If Your Identity Is Stolen: The 48-Hour Property Response Plan

Freeze your credit at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — each is free and takes about 5 minutes per bureau. File a report at IdentityTheft.gov; the FTC's recovery plan is the document law enforcement and lenders want to see. Change passwords on every email account tied to financial logins and enable two-factor authentication.

Pull your property record from the county recorder and confirm nothing has been filed since you last checked. Set up record monitoring if you don't already have it. Notify your title insurer so they have a contemporaneous record if anything surfaces months later. Call any lender with an existing relationship; many will add a verbal-confirmation flag to your accounts.

Order free credit reports from each bureau and review every account. Dispute anything unfamiliar in writing — the bureaus are required to investigate within 30 days. Save every letter, email, and confirmation number in one folder; you'll reference it for the next year.

Stolen identity data circulates on criminal marketplaces for years, not months. The initial 48-hour response limits the immediate damage, but the elevated risk to your property persists indefinitely. Plan to recheck your property record at least monthly for the first year, and keep active record monitoring in place permanently — the marginal cost is small relative to the residual exposure.

Create one physical or digital binder for every report, letter, freeze confirmation, and call note. When the next anomaly appears — and it usually does — having the full history in one place turns a multi-day reconstruction into a 15-minute reference. Future lenders and underwriters will also ask for the history, and a clean record of your response strengthens future credit and insurance decisions.