SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake County residents have a new tool to combat title fraud and stay up to date on any changes regarding their property.

Salt Lake County Recorder Rashelle Hobbs recently launched a new service called “Property Watch,” which allows property owners to get free, real-time email updates about recorded changes, like liens or deeds, on their property.

Registration is easy — simply go to the recorder’s website, click on Property Watch, and enter your address and contact information. Hobbs stressed the information will be kept confidential and only used to give updates.

“This has been months in the making,” she said Thursday. “It’s a great resource that will help prevent title fraud while also protecting your property record.”

In its first two days last week, nearly 3,000 residents subscribed to the service, and Hobbs said the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

“We had a subscriber yesterday find out from subscribing to Property Watch that they had a lien on their property that they would not have found out about until the closing of their house,” Hobbs said. “I think personally this peace of mind is something we could all use a little more of right now.”

Hobbs got the idea after going to senior centers in Salt Lake County and realizing many of the county’s elderly were unaware of important recorded changes to their property.

“There were times where the property owner would be under the impression that the house was under someone else’s name, or there was an action that needed to be taken — that what was on file wasn’t what they thought was on file,” she said.

In February, while the recorder’s office was working on launching the program, Hobbs noticed a troubling trend — dozens of property owners were coming to her office after receiving a letter from a California company called Property Site, urging them to buy a “property assessment profile” for $95.

The profile gave residents information they could obtain through the recorder’s office for a $5 fee, although many were under the impression the letter came from the county, not a private company.

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“While it’s not illegal, it’s absolutely misleading and predatory,” Leslie Reberg, Salt Lake County chief deputy recorder, said in February.

With bold lettering and a deadline that conveyed a sense of urgency, both Reberg and Hobbs worried the elderly or people who speak English as a second language were particularly vulnerable to paying the unnecessary fee. The letters validated Hobbs’ efforts to launch Property Watch, noting the need for a simple, streamlined way to access property information was apparent.

While Hobbs said that type of solicitation will unfortunately never go away, she hopes Property Watch will make residents less susceptible to similar schemes in the future.

“Hopefully if you subscribe to Property Watch you’ll know that is not something that came from your county recorder’s office.”

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