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What do five tons of mud and Elvis Presley’s Graceland property have in common? They both were part of presentations at the Business Issues Policy Committee. The topics? Protecting consumers against flooding and fraud.
Jeffrey Jackson, acting assistant Administration of the Federal Insurance Directorate at FEMA’s Office of Resilience, spoke first, recalling his recent visit to western North Carolina following Hurricane Helene.
“It continues to frustrate me when I hear statements following events like Helene and Milton such as, ‘No one told me about flood insurance,’ [or] ‘I didn’t know flood insurance wasn’t part of my homeowners insurance policy,’” he said.
As of Oct. 31, FEMA received more than 72,000 claims from National Flood Insurance Program participants impacted by hurricanes Helene and Milton, paying more than $706 million in relief dollars.
“[Agents who are REALTORS®] are the first points of contact with potential home buyers and are trusted to discuss the importance of flood risk and flood insurance,” he said.
Jackson announced a new rule finalized on Friday and to be effective Dec. 31, which would allow NFIP policyholders to pay their annual premium in monthly installments, “making flood insurance, in a sense, more affordable to purchase and maintain a policy.”
NFIP is a voluntary program in which interested persons can purchase flood insurance for their property, if it is located in a community that participates by adopting and enforcing a set of minimum floodplain management requirements to reduce future flood damages.
He previewed a product still in development to become available through floodsmart.gov: NFIP’s “direct to customer” insurance quoting platform, which will eventually allow consumers to purchase flood insurance online directly from FEMA.
Now to Graceland. It’s not just the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s home, but also a recent example of seller impersonation fraud, which totaled $2.7 billion in losses in 2023, Todd Niemczyk, Privacy Counsel at Fidelity National Financial, said.
The scheme goes like this: Fraudsters typically find an individual’s non-primary property through public data and then create a fictitious email, find a listing agent and list the property for cheap. The agent will unknowingly find a buyer and take the transaction to a title company which will then email the document to the fictitious seller, who will return it with a fake notarization and get their money.
“This fraud is not that sophisticated,” Tyler Newlon, executive vice president at Pioneer Title Agency, said.
Niemczyk shared these red flags for agents and title professionals:
- A quick sale
- Cash buyer only
- Refuses to meet with agent or attend closing in person
- Is out of state or country
- Does not want to use a telephone or do a video call
- Proceeds must be wired
- Refuses or cannot complete multifactor or identity verification
- Wants to use their own notary
“When you get that sort of tingly feeling—that ‘something’s not quite right here’—listen to that feeling and maybe take some more steps” Niemczyk said.
Newlon says communication is key to verifying identities and documentation before completing the transaction. “To pick up the phone and make the phone call, it’s the easiest thing we all do.”
