New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is ramping up efforts to protect homeowners in creating the city's first office focused solely on deed theft. 

The Office of Deed Theft Prevention, which will be led by local attorney Peter White, will flag suspicious real estate filings, improve data sharing across agencies and conduct public education, among other tasks. The office opens less than two years after the state criminalized deed theft, and after the state recorded its first criminal conviction for deed theft last fall.

The incidents involve criminals using fraudulent real estate filings to steal homes from longtime homeowners.

"Deed theft preys on the New Yorkers who can least afford it," said Mamdani in a press release last week. "We are bringing the full force of City government to bear to stop it – to protect homeowners, defend generational wealth and make clear that this city will not tolerate the exploitation of our communities."

The move is part of Mamdani's oft-debated housing agenda, in which he's pledged to raise taxes and freeze rent hikes on rent-stabilized units to help address the city's sky-high cost of housing. 

Thousands of deed theft complaints have been filed across New York City in the past decade, the Mamdani administration said, disproportionately targeting Black homeowners and neighborhoods. Minority borrowers in the Central Brooklyn neighborhoods Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights are particularly affected, a state assemblymember added. 

City Councilman Chi Ossé, in an open letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in February, claimed there were 3,500 deed theft-related complaints in New York City between 2014 and mid-2023. The councilman, who asked the governor to enforce a temporary moratorium on eviction proceedings where deed theft is suspected, was arrested in a property protest last week.

Deed theft prosecutions

The state secured a guilty plea last year from a real estate agent in a deed theft case, the first under New York's Home Equity Theft Protection Act passed in July 2024. Prosecutors said Oscar Dais forged the signature of a homeowner in 2021 to take ownership of her Rockland County property while it was in foreclosure, without the homeowner's knowledge. 

The Empire State's statute allows the attorney general to pause evictions during deed theft investigations.

While many states either have or are exploring residential deed fraud-related statutes, around a third lack such protections, according to a recent study from EquityProtect. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also recorded over 9,300 complaints for title or deed theft in 2024, while all real estate cyberfraud losses last year topped $275 million.