Real Estate Scam on front page of local paper

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Baiting Guru Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 5727

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2013/sep/11/renter-beware-real-estate-scam-surfaces-again/

According to the paper it has been picking up steam lately. Lawrence is a college town and always has students looking for inexpensive housing, so the market is ripe for these lads.

I signed in and made a post endorsing scamwarners. Naturally the majority of the posts claim the victim is greedy.

Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 10:55 am

People are commenting there that scammers pray on stupidity, in this case I think they're right.
If you want to rent/buy a house, why the hell are you looking on Craigslist?

Insanity...

Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 11:13 am

It's not just Craigslist that these scams appear on.
Lads will post anywhere they can in order to try and find victims.

A scam victim isn't necessarily stupid. Some rental scam formats can be very convincing to the general public.

Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 11:34 am

Well all the same though, if I was looking for a property I'd go to a high street estate agency and let them sca... erm... sell me a place.
It just seems like the sensible thing to do, I don't understand why other people think avoiding high street estate agents is a bright idea.

Baiting Guru Joined: 27 Mar 2011 Posts: 21158

I am sure that one of many factors in this would be related to the school and the desperation for housing.

I have seen the same thing in OKC a while back on one of those "in your corner" news segments just a few months ago.

Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 12:15 pm

expanding on next victim's point:

A lot of big university towns in the US tend to have unusual housing markets, with loads of independent property owners (ranging from individuals renting out just one room or a single "investment property" up to very large corporate slumlord, errr property owners) and typically not using intermediary agencies to let their properties. Advertising on the cheap which means craigslist, forum postings, whatever.

Coupled with naive young people living away from home for the first time and an utterly predictable letting period where everyone is (desperately) looking at the same time, it's no surprise that rental scams are flourishing as the time pressure they use fits perfectly with desperate students looking to find places to live quickly.

It's great to see such coverage during the start of term - many legit rentals look very much like the scams (EDIT: "AT FIRST"), so it's crucial to spread the word about how the scams develop. (Unwillingness to meet in person and show the property being a huge red flag).

Also, the use of rental agencies in the US is not nearly as common in my experience as it is in the UK, in fact 20 years ago when I was a student in a US university town we were warned about rental agency scams - "agencies" that purport to be representing property owners but are really only just reading the newspaper ads and charging high fees for their information.

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