If you own a home in Arizona — especially one that sits vacant part of the year, or one you inherited and haven’t moved into yet — this is worth five minutes of your time. The Arizona Attorney General’s office has fielded roughly 400 real estate fraud complaints since 2024, with about 40 active criminal investigations, and the pattern is consistent: vacant homes, vacation properties, and homes belonging to elderly or deceased owners are the ones targeted 1. The state’s response has two parts — a free alert tool you can turn on today, and a new law that raises the cost of trying this in the first place.
What is Arizona’s new deed fraud alert system, and how do I sign up?
It’s called ERAS — the Early Real Estate Sales Alert System — and it’s run by the Arizona Department of Real Estate. Register your property by owner name, address, or parcel number at earlyalert.azre.gov, and ADRE notifies you before a sale involving your property is finalized or recorded 1. It’s free, it takes under a minute, and it’s not the only tool available — Maricopa County runs its own free, separate program with a nine-year head start.
| Tool | Coverage | Status |
|---|---|---|
| ERAS (AZ Dept. of Real Estate) | Statewide, any Arizona property | Live now — free, register at earlyalert.azre.gov |
| Title Alert (Maricopa County Recorder) | Documents recorded in Maricopa County only | Live now — free, 89,000+ registered |
| County assessor mailing-address alerts (SB 1479) | Varies by county once built | Not required to be operational until January 1, 2027 |
If you own property in Maricopa County, registering for both ERAS and Title Alert takes about two minutes total and covers you two ways — one at the state level, one at the county recording level.
What does SB 1479 actually change under Arizona law?
SB 1479, sponsored by Senate Majority Whip Frank Carroll and signed by Governor Katie Hobbs, was approved and filed as Chapter 31 on April 9, 2026 3. It doesn’t just add an alert system — it changes what happens when fraud is attempted:
- Deed forgery is now a Class 4 felony, up from a misdemeanor — a meaningful deterrent where there was barely one before 4.
- Photo ID is now required for most in-person deed filings, with exceptions for government agencies, banks, and title, escrow, or legal professionals filing in their normal course of business.
- Notaries must record signers’ thumbprints in their journals and retain at least 7 years of video for remote online notarizations — closing off a route fraudsters had been using.
- A prior loophole is repealed that could have let an uncontested forged deed become legally valid after just 5 years.
- Affidavits of legal value must now include buyer and seller phone numbers, adding one more verification point to every recorded transfer.
A related bill, SB 1254, also closes a separate gap by requiring the person receiving a deed to formally accept it before it can be recorded — so a property can no longer change hands on paper without the new owner knowing it happened.
The state didn’t just build an alarm. It made the crime it’s alarming about a felony.
Worth flagging clearly: the county-level piece of SB 1479 — requiring assessors to build their own mailing-address change notification systems — doesn’t have to be operational until January 1, 2027 4. ERAS and Maricopa Title Alert are both live now; that piece isn’t yet.
Who’s most at risk, and what should you do right now?
Based on the Attorney General’s complaint data, the properties that get targeted share a pattern: nobody is checking on them regularly 1. That means the same situations that come up constantly in my work — a second home you visit a few weeks a year, a rental you manage from out of state, or a parent’s house sitting empty during a probate or an estate sale — are exactly the ones worth protecting first.
- Register at earlyalert.azre.gov for any Arizona property you own, whether you live in it full-time or not. It costs nothing and takes less time than reading this sentence twice.
- Maricopa County owners, also register for Title Alert through the County Recorder — it’s a separate system and catches recordings the state alert might not flag the same way.
- If you’re handling a parent’s or relative’s home during a move, sale, or estate process, register it too, even if it’s only vacant for a few months — see our guide on selling a parent’s home in Arizona for the fuller process.
- If you’re selling, this is now one more thing title companies and closing attorneys are watching more closely — a good thing, and a reason to work with people who know the new requirements.
None of this requires a lawyer or a fee. It requires going to one website and typing in an address.
