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Planet Money

Title Pirates

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.629.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all.

0:11.5

On the web at theshmit.org.

0:15.3

This is Planet Money from NPR.

0:20.7

Gina Lito is a real estate developer.

0:23.9

She buys properties, builds houses on them, sells them.

0:26.8

And she's pretty hands-off about all the paperwork.

0:29.5

She has her lawyer handle that stuff.

0:31.4

The lawyer comes.

0:32.6

I give him the money, and he will close, and he will call me and say, it's closed, it's yours.

0:39.4

So impersonal.

0:40.8

Yeah, it is. I've never met any of the sellers of the properties we have bought.

0:47.4

Gina and her business partner have bought eight properties in Connecticut, where they live.

0:52.1

And then, two years ago, she found her ninth.

0:55.0

Our realtor came to us and said there is a piece of land for sale. It's been in the same

1:00.6

family for many years. Did you go see the property? So I drove by, but it was just an overgrown

1:07.0

lot at the time. An overgrown lot.

1:16.0

Now, even though she's pretty hands-off, every time Gina buys property, she does her due diligence.

1:17.8

Like, is the land flat?

1:19.1

Are there any wetlands?

1:22.6

She and her partner look at zoning, boundaries, that kind of thing.

1:26.3

And, of course, with this new property, she checked out the owner.

1:28.4

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,

...

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