The best tool is: sharpen your senses, and above all, your common sense. Unfortunately it happens that a fake ID is not detected by the controls of a notary’s office. Life experience is full of stories in which X impersonates A, and sells his property to C.
What can you do to avoid this? Tips if you are A, (that is, the owner of the property that fears being impersonated):
1 keep an eye on your property. Periodically check it in the Property Public Registry. To be sure that it does not have any annotations or movements that you do not know.
2 Take care of the possession. Watch that there are no unauthorized accesses or visits to your property (especially if it is a land lot).
The risk of usurpation is one of the reasons why land lots are often marked with the sign “this land is not for sale”. Or “for any matter related to this property, please contact ____”. In order to avoid that an X usurps your identity, and an A falls in good faith. Every time that when X shows the property to A, A will surely be careful to pay attention to these signs.
Tips if you are C (i.e., the buyer):
1 Check the history in the property’s public registry. That there is a chronology between owners, and that the dates of the titles by which the property was acquired, is more or less contemporaneous to the date of registration. Regularly it is an indication that there is a problem, when on a date X, a “title deed from 10 years ago” is registered in the Public Registry.
2 Check that the cadastral history matches the one in the property’s public registry. If there are discrepancies, such as if the cadastral title holder does not match the one on the public registry, which means that we might have a problem
3 Be aware of factual issues. Analyze the ease with which the person who is offering you the property has access to it, verify that there are no elements to make you think that the property may be affected by an invasion, etc.
4 Be careful with the powers of attorney. If the owner of the property is a physical person, and is going to appear “by proxy”, be very careful. Unfortunately, cases of forged powers of attorney are becoming more and more common. So the general advice is not to buy real estate sold by an individual by proxy, unless you know the owner / seller or if there are additional elements that make you trust the power of attorney.
If the owner of the real estate is a legal entity, corroborate that the power of attorney from the company is in fact is duly registered in the Public Registry of Commerce (in the record of the company).
