Realtors & Home Sellers Beware
As if home sellers didn’t have enough to worry about, now they have to beware of one more thing: scam artists who post their home as a rental on Craigslist.
A Brockton couple who was trying to sell their home had a few would-be tenants show up at their front door saying they saw their home listed for rent on Craigslist.
Someone had taken the for-sale listing from the couple’s Realtor’s Web site and pasted it into a Craigslist ad requesting that interested tenants send $950 to rent the house and that the keys would be mailed to them.
The homeowners were interviewed on WCVB-ABC Channel 5 last night and when asked what should be done to fraudster, the husband said, “His typing fingers should be cut off.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t a new scam. The Massachusetts Association of Realtors sent a warning to its members back in May. The group told Realtors that photos and listing information were being taken from Realtor.com and other online sources to trick renters.