If you are considering any type of real estate transaction, whether it be buying, selling or leasing a house, be aware of some of the online hoaxes that are becoming more pervasive as we enter the busy time of the year. The most common leasing scam we see during each spring and summer are the use of legitimate homes for sale being used as homes available for lease at a bargain price as a way for people to scam money.
Last month the RJF Team listed a home for sale in Paloma Lake. Within a week we began receiving messages from curious people who wanted to lease the property for a bargain price of $900/month. Considering this was a 2,370 square foot home with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bath, the market value to lease this property would have easily been several hundred dollars more, so of course, many people were interested.
So what happened? Why was our legitimate home for sale showing up online for lease? Someone claiming to be the owner of the property had placed the fake lease listing on Trulia, which doesn’t really have any barriers to prevent fake listings from showing up. The real owners who wished to sell the property didn’t have a thing to do with it.
For the past several years, scam artists have been using the busy buying season to try to make money off of people looking for leases. They pick great homes in popular neighborhoods and then create lease listing for below market price on Craigslist and online home search portals like Trulia and Zillow, who do not require any proof of the legitimacy of a listing before it goes live.
When someone contacts them about the lease, they will only communicate via email and will most likely be out of the country. They then request a deposit of some sort – usually a few hundred dollars – to be wired to them in return for receiving the keys so you can tour the house yourself.
The problem is that these people putting up the listing don’t have any keys to hand out because it’s not their house! Now the person interested in the lease is out a few hundred dollars and the scammer disappears into the shadows of the internet.
If you see a lease listing that seems too good to be true, make sure to check with an agent to make sure it’s truly a lease property listed by either the owners or a licensed agent. If you’re selling a house and see it suddenly for lease online, make sure to let your listing agent know so that they can get it removed as quickly as possible. Scams are everywhere online, so make sure you don’t get sucked into one!
