How to Verify Any Texas Land Seller Is Legitimate: The 7 Free Checks I Tell My Own Buyers to Run on Me (2026)

Vacant land is now the #1 target for title fraud in America. Here is how to verify any seller — including me — in under an hour, for free.

Rodrigo Blanco — Founder of TerraFunded

Published: 2026-06-10

The most common first message I get from a buyer is not a question about price, acreage, or financing. It's some version of this: "Rodrigo, no offense... but how do I know this is real?"

No offense taken. That is the single smartest question you can ask, and I'm going to spend this entire guide teaching you how to answer it yourself — for me, or for any other land seller in Texas.

Here's why this matters more in 2026 than ever before. According to the National Association of Realtors' 2025 Deed & Title Fraud Survey, 62% of all title fraud cases in the past year involved vacant land. Not houses — empty land, exactly the kind of property you're shopping for. Scammers love vacant land because nobody lives on it, nobody watches it, and the real owner often lives in another county or another state. They pull ownership records from public databases, build a fake identity around the real owner's name, list land they've never seen, and pressure a buyer to wire money fast.

I've been selling Texas land with owner financing for five years — over $15 million in closed sales, 350+ families. The legitimate sellers in this business have nothing to hide, and that means every single check in this guide should come back clean when you run it on us. If a seller can't pass these seven checks, walk away. No exceptions, no matter how good the price looks.

Total cost to run all seven: roughly zero dollars. Total time: under an hour.

The 7 checks at a glance

#	Check	Where	Cost	Time
1	Who actually owns the land	County Appraisal District (CAD) website	Free	5 min
2	The deed history	County Clerk's official records	Free–$1/page	10 min
3	The seller's business entity	Texas Comptroller / Secretary of State	Free	5 min
4	Title company closing	One direct question to the seller	Free	1 min
5	The title agent's license	Texas Dept. of Insurance lookup	Free	5 min
6	The human being	Video call or in-person property visit	Free	15–30 min
7	The wire instructions	Independent phone call to the title company	Free	5 min

If a seller fails any one of these, you don't need the other six. The deal is over.

Why vacant land became scam central

The fraud pattern even has an industry name now: seller impersonation fraud. The American Land Title Association reported in 2024 that 28% of title companies had faced at least one seller impersonation attempt, and that fake notary credentials showed up in 43% of those cases. A CertifID survey found 54% of real estate professionals encountered an attempt within a single six-month window.

The mechanics are simple. Everything a scammer needs is public: county records show who owns each parcel, whether there's a mortgage on it, and where the tax bill gets mailed. The ideal target is land that is paid off, unoccupied, and owned by someone far away. The scammer poses as that owner, prices the land below market to create urgency, communicates only by email or text, refuses video calls, and pushes for a fast cash closing — ideally without a title company "to save you both money on fees."

Read that last sentence again, because it's the tell. Every shortcut a scammer proposes is designed to remove the people whose job is to catch him. A title company's entire function is to verify that the person selling the land actually owns it. A scammer cannot survive that verification, so he'll always have a friendly-sounding reason to skip it.

The good news: this also means the fraud is easy to defeat. You don't need to be a lawyer. You need seven checks and the discipline to walk away when one fails.

Check 1: Confirm who actually owns the land

Every Texas county has an Appraisal District (CAD) with a free, public, searchable website. This is where property taxes are assessed, which means it's the most current ownership record you can access in five minutes.

Search the property by address, parcel ID, or owner name. What you're confirming: the owner listed at the CAD matches the person or company selling you the land. Not a similar name. Not "I'm selling it for my uncle." An exact match, or a documented legal relationship you can verify.

When you look up any property we sell — for example our Montelamar Estate tracts in Lamar County — the CAD record shows our entity as the owner of record. That's what you should see with any legitimate seller: no gap between who's talking to you and who's on the record.

Two honest nuances. First, CAD records can lag a few weeks after a recent purchase, so a very recent acquisition might still show the previous owner — that's exactly the kind of thing the seller should be able to explain with a recorded deed (Check 2). Second, if the land is owned by an LLC, the CAD shows the LLC name, which takes you straight to Check 3.

Check 2: Pull the deed history at the County Clerk

The Appraisal District tells you who owns it today. The County Clerk's official public records tell you the whole story: every deed, every lien, every transfer, going back decades. Most Texas counties have these searchable online; some charge about a dollar per page to download a document, and many let you view for free.

What you're looking for:

A recorded deed showing how the seller acquired the property. If the seller's entity bought 100 acres in 2023 and is now selling you a 10-acre tract out of it, there should be a clean recorded chain.
Liens and encumbrances. A mortgage isn't automatically a problem — but an undisclosed one is. The title company will catch this formally (Check 4), but seeing it yourself first tells you whether the seller is being straight with you.
Red flag: a quitclaim deed in the recent chain. Quitclaims transfer whatever interest someone has — which can be nothing. They're a favorite tool of fraudsters precisely because they make no promises. Legitimate Texas land sales close with a Warranty Deed; I wrote a complete guide on why the deed type matters more than almost anything else.

If you've never used clerk records before, call the County Clerk's office. Texas county clerks deal with these questions daily, and a five-minute phone call to a government office is free insurance on a five-figure purchase.

Check 3: Verify the business entity is real and in good standing

Most legitimate land companies sell through a legal entity, not a personal name. Ours is Longhorn Money Services, LLC, based at 3838 Oak Lawn Avenue, Suite 1000, Dallas, TX 75219. I publish that everywhere, and here's how you verify it — or any Texas entity — in five minutes:

Texas Comptroller's Taxable Entity Search — free, no account needed. Search the entity name. You're confirming the entity exists, is in good standing on its franchise tax, and matches the name on the contract you're being asked to sign.
Texas Secretary of State (SOSDirect) — shows the registered agent and filing history if you want to go deeper.

What you're really testing: does the name on the CAD record, the name on the contract, and the name on the Comptroller's registry all line up? Scammers improvise entities; real businesses leave a years-long public paper trail. An entity formed three weeks ago selling land it "has owned for years" is a contradiction you can catch from your couch.

One more layer that costs nothing: search the company and the person's name in plain Google. A real operation has a footprint — a website with real inventory, press coverage, reviews, social media with history. A fraud has a landing page that didn't exist last month.

Check 4: One question that ends most scams — "Which title company are we closing at?"

This is the shortest check and the most powerful. Every legitimate Texas land sale — cash or owner-financed — closes through a title company or a real estate attorney. The title company independently verifies the seller's identity, confirms clean ownership, holds the money in escrow, and records the deed with the county.

In other words, the title company does Checks 1, 2, and 3 professionally, with liability on the line. A scammer cannot survive it.

So ask the question. A legitimate seller answers instantly with a name you can verify. Every closing we do runs through a licensed title company, and I tell buyers the company's name before they've committed to anything — because that name is the proof.

The answers that should end the conversation on the spot:

"We don't need a title company — it just adds fees."
"My attorney handles everything in-house." (Whose attorney? Verifying him is now your problem.)
"We can close faster if you just wire the deposit directly to me."

Nobody who actually owns land is afraid of the institution whose only job is confirming they own it.

Check 5: Verify the title company itself

Sophisticated scammers have started faking the title company too — a real-sounding name, a cloned website, an "escrow officer" who answers emails. So you verify one level deeper, and Texas makes it easy:

Title agents and escrow officers in Texas are licensed by the Texas Department of Insurance, which has a free public license lookup. Confirm the title company and the escrow officer handling your file hold active licenses. Then find the title company's phone number independently — from their official website via your own Google search, never from a number the seller gave you — and call to confirm they have your transaction on file.

Five minutes. Free. And it closes the last sophisticated loophole.

Check 6: Verify the human being

Everything so far is paperwork. This check is simpler: make the seller be a person.

Ask for a video call. Ask to meet at the property. A legitimate seller wants you to walk the land — it's the best sales tool we have. I tell every serious buyer to visit before closing, and our how it works page walks through exactly what that visit looks like.

The fraud pattern is the opposite: email only, excuses for every call, "I'm overseas for work," "my schedule is impossible, but the price is only good this week." The 2025 fraud surveys are unanimous on this point — refusing live, visual, human contact is the single most consistent behavioral marker of seller impersonation.

And when you do get the video call or site visit, the test is simple: does this person know the land? Someone who owns property can talk about it — the soil, the road, the neighbors, what the county is like to deal with. Someone reading from a stolen listing cannot.

Check 7: Protect the wire

The last mile is where buyers lose money even in otherwise-legitimate transactions: wire fraud. Scammers intercept or spoof emails and send altered wire instructions that look like they came from the title company.

The rule, with no exceptions: before sending any money, call the title company at the independently verified number from Check 5 and confirm the wire instructions verbally. If instructions ever change mid-transaction — new account, new bank, "updated" details — treat it as fraud until the title company confirms by phone. Real title companies almost never change wire instructions mid-file, and every legitimate one will happily verify by phone, because they fight this fraud daily.

Also worth saying plainly: a deposit on a land purchase goes to a title company's escrow account, not to a seller's personal Zelle, Venmo, CashApp, or crypto wallet. There is no legitimate version of that request.

Run all seven on us — seriously

I built this guide so you could verify anyone, and "anyone" includes TerraFunded. Here's your homework if you're considering one of our properties:

Pick any tract and look up the county's CAD record.
Pull our deed history at that County Clerk.
Search Longhorn Money Services, LLC at the Texas Comptroller.
Ask me which title company your closing would run through.
Verify that title company at TDI.
Get me on a video call, or better, meet me at the land.
Before any money moves, verify the wire by phone with the title company.

Every legitimate operator in this business passes that list without breaking a sweat. The day a seller — any seller — gets defensive about it instead, you've learned everything you need to know for free. And because our deals are owner-financed, there's one more layer of alignment worth understanding: we hold the financing for ten years, which means we only succeed if you keep the land and stay happy on it. A scammer's interest in you ends the moment your wire clears. Ours starts there.

Frequently asked questions

How can I check who owns land in Texas for free?

Search the county's Appraisal District (CAD) website — every Texas county has one, and they're free and public. Search by address, owner name, or parcel ID to see the current owner of record, the assessed value, and the mailing address for tax bills. For the full ownership history, search the County Clerk's official public records in the same county.

What is seller impersonation fraud?

It's when a scammer poses as the real owner of a property — usually vacant land with no mortgage and an absentee owner — and sells or attempts to sell it to an unsuspecting buyer. The scammer uses publicly available ownership records to build the fake identity, prices the land below market for urgency, and pushes for a fast closing without a title company. NAR's 2025 survey found 62% of title fraud cases involved vacant land.

Is it safe to buy land directly from an owner without a realtor?

Yes — buying directly from a landowner or land company is common and legal in Texas, and it's how owner financing typically works. The realtor was never the safety mechanism; the title company is. As long as the transaction closes through a licensed title company that verifies ownership and holds funds in escrow, the absence of a realtor doesn't reduce your protection.

What's the biggest red flag when buying land?

A seller who wants to skip the title company. Every other red flag — pressure to close fast, communication only by email, prices far below market, requests to wire money to a personal account — is a variation of the same goal: removing the independent party whose job is to verify the seller actually owns the land.

Can a scammer really sell land they don't own?

They can attempt it, and attempts have surged — 28% of title companies reported facing at least one seller impersonation attempt according to ALTA's 2024 study. Completed frauds almost always share one feature: no legitimate title company was involved, or the closing was rushed through with forged identity documents. That's why the title company question is the single most efficient filter.

How do I verify a Texas LLC is legitimate?

Search the entity name in the Texas Comptroller's free Taxable Entity Search to confirm it exists and is in good standing, and check the Secretary of State's records for the registered agent and filing history. Then confirm the LLC's name matches both the county ownership record and the contract you're signing — all three should line up exactly.

Does owner financing make fraud more likely?

No — if anything, the incentives run the other way. In a legitimate owner-financed deal, the seller carries your financing for years and only profits if you keep paying, which means their interest in the transaction survives the closing. What matters is that the deal still closes through a title company with a recorded Warranty Deed, exactly like a cash sale. If a seller offers "owner financing" but resists a title company closing or offers only a contract for deed, that's a different conversation — and a different risk.

What should I do if I think a land listing is a scam?

Stop communicating with the seller, don't send money, and report it: to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), to the platform where the listing appeared, and — if a real property owner is being impersonated — to the County Clerk in that county, since many Texas counties now offer free fraud alert services that notify owners when documents are filed in their name.

What to do next

The fear behind "is this real?" never fully goes away — and it shouldn't. It should turn into a checklist. Run these seven checks on any land seller in Texas, including us, and let the records do the talking.

If you're ready to put the checklist to work, browse our available properties, pick one, and start verifying. Text me which tract you're looking at and I'll send you the county records to check myself — CAD link, deed reference, title company name. I'd rather spend ten minutes proving we're real than have you spend ten months wishing you'd asked.

— Rodrigo Blanco, Founder of TerraFunded. Read more about who we are.

For the interactive version with related properties and contact info, please visit the original article.