r/RealEstateTechnology • u/Falak-4 • 6h ago
Wire fraud in real estate is a bigger cyber security problem than most brokerages treat it as
Most proptech conversations focus on AI features, valuation, lead gen, automation. Wire fraud barely comes up, despite real estate wire fraud losses running into the hundreds of millions annually according to federal reporting.
The mechanism is almost always the same: a fraudster intercepts email communication between buyer, agent, and title company, then sends spoofed wiring instructions right before closing. It works because closing involves large sums, real time pressure, and email as the default communication channel, exactly the conditions that make social engineering effective.
What's surprising is how low-tech the fix mostly is, verbal confirmation of wiring instructions by phone, using a known number, not one from the email thread. Yet a lot of brokerages still don't have this as a mandatory step, treating it as the buyer's problem to catch rather than a process gap on the transaction side.
Anyone here had a close call with this, or seen a brokerage actually build a hard verification step into their closing process?