Greg's Corner

The cost of online rental scams

A number of people tend to think that the real estate rental scams that take place online are no big deal. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Currently, southwestern Florida is experiencing a surge in these rental scams. The scam is the same one that’s been plaguing certain classifieds sites for years. A con artist, or artists, will copy an ad from a property that’s being sold and change the ad to make it appear that the property is for rent. Then the scammers will claim to be renting it at a reduced price that’s hard to resist. On top of that, they’ll try to lure in people who are either undocumented in this country or people with low credit scores. Of course the scammers will put restrictions on how you deal with them such as only contacting them through email or not letting you view the property before sending them some form of down payment or processing fee.

WFTV in Florida supposes that if one of these scammers collected the $310 ‘processing fee’ that the scammers are asking from two people a day, the scammers could end up with a quarter million dollars in a short amount of time. That’s not even taking into account the victims who will not only be out of their money but could also find themselves without a place to live.

The best way to find out who the true owners of the property are and if it’s for rent is to go to your county’s appraiser website. However, the best way not to get scammed is to not use that certain classifieds site that is the flame to the moth for real estate scammers.