Rental scams, e.g. apartments.com

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t3chiman

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t3chiman
A couple of years ago, a relative bought a home in Delaware. Nice place, a few miles from some ocean resort towns. Last Friday, she gets a call on her cell phone: "I saw your ad on apartments.com, when can I come by to look at your place?"

!!! Checking it out, the pictures are legit, copied from the original sales listing. But all else is nothing but red flags: rent rate 1/3 of market ($1200), contact number in Chicago, send $1000 deposit, no listing service, even a plea not to bother the busy existing tenant.

Apartments.com took down the ad, after about half a day's delay. Apparently, these "send me the money, and I'll send you the keys" scams are common, and zero-risk for the distant scammer; they can cause lots of grief for the hapless victims, though (Multiple people show up at the door, expecting accommodation for their money. Police are called to disperse the angry crowd, etc.).

This incident was a quick amateur driveby. But there are sharp crooks out there, exploiting passive county clerks and complicit notaries, that file forged quitclaim deeds, and, once titled, turn the property over. The poor owner ends up evicted. Sure, they can prosecute the fraud, and sue the fraudster--from a distance.

Be careful out there.
 
The house that my daughter bought a few years ago had the same scam except they used local people to collect the cash so it was only "slightly" less dubious.
 
Hmmmmm...... I'm seeing a new way to cover some of my aviation expenses.

Ron, how about posting a few pics of your digs for us?
 
Last year a friend of mine sold a house. It had been a rental for several years. 3 months after closing, it was on Zillow. Since I have a property a block away, i inquired about it. Total scam. We have a part time house. It's in a pretty quiet area and there are many vacation homes and snow bird houses. 10+ yrs ago locking your door was an after thought. But when the short term rental industry exploded things changed. We now have security cameras. We have had 3 in the last year trying to get into our place. They supposedly had rented it. I'm sure one actually thought they did, the others were suspect. We had someone think they bought a vacant lot in the area. Sent the money etc. When they showed up to see it, there is a house on the property. Total scam. Can't be too careful.
 
I listed our first rental house for rent. A couple days later I found it listed on Craigslist for rent a couple hundred dollars a month cheaper. Of course I inquired about it, asked to see the proper. Got an email back in broken English asking me to put down a deposit to schedule a showing. I tried to get any kind of contact info other than the throwaway gmail account, but the scammer didn’t bite.

I reported it to CL as a scam of course, and let the scammer know that I was very interested in how he was going to rent me my own house. That ad stayed up well after I had rented the house.
 
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