Why your mailbox exploded
Foreclosure filings are public. Within days, list-buyers sell your address to everyone with a “rescue” product, and the letters range from legitimate investors — we send letters too, and I will tell you below how to test ours the same way — to outright deed theft. The good news: the scams repeat the same five patterns, and each has a tell you can spot in one reading.
Tell oneMoney up front for a promise
Anyone charging an upfront fee to “negotiate with your lender” or “audit your loan” is breaking federal rules: the MARS rule bans collecting before you have a written offer from your lender that you accept. The legitimate version of this exact service — a HUD-approved housing counselor — is free. Upfront fee equals walk away. No exceptions.
Tell twoSign the deed, stay as a renter
The deed-theft package: transfer title “temporarily” to a rescuer, rent your own house back, buy it back later once you are on your feet. In practice the buy-back terms are engineered to fail, the equity is stripped, and the eviction comes anyway. No legitimate program requires deeding your house to a private party to save it. If a plan involves signing a deed and staying put, it is the scam — full stop.
Tell threePay us instead of the bank
Any arrangement where the monthly payment goes to a middleman who promises to forward it or hold it in escrow. The servicer never received it, the default deepens, and the middleman evaporates. Payments go to the servicer, a court, or a licensed closing attorney — never a stranger’s LLC.
Tell fourGuarantees and government cosplay
Official-looking seals, “pre-approved federal modification,” a guarantee to stop the sale. Nobody can guarantee a modification — not an attorney, not a counselor, nobody — and real government programs do not cold-call with deadlines measured in hours. Urgency plus certainty is the signature of every con; real help speaks in options and paperwork.
Tell fiveDo not call anyone
The isolation move: “do not contact your lender or a lawyer — it will ruin the deal.” Exactly backwards. Every legitimate path — reinstatement, modification, sale, bankruptcy — survives scrutiny from your servicer, a counselor, or an attorney. The only product that dies in daylight is a scam. Anyone who needs you not to make phone calls has told you what they are.
The honest testHow to vet anyone — including us
A legitimate cash buyer will put the offer in writing, name the closing attorney, welcome your attorney’s review, and never touch your loan, your deed-before-closing, or your payments. Title changes hands once, at a licensed NC closing attorney’s office, with the payoff going straight to the lender and the equity going straight to you. Apply that test to every letter in the pile — apply it to ours. Anyone who fails it, report to the NC Attorney General.
Cover image — Photo: public domain (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons.
