she still doesn’t legally own her own home — and she’s being countersued by the very company that filed the fake deed.
If it can happen to someone actually living in the house, it can absolutely happen to your rental.
Why Landlords Are Especially Vulnerable
Fraudsters don’t pick houses at random. They comb public records for the ones that look unwatched — and rentals check almost every box:
- Vacant units sitting empty between tenants, or torn up mid-renovation during a turnover
- Tax-behind properties that show up on the public delinquency list
- Out-of-state owners who can’t swing by to notice that anything’s off
- Cash-bought or inherited homes with a thin paper trail
And here’s the uncomfortable part: that list is just the normal rhythm of the rental business. Every turnover means a stretch where the unit sits empty, the locks are getting changed anyway, and contractors are coming and going.
To a fraudster watching the records, that window is an invitation.
Detroit makes it even easier. Roughly 4 in 10 home sales here are all-cash, so there’s often no lender or title company in the deal to catch a problem. It’s the same gap that lets fake “landlords” and property managers rent out homes they don’t own.
And once a fraudster files, you’d think someone would stop them. They won’t. Michigan’s Register of Deeds offices aren’t allowed to investigate — if the paperwork has the right margins and font, they have to record it. Nobody at the counter is checking whether the signature is real.
The saving grace is that ownership is still public record.
You can verify the real owner yourself by checking the property records at your county Register of Deeds before any money changes hands — but for the full guide, check out our other article.
What It Costs You to Fix
Once a fake deed is on record, you can’t just call and have it erased. You have to file a quiet title lawsuit to prove you’re the rightful owner — and those cases can drag on for months, sometimes years if the fraudster decides to fight.
The legal bills run from a few thousand dollars into the tens of thousands. And the whole time, your title is clouded, so you can’t sell, refinance, or pull equity.
So the move isn’t to wait and react. It’s to lock things down before anyone ever tries.
The Landlord’s Deed-Protection Checklist
We’ve been managing rental properties across Metro Detroit for decades, so we’ve seen it all.
And it’s given us the time to build the perfect defense against deed fraud and other scammers. Here’s what we recommend (and what we do for every client of ours the moment we onboard them):
- Sign up for free property-fraud alerts. Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county registers of deeds will email you the instant anything is recorded against your property. It’s free, takes minutes, and is the fastest way to catch a forged filing. Enroll every property you own.
- Keep your taxes current. Tax-behind homes are the first thing fraudsters look for, because they pull straight from the public foreclosure lists. Staying current keeps you off their radar entirely.
- Don’t let a property sit there looking abandoned. A dark, half-finished rehab tells fraudsters nobody’s watching. Set up motion-sensor lights and a couple of cheap remote cameras — the $20 kind you can pull up on your phone and move to whichever unit is vacant. Small spend, big deterrent.
- Use a warranty deed and carry owner’s title insurance. Both give you real legal standing if your ownership is ever challenged. Quitclaim deeds — the kind most forgers lean on — give you almost none.
- Pull your records a few times a year. Check your recorded deed and your tax bill on the county site. If you’re out of state and can’t physically drive by, this is how you drive by your title.
- Learn the red flags. Locks you didn’t change. Mail in a name you don’t recognize. A tenant mentioning that a stranger stopped by claiming to own the place. Treat any one of these as an emergency, not a mix-up.
- Move fast if you’re hit. Call the county’s deed-fraud unit, file a police report, and get an attorney started on a quiet title action right away. The sooner you catch it, the cheaper and shorter the fight.
Catch Them in Weeks, Not Years
You can’t make your title completely fraud-proof. But you can make your property a bad target — current on taxes, watched by a camera, checked on regularly, and backed by alerts and title insurance.
That’s the difference between catching a forged deed within a week and finding out two years later in a courtroom.
If you own rentals in Metro Detroit and you’re not sure they’re protected, talk to us. We’ll walk your whole portfolio through this checklist — before someone else gets the chance to run their scam.