We posted a blog post over 6 years ago about rental scams, and in the last few months, we've seen it happen again. We just wanted to share this again for all of you.

Here in our area, it is not uncommon to have quite a few calls over the course of the year, asking if a home we have listed online is also for rent, as potential renters have seen the home listed on Craigslist and usually at a lower price than the other available homes. We are always glad when we get these calls asking us, because often times, the home is not available for rent, and a fake rental listing has been placed on Craigslist by a scammer. Typically an email will come back to the potential tenant, and it will say something to the effect of, "Oh yes, our home is for rent. We have left the country on a trip to (insert far away place here) where we work with (insert cause type of work). We had the house on the market, but our Realtor could not sell it, so we have decided to rent it. Please take a drive by and let us know what you think." There is often more in the email, at least 4-5 paragraphs about the person who is allegedly trying to rent out the house and all about them. And the email often comes back from what appears to be a real name ie: joesmith@popularemailprovider.com. At this point, we've had many customers who do a "drive by" based on the email they got back. When they see our sign, that's when they call to ask us if the place is really for rent. We let them know it is not, find the listing online, get back the scam reply, and then we have the listing flagged on Craigslist and we write back that we are the listing agency and we know it's a scam, and have flagged the listing online. That's usually takes care of the issue for a little while. So please, do be careful when searching on Craigslist. While there are many valid properties on there for rent, some of them are not valid, so we do advise caution.

For more information on how to avoid these scams, feel free to visit: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams for more info! And please, if you see one out there that is a property we have listed, please feel free to give us a call and let us know! Our marketing department can be reached at the Littleton office, 603-444-1294 or via email: Chrissy@BadgerPeabodySmith.com