What's with all these rent to own places or the lavish homes for rent for paltry fees? Spam? For real? The ones that have toll free numbers posted...tell me what you know.

12/4/2009 6:32:48 PM

lol

12/4/2009 6:37:37 PM

Link?

12/4/2009 6:39:53 PM

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/apa/1495263068.html

just one of the many, and not the best example.

12/4/2009 6:43:57 PM

probably just folks trying to avoid foreclosure. that or guy/company is buying up foreclosures and trying to rent them out to people that lost their homes.

12/4/2009 6:47:12 PM

Gotta be a scam of some sort...
Location: Raleigh / Durham / Ch...Nobody puts that except scammers.
Phone number embedded in the pic.

I mean, you could call them and figure out how they're trying to get you to part with your money, but there's really no point.

12/4/2009 7:23:38 PM

paltry fees?

you could own a place if you're spending over $1k a month renting

unless you just don't want to own

12/4/2009 7:24:25 PM

Don't want to own...YET. Unless it's equitable to do so for a year or less prior to moving.

That and i need at least a year to do some repair to my credit, which has taken a hard hit this past year.

12/4/2009 10:31:23 PM

Nigerian Scams.

The scammers find vacant homes online (by looking at pictures, you can see if there is furniture or not) post them on CL for way under market value rent, then you send a money order to secure the deposit.

Quite a few Realtors I know have had their listings caught up in this scam. One talked about it in a meeting, she had her neighbors home listed, she noticed on a Saturday a ridiculous amount of cars driving by, she went and talked to some people she saw looking at the yard and they tipped her off.

The home was listed on CL for $950 it probably should have rented for close to $3,000 a month. She found the listing and had it pulled. It was an athletes home that had moved out of state or something, the home was vacant.

12/4/2009 11:52:23 PM

God damn that's expensive. I think I hit the jackpot with a house I found for rent, 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 1500 sq ft in a nice little neighborhood for $800. It's sick.

Though, I did find it on CL...

12/4/2009 11:58:23 PM

Well, say person A's home is going into foreclosure

They allow person B to 'rent' the place, basically saying 'yeah, you're taking over my mortgage... as long as you're renting, I won't have to foreclose on the house! Just keep giving me the rent!'

Person B rents the place.
Person A pockets the cash, still doesn't pay their mortgage, and the house goes into foreclosure.
Person B (who has been doing everything right paying rent) gets kicked out of the house one random day, and there's nothing he can do about it.
Person A, has some extra cash



this has been going on for a long time.

12/5/2009 12:09:28 AM

[new]

12/5/2009 12:22:36 AM

[Edited on December 7, 2009 at 2:15 PM. Reason : ]

12/7/2009 2:15:01 PM

[Edited on December 7, 2009 at 2:15 PM. Reason : stupid internet]

12/7/2009 2:15:01 PM

Quote :

"lavish homes for rent for paltry fees? "

I don't consider $1050 paltry. That may just be his mortgage amount and the person is trying to break even if he can't sell it.

12/7/2009 2:15:01 PM

What are some good places to browse houses for rent, especially houses between Hillsborough st/Wade avenue? Is the best strategy to just drive around and look for "For Rent" signs?

12/7/2009 2:37:41 PM

For some of the houses shown, I consider $1050 pretty paltry. That's the upper limit of my range, but it still ain't much for more than 2000 square feet and a two-car garage.

I'm gonna look at a house today for $750 a month. Three bedrooms. Fenced in backyard. I happened to see a for rent sign on my way to work. I haven't looked at anything off of CL yet.

12/7/2009 3:08:12 PM

The costs can be lower to an owner using FRBO, CL, Ebay, etc. because they don't have to pay things like a property manager's fee or collect the applicable taxes that are normally owed for the rental income.

I just wanted to post another perspective, because a lot of those listings are owners trying to rent a home themselves legitimately.

12/7/2009 3:26:57 PM

dannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. i have 2 rooms......

12/7/2009 3:32:37 PM

Quote :

"I just wanted to post another perspective, because a lot of those listings are owners trying to rent a home themselves legitimately."

Those homes/owners are NOT the target of my concern. I'm most interested in the story behind all the listings with toll free numbers for contact information. Those are NOT individual/private owners.

^I have one dog and two cats that must go with me. Are your parents gonna put up with that? That and I'd like to have something closer to work. The house I'm looking at this evening is about 5 miles from my office.

12/7/2009 3:57:43 PM

Quote :

"Those homes/owners are NOT the target of my concern. I'm most interested in the story behind all the listings with toll free numbers for contact information. Those are NOT individual/private owners."

Ah, I might have missed the spirit/target of your question.
Competent property management companies also use third party sites like the ones that have been listed to further advertise their product. I'm not saying that there are no scams out there, only that those third parties will have ads from more than just scammers (i.e private owners, real estate firms, property management companies, etc).

12/8/2009 11:18:26 AM

HELLO DEAR

12/9/2009 10:44:25 AM

This scam shit is RAMPANT. Just for shits and giggles, I saw a house on CL today for 1000/mo. NO WAY that this house would ever go for that low. It is more than 3000 square feet. Drove by it, and sure enough, it's listed with Fonville Morrisey for about 400k.

Yesterday, I responded to an ad that seemed legit. Nigerian.

WTF?

Oh, and all the others are lease to own kinds of deals through a pre-foreclosure listing service. That you have to pay 200 dolla to sign up for.

It seems that there are few listings on CL that aren't scams, listing services, or apartment communities.

12/22/2009 7:38:46 PM

I responded to an ad for a nice looking place off Wade in Raleigh. Fit my budget, right location, a little bigger than I had seen in that price range, but not way too good to be true. Rent was around 800-1000/month. So I fire off an email.

I do some more looking and it turns out it probably is too good to be true - it's been on the market for ~5 months at ~$450k or something (800-1000 a month should rent a place worth half that). So I forget about it.

Couple days later I get an email back: "I've moved to London and I want to rent my place since I can't sell it right now, send me your info and credentials and I can mail you the keys." (English wasn't that good either). Fishiest thing was that he was using a free email account made from the _Realtor's_ name, but he used it backwards.

We looked for about a month for something inside the beltline and did find a fantastic place using craigslist alone. I did see a lot of those ads you're talking about and what jumped out at me the most is that they don't mention a location or even show pictures of a particular house. (palm trees, in Raleigh?) I figure it's probably the typical real estate scam of "get a great deal by using our list!... the list is 50 bucks"

12/22/2009 10:56:07 PM

If you have actual parameters for your search, and you should, those scams should be easy to avoid. The only things i get are Lake Park's constant craigslist spamming.

12/23/2009 1:57:43 AM

And I do have actual parameters for my search. Unfortunately, my credit has been shot to shit in the last year, so that precludes going through most property management firms. That leaves individuals, and it's a real crapshoot there.

12/23/2009 9:47:26 AM

more like rent to pwn

12/23/2009 1:04:38 PM

You are awesome, Shawna...but I still need a house.

12/23/2009 4:30:27 PM

Quote :

"Well, say person A's home is going into foreclosure They allow person B to 'rent' the place, basically saying 'yeah, you're taking over my mortgage... as long as you're renting, I won't have to foreclose on the house! Just keep giving me the rent!' Person B rents the place. Person A pockets the cash, still doesn't pay their mortgage, and the house goes into foreclosure. Person B (who has been doing everything right paying rent) gets kicked out of the house one random day, and there's nothing he can do about it. Person A, has some extra cash this has been going on for a long time."

Lot of this going on in Florida right now, my uncle has been doing this for almost a year now.

12/26/2009 2:57:45 PM

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