How can I ensure this isn't a rental scam?

December 10, 2019 10:21 AM

We've been offered a rental home that seems too good to be true; I'm terrified of being scammed. This could be a godsend for my family, or a devastating mistake. Help me figure out if I'm being paranoid, if there's some kind of proof that is reasonable and I should ask for, or reassure me?

Ad was on Craigslist & Trulia. Was posted with one rate and deposit, then later reduced (by $55) when I viewed the ad a second time.

Open house last Saturday, we attended. We were there at beginning, no other potential renters arrived while we were there, though I got the feeling towards the end they might have been expecting someone.

House was recently sold; the assessor's office has online info, and it shows a mid-November date. Name of owner matches name of the person. Owner's address matches city they said they live in. I looked up the owner's address, and that home is only 2 years old, and when I looked it up on the assessor's site, the name also matched. Phone number is from another city in same metro area. When looking up the number online, it returns as wireless, Integra Telecom, and the initials of the owner do NOT match. I'm not having much luck on social media searching, name is [nationality] and seems to be common.

They told me of recent purchase when I asked how long they've had the house. Said their purpose is to eventually retire there, they live about an hour away, but that they participate in [local sport].

Don't care if we have pets, low pet deposit, honestly low rent for the area. Willing to allow us to paint or make improvements, willing to take cost of improvement off rent, just want people who "won't burn the place down".

Application was initially going to be through Smart move (and refund fee against rent!), then decided to accept manual application after we discussed what they would find on screening. (Issue that has been approved for rental on appeal at a local apartment complex.)

Some work has been done between the house's sale listing and when we viewed it. We walked through the home. It's in a rural area near a small city, and isn't fancy.

I send her pics of our ID, proof of income, and completed applications last night. This morning she said they reviewed it, it looks good, and when would we like to move in? So she can prepare lease agreement.

I know not to pay anything online, to sign paperwork in the home on walkthrough at the time I receive keys.

They seem nice. They're exactly the sort of magical unicorn landlord that everyone in my very tough local rental market wishes they could find...

Which is exactly my concern, I think. I'm having a hard time believing unicorns exist. And I'm scared. This would combine households and put all of us in a better financial situation - but only if it's real.

So help me make a decision. Is it ok for me to ask for ID or proof she's the owner? Is there anything else I should be doing?

posted by stormyteal to Home & Garden (15 answers total)

If the signing by the owner or owner's agent is notarized, the notary will check their ID. Would that reassure you?
posted by Glomar response at 10:34 AM on December 10, 2019

Well, if you're looking for something to be worried about, they do sound like amateur/casual landlords (or else they're professional landlords presenting themselves as amateur/casual landlords, which would be a very bad sign, but also very weird!). Do they have other rental properties? Have they been landlords before? There's nothing *wrong* with small time landlords, necessarily, landlording is just not their main thing. This type of landlord can be a real pain in the ass, but they can also be a GREAT DEAL (sometimes both at the same time!). I would say make sure you're very much on the same page about who is responsible for what (repairs, yard maintenance, whatever), and make sure that you know your rights as a tenant and their responsibilities as landlords (for your jurisdiction) backwards, forwards, and sideways, because this type of landlord sometimes has no freaking clue what they're doing and will just casually do illegal things without even knowing it. And also if you feel like you're getting a great deal I would urge you to kinda roll with it and see where it goes!

Also if you're concerned do at least a little google-stalking - see if you can find their facebook/linkedin/profile page on [local sport org]'s website, and see if you can find a photo, and see if it matches up with them. Not a big red flag if you can't find anything (lots of people just don't do social media/have it locked down reasonably) but if you find a plausible facebook with their wedding photos on it or something I bet you'll feel a lot better.
posted by mskyle at 10:38 AM on December 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

The weak point is if they are who they say they are. You might want to get in touch with the realtor who sold the house, and as suggested above do some light online stalking until you can put names to faces.

Once you take care of that I think you’re clear of the common scams.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:49 AM on December 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

We lucked into a unicorn landlord about a decade ago, and its really worked for us. Low rent for the area, laid back, cuts deals on improvements, for sort of the same reasoning your landlords gave -
retired, will eventually live here, mostly just wants us to not be headaches (which we aren't, just a boring family.)

The downside is that it always takes a bit to get shit fixed, and always in the cheapest manner, but if you all can handle it, its well worth it.

So its possible you got lucky? Considering you are renters, you do have a built in out, ie don't pay rent if things go sideways.
posted by RajahKing at 10:53 AM on December 10, 2019

Well if nobody else showed up to the open house I'm not surprised the landlords are being easy to work with. They don't have any other prospective tenants so they want you. I'm guessing this just isn't as amazing a deal as you think it is and/or that your local rental market isn't very high volume (esp this time of year things tend to be slow).

If you went to an open house that they held in the house it seems like the odds that this is a scam are pretty low. I guess after signing the lease you could ask for some kind of proof of ownership if you really want?
posted by phoenixy at 10:54 AM on December 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

It might be helpful for you to list specific fears. It'll be easier to deal with that than to prove to yourself that nothing could possibly go wrong.

1. Non-scam pitfalls: Other answers have usefully identified possible pitfalls that you should watch for, but that aren't actually scams. There may be more to add in this category, for instance, unshared expectations about when they'll want to move into this house, or how they'll handle repairs they are responsible for, since they live a distance away.

2. Scam pitfalls: Your due diligence seems to have yielded solid results. Of course, review the lease carefully.
posted by alittleknowledge at 11:04 AM on December 10, 2019

Here's some articles about rental scams and red flags: How to Spot a Rental Scam, from Trulia's site, from U.S. News.
posted by amanda at 11:12 AM on December 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Since the name matches the name on the real estate records, the big question is if they really are name. I don't think it would be inappropriate to ask to see some state-issued ID, since you will presumably be handing them a (relatively) large check.

Endorsing the comments about "amateur" landlords above--sometimes these prove to be very workable situations, sometimes not so much.
posted by praemunire at 11:40 AM on December 10, 2019

I have just such a magical unicorn landlord, and that's exactly how I found them. If you attended an open house in the actual house and have evidence that the person you spoke to is really the owner (and you're sure it was really them you talked to), I think you're on solid ground. We were the only people at a rental open house and ended up renting from the owner, who'd never rented to anyone before and was using a lease packet he'd picked up at Office Depot. To be honest, we like dealing with him a lot more than we've liked dealing with management companies. We take good care of the place, he fixes things promptly when that's needed. If either of us were flaky, there could have been some friction, but we did luck out (and so, I think, did he). We are in the best case scenario, so I don't want to tell you everything will always go perfectly, but I did want to chip in and say that such situations DO exist, and it looks like you're applying the appropriate amount of scrutiny to make sure it's what it seems.
posted by kite at 11:41 AM on December 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

When I first got into investment properties, a lot of the books geared towards self-managed properties suggested pricing the rent below market. The reasoning behind this was that you would attract a wider pool of tenants and you could then select the one that was least likely to be a pain-in-the-ass. For many small-time landlords, having a non-PITA tenant means more than getting the highest market rent. It also means that once a landlord has a tenant in the property they will have fewer turnovers, as tenants are unlikely to find a better deal.

This is likely a strategic move on their part, and not necessarily a scam.

My tenants that pay slightly below market rent are also less likely to request small repairs, I've found. They just take care of things themselves. In turn, I'm likely to renew their leases with minimal rent increases.
posted by Ostara at 11:54 AM on December 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

I was a small time landlord and I did exactly what Ostrava said for exactly that reason. I got great tenants, charged them slightly below market rate, looked after them and they stayed for years and treated the place like gold and fixed things for themselves. It was the perfect setup.
posted by Jubey at 12:59 PM on December 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you've gotten into the property then the chances it's a scam are very, very low. Scammers will get you to send them money or bank account details without having physically been on the property and then disappear once they get your money. Scummy landlords will show you a "show unit" that isn't actually your rental, and then your actual rental is significantly different from the show unit.

I wouldn't worry about the phone number not matching. My phone number is listed for people who are not me in records databases.

There are a lot of small-time landlords who are just looking for the right tenant and if they find someone they click with, will try to ease the process of getting you moved in. That's exactly the experience I had with my first landlords in my current city, tight rental market and all. (What's the catch? Well, the catch is that I was probably the "right" tenant because I have privilege on almost every axis. But no catch in the sense of it being a scam or trick.)
posted by capricorn at 1:04 PM on December 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

If you've gotten into the property then the chances it's a scam are very, very low.

Yeah, this is the key thing. Most "rental scams" are people proposing the rental of units they don't actually have access to (or which may not exist) in cities which they probably aren't even physically located in. Short-term rentals like AirBnBs can also pull off a bait-and-switch scam, but that's pretty hard to do to people looking for long-term residency.

Rental scams are mostly pretty crude, short cons. They rely on stories which don't hang together at all and on disappearing with quick cash before the whole thing falls apart. Actually meeting with people, or showing a real property, make it that much riskier and leave a more traceable trail, and untraceability is key to pulling it off.

Now, there may be any number of other ways a rental could be hinky without being a scam. None of them are in evidence here, but any rental situation has potential risk even without being a scam. They could be crappy landlords, or somehow not up to legal standards with regard to their permits or mortgage or somesuch. But it's pretty likely that they actually own this property (modulo financial obligations to banks/tradespeople/government) and intend to rent it.
posted by jackbishop at 1:52 PM on December 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Scammers will get you to send them money or bank account details without having physically been on the property and then disappear once they get your money.

Yes, this is the most common way of doing it, but it is by no means unheard of for scammers to have access to the property. Either because the property isn't secured, or because the scammer has some sort of relationship to the owner that they're exploiting without the owner's knowledge.
posted by praemunire at 3:14 PM on December 10, 2019

It sounds like you have no reason to doubt this one.
You have done a reasonable amount of due diligence and it checked out.

I can't prove it's not a scam. I've seen someone rent a flat using a stolen identity, then pose as the landlord and take deposits from dozens of prospective new tenants for the flat, then vanish, taking all the fittings with them like the gas oven. This happened with the flat below me back in London and the real landlord was pissed.
posted by w0mbat at 5:26 PM on December 10, 2019