A couple years ago, Gina Leto, a real estate developer, bought a property with her business partner. The process went like it usually did: Lots of paperwork; a virtual closing. Pretty cut-and-dry. Gina and her partner started building a house on the property.But $800,000 into the construction process, Gina got a troubling call from her lawyer. There was something wrong. At first, Gina thought the house had burned down. It turned out that the situation was... maybe worse.On today's show: Buying land seems pretty secure, right? There's so much paperwork and verification along the way. But a messy system of how titles are sold, transferred and documented makes a perfect entry point for a new kind of criminal: Title Pirates.Today's episode was hosted by Erika Beras and Jeff Guo. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Liza Yeager. Fact-checking by Sarah McClure. Engineering by Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez. Planet Money's executive producer is Alex Goldmark.Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Planet Money from NPR. Gina Lito is a real estate developer. She buys properties, builds houses on them, sells them. And she's pretty hands-off about all the paperwork. She has her lawyer handle that stuff.
The lawyer comes, I give him the money, and he will close. And he will call me and say, it's closed, it's yours.
So impersonal.
Yeah, it is. I've never met any of the sellers of the properties we have bought.
Gina and her business partner have bought eight properties in Connecticut, where they live. And then, two years ago, she found her ninth.
A realtor came to us and said, there is a piece of land for sale. It's been in the same family for many years. Did you go see the property? So I drove by, but it was just an overgrown lot at the time. An overgrown lot.
Now, even though she's pretty hands-off, every time Gina buys property, she does her due diligence. Like, is the land flat? Are there any wetlands? She and her partner look at zoning, boundaries, that kind of thing. And of course, with this new property, she checked out the owner. She wanted to have an idea of who she was doing business with.
It's more out of curiosity than anything. But obviously, if you found out, you know, the person was, I don't know, a gangster or something. I don't know if I'd want to buy a property from them. So silly things like that. And when I Googled, I found the name on the documents. The correct address was there. He seemed like a normal man and everything seemed fine. And That was it.
So they do all the paperwork, use their real estate agent and attorney. They close the deal the way they always do, totally virtually. They paid $350,000 and got to work building a very nice house.
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