More than one-third of New York City transfers of one- to three-family homes from individual owners to companies last year had gaps in their ownership records that researchers say could signal deed theft or other predatory schemes.
The findings come just days after Victor Quimis, 40, became the first person convicted under New York's criminal deed theft law, after admitting to stealing the home of an elderly Queens widow who was receiving hospice care.
Quimis and an accomplice forged Renuka Bherwani's signature to transfer ownership of the Kew Gardens Hills home she had owned for decades, according to prosecutors—first to themselves and then to a corporation controlled by Quimis.
He subsequently obtained a $552,500 mortgage against the property, pocketing more than $300,000 after paying off existing debts. Bherwani's family discovered the theft only after receiving a city notice congratulating Quimis on becoming the home's new owner.
“My mother lived in that house for nearly 40 years, and she was in hospice care in it when her home was stolen out from under her," said Kamal Bherwani, Renuka’s son and the executor of her estate. “Deed theft targets the elderly and the vulnerable, and I urge any family that sees something wrong with a deed to call the Attorney General's Office immediately."
Researchers at New York University's Furman Center are now seeking to better detect potential fraud through patterns in public ownership records, too.
Their latest analysis found that 34.5% of transfers from individual homeowners to companies in 2025 involved a mismatch between the seller on the new deed and the buyer on the previous deed—the highest share in at least a decade.
The share of transactions with mismatched ownership records has climbed from 26.8% in 2021, while an additional 1.4% of transfers in 2025 involved properties with no previous deed on record.
While these discrepancies don’t necessarily indicate fraud—they can also arise through legitimate transactions like foreclosures—researchers say they can help identify properties warranting closer scrutiny.
In New York City, that scrutiny is particularly important. Decades of rising property values have left longtime homeowners and their heirs with a huge amount of wealth that could be vulnerable to exploitation.
Earlier research from the center identified approximately 45,000 homes worth a combined $34.7 billion with at least one indicator of vulnerability to title-related problems or predatory tactics.
The latest report narrows its focus to 2,300 properties at particularly high risk because at least one listed owner is deceased and the property has no recorded deed or one dating back more than 30 years.
That can create difficulties for heirs from establishing their legal rights to the house—an issue that can compound by cutting off access to home equity or financial assistance, or even create difficulties paying necessary bills.
Indeed, nearly 13% of these high-risk properties owed more than $500 in property taxes, compared with fewer than 2% of all individually owned one- to three-family homes. And they were nearly seven times as likely to have appeared on the city's 2025 tax lien sale list.
The findings come as New York City expands efforts to combat deed theft. In April, Mayor Zohran Mamdani established the Mayor's Office of Deed Theft Prevention to coordinate investigations and protections for vulnerable homeowners.
“This is exactly the kind of crime the state's new…
