CL Rental Listing Scam

[Allen Maris]

Just thought I'd share a lesson learned this weekend. I had a house on Zillow, Make Me Move, and then decided to rent it, so posted it on there last week. (It got picked up by Hot Pads too)

I received an email from a nice person telling me that she had seen my ad on Craigslist, but the price was 1/3 what I had it on Zillow for which seemed way too cheap to seem real. She had been exchanging emails and phone calls with "the owner" who was out of town and said he'd be willing to rent to her and they could exchange keys for money via mail. The owner had told her to drive by and walk around the property. He had stolen my photos and listings from Zillow and then was trying to bait someone. Thankfully she was smart enough to not do it. I tried contacting the guy pretending to be a renter but didn't get a response.

I pulled the ad from Zillow. Hopefully I won't come home one day to find a moving truck out front with someone thinking they're moving in...

My lesson of the day, I won't put the address anywhere online.

[Dawn Anastasi]

This happened to me recently as well. I was at the property when someone came up and said that they were looking to rent the property and they were talking with the owner. I said "I'm the owner" and it was someone else.

On the pictures now I embed my name/company name and phone number so they can't reuse the pictures. I generally don't post addresses.