PT Barnum is credited with having said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”; which is cynical but not inaccurate. However, scammers are getting more and more sophisticated, and it’s easy to imagine getting taken advantage of, even by professionals in the target industry. I ALMOST fell for a Facebook Marketplace scam 2 weeks ago, and felt like Colombo.
In todays’ internet-driven real estate market, roughly half of the homes I list end up being used by scammers. They take a property that’s for sale, steal the photographs, and list it for lease on real estate sites that allow for owners to directly advertise their rental homes. Their goal is to get deposit money – typically $500 – $1,000 – and the pace of today’s market is on their side because when Realtors aren’t involved, there’s a level of trust that’s almost always assumed between landlord and tenant. They do this for a living, and although they often don’t even live in the US, they can be very convincing.
Need one telltale sign that a rental house is a scam? If it’s listed at a price that’s too good to be true, it’s a scam. They almost always target the lower socioeconomic class, and it kills me when I have a half-million dollar house on the market and field calls inquiring about the house that’s “for lease” for $1,000 per month. Just last week I was walking out of a listing and was met at the front door by a single mother. She had 3 kids under 10 years old in her very modest car, and was about to wire the “owner” $800 deposit. Thank God our paths happened to cross and I was able to stop her. The encounter really got to me. These lowlifes often think all Americans are wealthy, they milk people for money that they genuinely can’t afford to lose, and probably sleep just fine at night. This lady would have been in real trouble if she lost $800, never mind she may have ended up homeless because the lease for her old property was probably up. 3 kids, a small car, out $800 and no place to live.
If you ever happen across a lease (or purchase) online that looks to be too good, please call me and I’ll do some research. I’d rather spend 30 minutes doing some vetting than hear about a friend/client/neighbor getting scammed.
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