A buyer reaches out, says they’re relocating from out of state and wants to hop on a Zoom call to talk through the process. The link they send doesn’t open a video meeting — it installs malware.
Judah Sameth, an agent in DeKalb County, Illinois, described that scenario in HomeLight’s Top Agent Insights Q2 2026 report. The scam is straightforward once you know what it looks like, he said. The problem is that it looks exactly like a normal part of the job.
According to the report, which surveyed 950 top agents nationwide in April, real estate scams are on the rise, and the schemes agents encounter are often difficult to identify as scams. AI is a significant reason why.
The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center report contains 1,008,597 complaints of cyber-enabled crime last year, with total losses surpassing $20.8 billion, a 26 percent increase from the previous year.
Real estate fraud accounted for 12,368 of those complaints and $275.1 million in losses, up from 9,359 complaints and $173.6 million the year before. The IC3 also received more than 22,000 complaints that referenced AI, with adjusted losses exceeding $893 million.
AI is a useful tool for fraudsters because it lowers the barrier to producing convincing fakes like emails, voices and documents at a scale previously impossible. The FBI warned in the report that AI-generated content is getting harder to distinguish from the real thing.
In real estate, the most direct AI threat is business email compromise. The IC3 report found that in 2025, businesses lost more than $30 million to BEC scams with a reported AI connection, schemes that use generated text to impersonate executives and cloned voices to authorize fraudulent wire transfers.
In a transaction where multiple parties are emailing about large sums of money on a tight timeline, that kind of impersonation is hard to catch.
Fake video meeting links
The Zoom scam Sameth described in the report isn’t targeting buyers. Instead, it’s targeting listing agents. The setup fits well into how agents work: An out-of-state buyer wants to connect virtually and sends a link. Clicking it can hand over passwords and system access to whoever is on the other end.
“Never use the ‘buyer’s’ link that they send out,” Sameth said in the report. “If a buyer wants to have a Zoom meeting, we have them call first, and we’ll send out the link.”
Wire fraud
Business email compromise was the second-highest loss category in the IC3 report at $3.046 billion across 24,768 complaints nationwide. In real estate, it typically works like this: Cybercriminals hack into the email of an agent, buyer or title company; monitor the transaction; then send fake wire instructions just before closing, timed for the moment when money is moving and timelines are tight.
“Right before closing, you’ll get an email that looks like it’s from your title company or lender with ‘updated wire instructions,'” Jennifer Hupke, a top agent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said in the report. “It looks legit — same logos, similar email, correct names — but it’s not them. And once that money is wired, it’s gone. We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars.”
Her advice: “If you get an email about money, you pick up the phone and call a known number. Not the one in the email,” Hupke said in the report. “This isn’t about being overly cautious — this is about protecting your money at the most vulnerable point in the transaction.”
Seller impersonation
Scammers pose as homeowners using fake IDs or stolen public records to list and sell properties they don’t own, according to the HomeLight report. Vacant land and unencumbered homes are the most common targets — properties where the real owner may not be closely monitoring activity.
“Scammers are now using AI to mimic property owners and professionals, targeting vacant land or unencumbered homes to sell them right out from under the true owners,” Matthew Gibbs, a top agent in Middletown, New York, said in the report.
His advice for avoiding it is to never use a phone number or link provided in an email to verify a seller’s identity. “Call a known, trusted number to verify all wire instructions or seller identities before a single dollar moves,” Gibbs said in the report.
Fake rental listings
Scammers also steal photos from active listings and repost the properties as rentals to collect upfront deposits from prospective tenants who won’t realize it’s a scam until move-in day.
“Scammers are finding properties [online], taking photos off old listings, advertising them for rent, and collecting a deposit,” Anne Skinner, a top agent serving Colorado’s north-central mountain communities, said in the report. “Many of these tenants are coming from out of the area. When they show up, the home is definitely not available.”
Deed and title fraud
Another scam involves criminals who forge the owner’s signature or use fake identification to transfer property ownership, then sell the property before the real owner realizes what happened. AI has accelerated this by making identity documents easier to fabricate and harder for title companies to catch at the speed transactions now move.
Julianne Clark, a Beaufort, South Carolina, agent, said in the report that many county clerks or recorders offer free fraud alert notifications for property filings. “Register with your local county courthouse for deed scam protection,” she said in the report, adding that the service is especially important if a property isn’t actively being used. “Vacant land [scams] were a big thing last year.”
The common thread
Gibbs said in the report that AI has changed the operational reach of real estate fraud more than anything else, giving scammers the ability to run multiple schemes simultaneously and personalize each one in ways that would have required significant manual effort before. Vacant land, unencumbered homes, properties where no one is paying close attention are consistently targeted.
The HomeLight report notes that scammers target predictable moments in a transaction, and knowing where they appear is the best defense.
“Every scam leans on urgency, emotion or confusion,” Amanda Stanford, a San Antonio agent with 30 years of experience, said in the report. “Most people don’t lose money because they’re careless. They lose money because the scam looks exactly like a normal transaction at the exact moment they’re least likely to question it.”
Her advice to agents: “Trust the process, not the message. Slow down and verify everything by phone with partners you or your agent trust.”
