NBR: Anyone selling a house who has dealt with scams?

niknak1208 · April 2015

So we just pulled our house off the market. It's been listed maybe 6 months. We had some not so successful showings and felt it was too close to baby time to mess with it right now. Maybe a couple weeks ago.. literally the day we pulled it off.. this car was driving really slowly by and I happened to be in the driveway and they roll down their window and say hey is this house for rent? I said um no.. it was listed for sale but we just pulled it.. it's never been for rent. He says oh we saw it online. I said nope.. not for rent and he left. I didn't really think much about it. Well last night, I noticed this car driving by super slow.. turning around.. driving by again etc. I say to DH.. what is this lady doing??? He looks out the window and he says oh it looks like she's shoving flyers in mailboxes.. but then he notices that she only put something in OUR Mailbox. So he goes out there and grabs it. It's a handwritten note that says she saw the house for rent, asked for more info and never heard back?? So DH calls her and says do you mind telling me where you saw this? She says sure.. I saw it on Trulia.com. Sure enough.. we log on and there's our house. It's basically a carbon copy of our realtor's description but says 800/Month.. pet friendly.. all this garbage.

So I emailed my realtor and said hey this is weird.. any thoughts? He proceeds to tell me that he's talked to three people that said they saw our house for rent on Craigslist! He says it's a scam.. you have to find the ad and flag it. Well DH tried to call Trulia last night but they're mountain time and they were closed. But neither of us have come across anything on Craigslist.

I don't get it. Scam for what? I would really rather not have random people driving by my house with small kids and I'd rather not have our address on Craigslist.

Anyone heard of this before??

Ceridwen77 · April 2015

Wow this is awful! I have not heard about it but honestly it doesn't surprise me. Is there a phone number or other contact information in the ads? Not sure what you can do legally but may be worth grabbing as much information to find the culprit!

niknak1208 · April 2015

The Trulia website had a number so we were going to call that. I can't find a darn thing on Craigslist though. Our realtor said it's happening all over the country and to copy and paste any ad's we see to him as well so he can try and resolve it.

I guess I don't understand what the scam is supposed to accomplish. Obviously we own our home and we're not going to agree to rent to anyone so at this point it's just been an annoyance. But he says it's happening all over the place.

KaLikeAWind · April 2015

The scam is supposed to accomplish that the person who is listing it 'for rent' will collect a first months rent and a deposit, or at a minimum an application fee from prospective renters, and skee-daddle with those funds. Being a military family we move a lot and are always suspicious initially of renting from a private party because of this. They get the info from your listing and go from there.
I would honestly call the cops. They may not be able to do much, but this person listing your home is 1) falsely representing and 2) has the ability to potentially take money from prospective 'renters' who are gullible. It's a little like identity theft, IMO, so I would at least let the authorities know that someone in your area is doing it.

ETA - in addition to contacting trulia, craigslist, etc, of course.

What a pain in the ass. I'm sorry

niknak1208 · April 2015

I was wondering if we should call the cops. It just makes me nervous!! I just wasn't sure what the risk was for us. I think I'll call tomorrow. I've searched a ton and the only one i could find was on trulia.

KaLikeAWind · April 2015

I don't think there should be any risk to you (not for contacting the authorities, anyway - I can't think of a scenario where that would be harmful to you, but maybe someone else can, who knows), but whomever is listing your house for rent I'm sure has done it with other people's homes as well. And they are doing it to swindle people out of money. They're essentially con men, its got to be against some sort of law. If its not, it should be. But, should this person succeed in collecting money from someone for anything related to your home (like an application fee or a deposit) and run off with it, you could have someone on your hands who lost money and won't believe that you were innocent of the scam and may harass you. Then in that case they may call the cops on you for allegedly stealing their money, or you may have to call the cops on them for harassing you, and they have been victimized once already, so that just sucks.

I think its a good idea to tell them 1) so they can hopefully get this person and 2) to position yourself in such a way that should there be any fallout what like I described above, you're already ahead of it. It will be on record that you know there is a scam involving your property, and you are not a part of it.

Its a sucky situation but I should think it would be shortlived, once your agent can get the listings taken down and hopefully the cops find the person who is doing it so they cannot continue to do it. As a frequent mover and renter I hope they get this person, cause its just super shady and a real dick move.

niknak1208 · April 2015

So ridiculous. We didn't even know until these people just started asking us about it. When the first people stopped and asked.. they honestly didn't seem that bright so I just assumed they misunderstood a listing or whatever because we had literally just taken it off the market that day. But when the second lady stuffed that note in our mailbox..that's when we realized something was going on. People are so shady these days!! Craziness. We are going to call the police though. I would much rather have it on record that not worry about it and have it become an issue later. What a-holes!

jerseygirl227 · April 2015

Wow. Never heard of this scam. People suck!

Sharon&Paul · April 2015

It is actually very common. My husband is a realtor. They are trying to get people to send them money in the form of a deposit for rent without actually seeing the property. There really is no risk to you. They are not local. They are attacking the naive who would actually send them the money.

niknak1208 · April 2015

So far neither of us have been able to find anything other than what we found on trulia. Hopefully it just gets removed and it's done.

We did get home Friday night to find that our utility company shut us off!!! I was sooo livid. I called and they claimed that were had $159 bal that was past due. Next pmt isn't even due until next Friday!! I said so people are behind $150 and you don't reach out to them? You just shut them off?? So then of course there's a $100 reconnect fee. A $6 pay by phone fee. I mean geeeeeesh. Then have to eat out because we can't cook. There goes another $50. Then deal with kids who are scared of the dark and freaking out. Lol. Then called around 11am this morning because it still wasn't on. To find out they never scheduled a reconnect. Seriously?? I said they better be here ASAP because when I called yesterday I was told by 8am. Luckily they got here about 12:30pm. It was freezing in the house. It was down to 36 last night.

Sooo I would really love some relaxation!! I've been cleaning all day and now I'm having BH like crazy. Ugh

KaLikeAWind · April 2015

My good gods, you are going thru it right now! Your utility company reminds me of LIPA (Long Island Power) that was SO very terrible.
You better have a super comfortable labor and delivery after all this crap you have put up with from the universe in this past month or two here. Karma OWES it to you

cneiding · April 2015

i just saw this scam on our local news recently. Yeah, they take houses from realty listings and steal the online photos etc and advertise them for rent and collect money...like a couple months rent and security deposits etc from people...and later those renters learn the house was never for rent and they are out money.

When my husband had a vehicle on Craigslist a couple years ago something similiar happened where someone from like Arizona had listed my husband's vehicle in other sources around here as if they were the seller with their phone number etc and acted as if they had the vehicle parked here but they were the actual sellers out of state so don't contact the homeowners where the vehicle is at...just call the guy in AZ. Well someone ended up talking to my husband when they were looking at the vehicle at our house and my husband approached them and he found out about the scam going on. Called the sheriff around here and they were like, yeah we know that happens, we can't really do much about it. My husband even offered to collect the info like phone number of scammer, where they wanted the checks sent to etc and the sheriff was like "no we don't have time to chase down things like that"

And thats why these things go on!! No one tries to put an end to it! Similiar thing happened some years ago when my husband's hotel room in Chicago got broken into. THey stole my husband's computer while he was out to eat and got credit card numbers etc from his bag and info on the computer. Charged several of our accounts to the max....thousands and thousands of dollars. We contacted the credit card company to tell them we had shipping addresses where the stuff on the stolen accounts went to from online shopping and the credit card company was like "yeah we don't track this stuff down. We just wipe it off your account" so again the theif just gets away with all the stuff they stole...no one pursued it or anything!!!

niknak1208 · April 2015

@mellymar- seriously!! I'm thinking can I catch a break here or what. I was SO mad about our power. DH was not pleased either. I bet we spent $130 on eating out from not having a stove!

@cneiding. That's crazy!! Our realtor was kind of like well let's flag it and remove it but that's all we can do. Shame on those people! People are such scum bags! I mean why not just steal a credit card and spend a bunch of cash and then not get in trouble for it! Geesh. And we wonder why there's no accountability anymore!

jerseygirl227 · April 2015

Geesh @niknak1208. I think you have had more than your fair share of drama. Crazy!

You know, if these scammers could use their ideas for good, I bet the world would be a better place.

niknak1208 · April 2015

Right??! I'm usually a pretty boring person. Lol. I don't know what's going on lately but it could stop at any point.

On a good note, DH really got his butt in gear this weekend. We have a 3 bdrm and needed to get our master moved down to our finished basement. That's all done! So much more work than we thought. Lol. My DD's big girl room got started. Furniture in. Room cleaned. Just washing bedding and moving clothes still. He even started on my nursery stuff too. I'm doing a crib letter project and needed him to paint some frames and letters. He did that today. He was up at 6 am grocery shopping! Then went to his work for an hour. Then started on housework. I've been doing laundry ALL day! We are both pooped but feeling accomplished anyway.

jerseygirl227 · April 2015

That's a lot accomplished!!!

I just woke up from a 90-minute nap, lol.

Time to finish cleaning the bathroom and doing the laundry. Gotta vacuum as well. Wish I hadn't needed that nap.

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