There's an online real estate scam sweeping the nation that we wanted to make you aware of. The moral of this story is that if something in real estate seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
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There's a real estate scam going around right now that we wanted to make sure you were aware of. We even experienced it firsthand here at our office, but luckily, were able to catch it before anything bad happened. The Internet has made these scams a lot more prevalent than they have been in the past.
In this case, we had a listing that we started getting calls and emails about in bunches. Many of them came from out of state. These callers and emails would ask if the property 'was still up for lease' because someone named 'Pastor Bill' was renting it out. Not only was someone falsely saying he was leasing our seller's property out, he called himself a pastor to make it seem safer.
'Pastor Bill' tried to 'lease' properties owned by our sellers.
'Pastor Bill' asked for an immediate $1,200 deposit because he had to get out of town quickly and get the property rented to maintain his income. It seems like common sense that this was a scam, but sometimes people can get desperate when they need to get into a home quickly. 'Pastor Bill' made it more appealing by offering to lease this property well below the market price, too. Unfortunately, people get scammed and end up sending checks to this criminal.
We've even heard stories about people showing up to a house with their things in a moving van, excited to move into the house. Needless to say, the real owners get understandably confused.
The moral of the story is that if you see a rental property that seems too good to be true, it probably is. Make sure you ask a lot of questions and do your due diligence. Get your agent involved, too. We can help prevent these situations. If you have any questions about renting property or about any real estate topics, don't hesitate to give us a call right away. We'd be more than happy to help.
