Be Aware When Renting an Apartment on Craigslist

In the world of renting an apartment, house or even summer home most people look at the advertisements in their local paper Right? Hmmm not really the case any longer. Looking in the local newspapers classified ads section has been quickly replaced with craigslist. Now craigslist is the single most powerful tool to advertise to a global audience at a relatively low cost.

This is great for the real estate rental community as agents can post advertisements for their properties available to a mass audience. So now that we know the positives of real estate and craigslist now let’s jump into the not so fun side of it and it most times has to do with for rent by owner situations. Now I’m not saying that all for rent by owner ads are like this but I will say that craigslist is becoming a breeding ground for scams not only in the United States but like the lottery scams from Nigeria the rental scams have been coming fast and furious.

From what I’ve seen it works like this an “OWNER” would post an advertisement for an apartment make it sound sexy enough and cheap enough to get attention, once they reel in someone that may be desperate to move quickly or to move to particular area they lay the groundwork. It can be from having them wiring some good faith money, wiring a months deposit to some unknown place with some simple rental application with no credit check or additional documents. Some renters may be so desperate and do a site unseen situation and just send the money blindly and hope for the best.

The reality is that these maggots’ prey on a potential tenants deperation and desire to be in a certain area, what they do in most cases is either go off of an expired advertisement, look through obituaries and even create some fictitious advertisement for a place that doesn’t even exist. Its crazy that someone would fall prey to this con game but its so simple and sometimes people can’t resist a bargain so they wind up paying the price.

 Now lets jump to For Rent By Owners which turn into scams itself, a lady in the San Francisco Bay area scammed 18 people out of sublease money, usually one months rent, for her apartment. An apartment she has no intentions of moving out of, she just kept renting the place over and over again, The end result 18 people were found scrambling to find somewhere to live and the woman is doing two years in prison for fraud.

These are the demons and pitfalls that await potential tenants on craigslist when it comes to For Rent By Owner. A lot of people want to try avoid paying a fee to find the right place in the right area but in reality it is the safest way to rent an apartment, house or rental home. Use a reputable real estate brokerage firm to get you what you want and avoid the stress of paying for something that you may never get in the first place.

Just imagine giving up your apartment because you signed a lease with someone that you thought was the owner of an apartment only to find out a day before that the apartment was rented 3 months prior and your deposit is gone and the true owner has no clue what is going on, it’s a scary thing to imagine. This is why it’s always best to use an agent as that will protect your interest on many levels.

Lots of Grad students are scrambling for housing at the last minute as they begin their Graduate year the first week of September at Columbia University in New York, some of these students are open to fall victim to one of these scams, just imagine your child going off to New York for school , they rent an apartment only to find out it was a scam, that would be horrible.

Don’t fall victim to these scams, this is why I have simply laid a few out for potential tenants, its like that medicine that your mother gave you as a kid, its tasted horrible but she said its for your own good and this is for your own good.

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Louis Velazquez
Commodity Acquisition Specialist
Real Estate Professional

To find out more about Louis Velazquez go to www.louisvelazquez.com