Someone has my house listed for rent on Facebook Marketplace

[Lisa Thiessen]

Someone has my house listed for rent on Facebook Marketplace. The house is currently rented and the person who lives there is not the one listing it, so it's not the tenant trying to sublease the property. I reported the listing to Facebook. Is there anything else I can or should do about this scam listing?

[Randall Alan]

Quote from @Lisa Thiessen:

Someone has my house listed for rent on Facebook Marketplace. The house is currently rented and the person who lives there is not the one listing it, so it's not the tenant trying to sublease the property. I reported the listing to Facebook. Is there anything else I can or should do about this scam listing?

@Lisa Thiessen

This happens to us all the time.  Both Facebook marketplace and Craigslist.

On Craigslist you can flag the post and it gets deleted.  

They are trying to scam people with the “I’m out of town but drive by and if you like it I’ll email you contract… just send me the security deposit first” routine!! 

We have literally had our new tenant call us and say “there is someone at their front door with a moving truck who says they rented the house… paid $3,000 to the scammers!  We ask them , “Did you do a walk through of the house?”  The answer is always “no, I just did everything online”.  We have to tell them that they have been scammed and they need to contact the police.  

It’s really sad.  We have gotten to the point that we overlay text on our listing photos that say “we do not list our properties on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace”.   We also put the same text in the middle of the blurb where we list the features of our property.  The scammers just copy and paste the listing so hopefully the miss the fact we did that or just move on to an easier listing to dupe.  

All the best!

Randy