The deed you signed: deceptive deed transfers in New York

A forged deed carries a signature the owner never gave. New York’s highest court held in Faison v Lewis (2015) that a forged deed is void from the start. It passes nothing, and a buyer or lender who takes the home through it cannot claim to have done so in good faith.

A deceptive deed carries a real signature. The owner signed, or the heirs signed, because of what they were told: that a share was worth little, that the house would be lost anyway, that the price was fair. The law generally treats a deed obtained that way as voidable rather than void. It stands until a court sets it aside, and a buyer or lender who takes the home in good faith before then can keep what they paid for.

That is why time matters most in the second kind. Each resale and each new mortgage brings in another party with its own claim to the home.

• Heirs approached one at a time. After an owner dies, a buyer contacts the children or grandchildren separately, and each is told their share is worth little on its own.
• An owner behind on the mortgage. A buyer offers a quick payment for a home in foreclosure, sometimes with a promise that the owner can stay or buy it back later.
• Pressure and timing. A deed signed in a hospital, in the weeks after a funeral, or far from the property, with little time to ask anyone.
• The second step. The home resells or is mortgaged soon after, often to a new company, for far more than the family received.

Homes in foreclosure or default. New York’s Home Equity Theft Prevention Act, Real Property Law 265-a, covers the sale of a one to four family home the owner lives in, when the owner is two or more months behind on the mortgage or the home is in foreclosure or on a tax or utility lien sale list. The buyer must use a written contract in large print, and the owner has 14 business days to cancel. A sale made in material violation of the law, including one built on false or misleading statements or one that takes undue advantage of the owner, is voidable for two years after the deed is recorded. The law also allows damages of up to three times the owner’s loss, and a deed that comes with a promise to sell the home back is presumed to be a loan.

Heirs’ property and prosecutors. A 2023 law lets the Attorney General and district attorneys ask a court to pause a case while they investigate deed theft, and a 2024 law gave heirs new protections against forced sales. The details are in New York’s deed theft laws, 2023 to 2026.

A deceptive deed is still a recording, and so is everything that follows it. We use our data and leverage the links and joins between those records to uncover the anomalies that deceptive deed transfers leave.

Your Homeowner Research Document shows every record on your property, connected and dated, with alerts when anything new is recorded. How the research works.

• New York Court of Appeals: Faison v Lewis, 25 NY3d 220 (2015)
• New York State Senate: Real Property Law 265-a, Home Equity Theft Prevention Act
• New York State Homes and Community Renewal: Deed theft law signed (November 2023)
• New York Attorney General: Deed theft

Checked in October 2026.