Intro – rental scams

Today, we’ll talk about an eye opener topic, which most people take for granted.  Rental scams?  For sure, sometime in your life, you have either leased or rented an apartment or a home.  Before we use to find them in newspapers or yard signs.  Now we find them mostly ONLINE. We use our phones to search sometimes.  We go to popular sites like Zillow, craigslist and other free rental sites.  Today, we will talk about how to avoid rental scams? What are the warnings signs that you are being scammed and how to report a rental scammer? Let’s explore it right now.

1 – rental scams

Hi Jennifer Yoingco, welcome to my channel. By the way, watch till the end of the video as I will provide you a free gift.  My moving guide checklist is now available for download. I will give that to you for free.

On to our topic.  How to avoid rental scams and how to report a rental scammer.

I thought about sharing this topic to you because one of my rental listings was used by a scammer. Good thing we were able to find out what the scammer is doing  before it caused potential harm financially.  These scammers are victimizing innocent people and taking advantage of them.  We need to be aware and be vigilant in all these things.  This is the reason, I would like to share this timely topic to you.  I would not like for you to experience the same thing.  I know everybody needs a place to stay, whether buying a house or leasing a house.  We all need a roof at the end of the day, right?  But who would like to be in this situation.  It is hard to trust anybody especially online.  They pretend to help you, but in reality, they are vipers or snakes.  I am really upset on what is happening.  Scammers use several tactics nowadays to get money from people and it’s sad when innocent people are victimized by these fraudsters.  I hope these tips will help you avoid them and make informed decisions.

 

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The story goes like this….take note, I have no idea that this is happening till I got a call from potential renters.   and the good thing is, they managed to find my contact number before the alleged scammer took their hard earned money.

For my rental listing, I have hired a professional photographer and have showcased it by putting it in MLS (or what we call multiple listing service).  I use HAR website.  This is where we post our listing whether for lease or for sale. The HAR website is a reputable site and I suggest for you to use this site when you are searching for homes for rent particularly here in the greater Houston area.  When we input or post our listing in the HAR MLS website, HAR syndicates this to several sites online. Syndicate means it automatically feeds our listings to various online home search to provide added exposure to assist in generating potential buyers /or renters for the property.  Examples on where they syndicate are Realtor.com, homes.com, chron.com, broker/agent websites, trulia.com, zillow.com, etc.

 

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Since my listing is a rental, when I posted the listing in HAR website, it automatically syndicated this in apartments.com website. Honestly, I did not know at first that it will go to this particular website. There are several websites that HAR syndicates to.   Nevertheless, it is an added website for which you can find rentals.  How did I know about this?? Anyway, a potential renter called me and said if I have a listing at 123 ABC drive listed at $1000/month.  I confirmed to the potential renter, that she is right that I have a listing located at 123 ABC drive but it is listed at $1500/month and not $1000/month as she has mentioned.  (Take note that the actual address and figures are not disclosed here for privacy reasons). I have asked her where she found the listing.  She said that she found it in apartments.com.  To cut the story short, I immediately went to the apartments.com website and found my listing, not one but two of them.  One listing that syndicated from HAR.com website (which is my listing that I inputted) and another one that is a duplicate listing showing the lease price at $1000/month.  Not only that the scammer has an incorrect lease price, even the terms of the lease are incorrect.  They indicated PETS allowed and that all utilities are included.  Take note that no pets are allowed and no utilities are included in my listing. Their goal is to really lure you to inquiring about the listing. Would you believe there is a contact name and number of the scammer.  What I did is reported the scammer and called the apartments.com website to delete the listing immediately.  They found out that the listing came from another site that syndicated to them.  In other words, they have no control what comes in to their website.  They said they rely on Realtors like us and the public to be vigilant and report any scams and/or fraudulent activity.

 

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So tip #1 – investigate further.  Make sure to google the property address and do your due diligence.  I suggest to go to a local real estate website like HAR.com to make sure that the property you are seeing online is legitimate or accurate.  I do not recommend going to Zillow or Trulia websites directly because the listings here are not up to date. I know it’s ironic that HAR syndicates to these websites which means the listings are fresh, but not all of the listings in zillow /or trulia come from HAR.com. Some of them are either for sale by owner or for lease by owner, or investors that add listings and also scammers. It is easy to create an account here because it is free.

Sometimes you see listings here that is either already under contract or SOLD in HAR, but still shows active in Zillow /or Trulia.  This is the reason why I do not recommend going to these websites directly. If you found a listing that is too good to be true, then go with your gut feel, because for sure it is too good to be true.

 

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Would you believe? This is not the first time I have received a call.  A second potential renter called me again and this time it is almost a close call for them in providing their hard earned money.  He called me to confirm if I am the agent for the listing at 123 ABC drive property.  I said YES and this time he said that it is listed for $1000/month.  I said NO.  Then he said, my friend found your listing and we are talking to a person named John Doe and he said that in order to process the application, we need to pay the application fee upfront. The owner prefer not to have a Realtor in order to avoid paying commission and that he (we will call him John Doe) is the owner of the property  The fraudster even provided them an email address.  The email address that the fraudster used is “[email protected]”.  Would you believe that?? Using blessing as if they are a nice person..again pretending and very deceiving.  The potential renter even informed me that since John Doe is not available to show the home to them, what he did is he drove to the actual property.  There he found my lockbox and my sign. And this is how he was able to contact me.  So second tip…make sure to ask the fraudster if he /she can open the property for you. For sure they will say NO.  If not, go to the actual property to see if it is legitimate.  If you are out of town or out of state, ask a friend to help you or seek the help of a Realtor or Real estate agent by checking reviews and testimonials.  For sure they will be able to assist in this regard.

 

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The third tip is if they are asking money upfront orIf they ask money without you viewing the property, then that is a potential red flag.  If they screen you, but with NO fees of course, then that is fine.  Nowadays, listing agents receive more than 50 calls requesting for showing and in order to be efficient, agents filter those renters by having them answer a questionnaire or review a tenant selection criteria to make sure they meet the minimum requirements.  It is a waste of time showing to potential renters if they don’t even meet income or credit score requirements.

Fourth tip, compare prices.  Usually you can check the typical market lease price for a particular city.  If the average lease price is $1500/month and the house that you like is $1000/month, then that is definitely a red flag.

 

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Fifth tip – when you pay, make sure not to pay using cash, wire transfers or gift card.  Usually, legitimate rentals ask for cashier’s check payable to a certain individual and or a brokerage company.

6th tip – once you found the property and you think it is going very well, another thing to check is to make sure to sign a written lease.  No verbal or oral lease agreement here.  Everything should be signed and documented.  Wait, before you sign, make sure to verify the landlord or the owner of the property.  The way to do this is by checking the tax records or public documents.

7th tip – check if the agreement has you sub-leasing the property.  Not a lot of landlords are allowing this arrangement so be wary if the scammer is asking you to sign a sub-lease agreement. This is a potential red flag.

 

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8th – scammers sometimes do not do credit or background check and or rushes at everything.  They Rush you to sign a lease and pay application fee and security deposit.

9th – avoid the scam of a middleman. What do I mean by this. You will see them in websites like craigslist or online with classifieds.  They are not the real owner but another person placing an Ad on behalf of the owner.  There was a study conducted “understanding craigslist rental scams” which I will include in the description below. It says that 29K scam listings were detected.  Would you believe that? So many…

Last but not the least – if ALL utilities are included as part of the lease, this may be another sign that it might be a scam.  Do not get me wrong, there are apartment or rentals with utilities included..again this is only one sign that you can be mindful of.

 

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Let’s say you got scammed.   How do you report a rental scammer?  Below are a few simple steps:

Call the police and give them the details.

Call the FTC or federal trade commission.  There toll-free hotline is

1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357).

Fill in their FTC online complaint form

You can also file a complaint on the Internet Crime Complaint Center

Also contact your attorney or legal advisor who can assist.

Leave a negative review on the website where you saw the ad post to make sure that nobody else will be a victim.