As Dave runs both PickRent.com and RentVine.com he runs across email addresses of people that are trying to list homes for lease on his web sites that aren’t theirs to lease.  They aren’t agents for the owner either but instead scammers that hope to have people send them money and never legitimately lease you the property they have advertised. 

So far, I know of two of the properties I have had listed with my property management company, A Vantage Properties, have been “spoofed”.  Both times on Craigslist where they have “stolen” the wording and pictures I had.  Then when someone asked for more details, they sent interior pictures that did not match the style of the home.  Thank goodness, most times when I have a home listed for lease, I put a For Lease by A Vantage Properties sign out front or in the window as most people will drive by a home first.  Though there are some people that are moving to an area and are leasing “long” distance (sight unseen) so maybe the scammers are hoping that someone won’t notice until it is too late. 

So, if you are looking to lease a home, run the email address of the individual you are talking to through this new tool, http://www.pickrent.com/stuff/scammerdatabase.cfm  If you’ve emailed someone that you know is a scammer (you never see inside the home, they are going to mail you the keys from out of country, and other “red flags”), please forward that email address on to Dave by using the “contact us” link on the scammer database page.

Thanks again Dave for helping A Vantage Properties and other property managers, owners, and those looking for homes to lease with more tools to help stay safe from scammers.

I talked to Dave Dugdale about this as he’s the owner of the rental listing sites www.RentVine.com and www.PickRent.com.  Dave likes to do research on these types of items and blog or videocast on what he finds.  So, I provided Dave with the contact information for the scammer so he could see what they were doing so he could write about it.  He went even further by creating a Rental Scam Checking Tool so people could check to see if the property they have found is just a really great deal or “too good to be true.”

Dave has put together a videocast describing How to Unmask Rental Scammers.  In this video he has interviewed others who have first hand knowledge of scammers.  They discuss some of the ways these scams work, how far they have gone, and how they can harm innocent people.  You can also learn how to protect yourself by looking the address up in the county assessor’s records (verify the owner’s name) and doing a google search to see if the address is listed somewhere else but listed at a different price or by someone else.  Dave also put together a Rental Scam Detection Tool.

The Rental Scam Detection Tool asks a series of questions to help you determine if that home you found is just a great price or too good to be true.  By taking your answers to the questions, this tool will provide you with a percentage of the home you are interested in possibly being a scam.  At the end of the “check” you can specific addresses against a database of email addresses used by scammers.

Even though I wasn’t happy having one of the properties I work with used in a rental scam, I’m glad that it helped Dave in look at this in a way to help others.  Because I think it is a great tool, I’ve added it to the www.AVantageProperties.com web site as well as links to the county assessors in my area to provide people more tools to help them keep from becoming a victim of a Rental Scam.