Avoiding Apartment Craigslist Scammers

Are you looking for an apartment or house to rent, but you’ve heard disturbing stories about being scammed by bogus agents?

Whether you’re a first-time renter or someone who’s been renting for years, we can all fall prey to this. Losing a few thousand’s would set anyone back, so what can you do to avoid this and find your dream home?

We’ll give you advice on what to look out for and what to do to avoid being duped out of your hard-earned money. 

Red Flags When Apartment Hunting 

Price and Location Mismatch

You’ve found a great place online, it's beautiful, clean, spacious, and in a prime location, and the rentals are reasonable, a little too reasonable. You’ve seen other places in the same location but going for significantly more.

If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t, run for the hills. Good apartments/houses don’t stay on the market long and will never be priced below the market value. Steer clear of such places to avoid becoming a victim.

Agent or Owner Is Difficult To Get Hold Of

There’s an apartment you’ve narrowed down on, but each time you call, it’s straight to voicemail. Most of the time, you get to speak to the agent when they’re returning your call, and the conversations are brief.

They’ve most likely been using that number to pull a lot of scams, and you’re probably one of the many they’re trying to get a slip on. Don’t keep wasting your time, simply forget that listing and move on.

Missing Pictures

If you notice a nice rental property in a good neighborhood with a modern exterior and designs, but with no pictures of the inside of the house, that is most likely a scam listing.

Most agents or owners want to give you an appreciation of the property, so they’ll provide as many pictures as they can to showcase their place. Fraudsters will take pictures of someone else's residence from the outside and post pictures of places that aren’t on the market, so be on the lookout for this.

No Credit Checks

Credit checks are mandatory for agents/owners who want to make sure they find the right tenant for their property to avoid issues down the road. This is just part of the screening process.

When you’re informed that there won’t be a background/credit check performed, that’s a big red flag. Who wants to have someone live on their property that they know nothing about? 

Rushed Tour

Rushed house tours can be a cause for concern, the tour is over within no time, and there’s always an excuse to apologize for the speed tour. This should invoke a sense of worry because you’ve both set aside time for the tour. You should proceed with caution if you encounter this.

Asks For Upfront deposit

If an upfront deposit is requested before even setting foot in the apartment, walk away. Scammers know that approach no longer works, so they are willing to play a longer game.

They even go to the extent of letting you tour the property and then, within a day or that same day, ask you to put something down to secure it because someone else wants to put in an offer.

They’ll persuade you to even put half down for the time being without any sort of paperwork being presented to you. Once you pay it, you’ll never hear from them again.

If you want to protect yourself from fraudsters, there are a number of things you can do.

Warding Off Craigslist Apartment Scammers

Making sure you do the appropriate checks and research when dealing with an owner/agent to make sure that they are genuine.

Here’s a list of what you can do:

Find The Property Owner

It’s possible to find out who owns the property by searching public records at your local tax assessor's office or county clerk. Searching for the property’s history can get you the information you need.

Once you find out who it is, you can cross-check with the name on the listing or use this information to get verification on the agent you’re dealing with.

Reach Out to Real Estate Agents

Real estate agents operating in the same location are likely to know who the owner or agent of a certain property is. Most of them know each other either through working together or crossing paths.

Bogus agents can be smoked out very quickly as a result and keep you from getting conned.

Google

The simplest but most overlooked solution, Google will reveal a lot of information about the person you’re dealing with.  If they’ve been a con artist for a while, you will easily find warnings or people complaining and cautioning about dealing with that person.

Verify Real Estate license

Verify that the agent's real estate license is real by running their license number and name through the local database. If the license number isn’t available anywhere (usually on business cards or their online profiles), you can just ask them.

If they refuse to give you the number for your verification process, you may have just dodged a bullet - move on to another listing.

Talk To The Current Tenants

It’s always good to hear from the current tenants whether the person you’re dealing with is responsible for the listing. This may not always be possible, but if the option presents itself, speak to them.

Even if it turns out that the agent is legitimate, they may also give you some insight into how the property is managed so that if you decide to take it there won’t be any surprises.

Is the listing verified?

Always make it a habit to only contact people with verified listings. This will help you avoid some headaches down the road because verified listings protect against this very same issue.

Use legitimate websites

By using a legitimate website, you can avoid all these hassles that will make house hunting even longer. And as we all know, good places go fast, so you want to make sure the process is as seamless as possible.

FLXLease does all the work for you, from verifying listings to verifying agents/property owners. All you need to do is just focus on your search, there are so many verified properties to choose from in different states across the country.

Sign up and find your dream home today.