Avoiding fraud

Private-sale sellers are targeted, and manufactured-home sellers particularly, because sales often happen outside a brokerage with less professional oversight. The patterns are consistent and recognisable once you know them.

Overpayment schemes: a buyer sends a payment for more than the price and asks you to refund the difference, often citing a shipping agent or a mistake. The original payment is fraudulent and will be reversed after you have sent real money. No legitimate buyer overpays and asks for a refund.

Sight-unseen purchases with pressure and no inspection: a buyer who will not view the home, will not inspect, is relocating urgently, and wants to move immediately to payment. Legitimate buyers of a home they cannot visit still want an inspection.

Instruments that clear slowly and reverse: cashier's cheques and money orders can be forged, and your bank may make funds available before discovering it. Availability is not clearance. For any significant sum, prefer a wire to your account confirmed by your bank, or close through a settlement agent or attorney.

Also protect the paperwork itself. Do not sign over a title before you have been paid and the payment has genuinely cleared. Do not send copies of the title, your identification, or the HUD label numbers to someone who has not demonstrated they are a real buyer, those are the materials used to fraudulently transfer or encumber a home.

A simple rule covers most of it: money first and genuinely cleared, then documents, then possession, in that order, with no exceptions made for urgency or sympathy.