Rental Scam Information – Protecting the Public from Rental Scammers

Online Tool To Help Tenants Avoid Rental Scams

According to RealEstateConsumerNews, there is a new online tool that helps tenants avoid rental scams.

I checked out the rental scam detection quiz and was impressed.  It takes just a few minutes to answer the 9 questions the quiz presents and it then gives you what it has calculated of the chances of the rental you are looking at as being a scam.  Based on the knowledge I have obtained from researching rental scams for blogs, I found the questions in this quiz to make a lot of sense and be very relevant.  In addition, I found the explanations the quiz gives for each question to be very informative.  I would highly recommend that you use this tool before handing your deposit money to a landlord or property manager.

Dissecting a Rental Scam Email

There are commonalities with all rental scam emails. Below are some tips when dissecting a rental scam email.

1. Does the email start out with Sir / Madam?
2. Are there misspellings in the email?
3. Are there character mistakes in the email? i.e Hello,my nameis Susie.
4. Is there excessive capitalization?
5. Does the email reference God, UK, Cashiers Check, Doctor, Nigeria, Reverend, etc.
6. Is the email from a free email provider. i.e gmail, yahoo, aol, hotmail.
7. Does the email refer to another person or agent?
8. Does the email reference wanting to move in site unseen?

If the email has a majority of these commonalities, then the chances are very good it is a scammer. If you are unsure, it is best to not reply to the email.