hi everyone so I wanted to share an experience with you guys, we had to look
for a new apartment lately and we almost got scammed by two people on Craigslist so
I wanted to share the experience with you guys in case it helps you
so if you're ever looking for short-term housing on Craigslist or
you're looking for somewhere to stay during a vacation, renting a house,
renting a condo, buying a house, these are the two scams that we encountered and
maybe you're gonna see some red flags if it applies to you
after searching on all the standard websites we decided to look on
Craigslist because we were finding some listings from actual apartment complexes
that we weren't finding on those other sites
so the first scam it was really convincing and they gave information that checked out
it was this really nice place, it was under market value and they were paying for utilities, it has a gym inside
we really liked it so I emailed him and the next morning he emails me
this really detailed, well-written response - he had his full name, he had his
occupation, he had where he was living, and he had a story about why he was in
New York now and that I should drive around the area and see how I like it
from what he says, it checks out, it makes sense
we emailed him back and I asked him a bunch of questions like I just want to let
you know that we're serious applicants because that's what he put in the title
and are you actually in New York, can you give us a tour and so he didn't write us back
and then I was like hey you know he gives me his full name, his job
and address why don't I just Google it just to see what happens and he
actually checked out, he's an actual person on LinkedIn so I signed up for a
LinkedIn premium membership so that I can email him (which I
can cancel after a month) but I emailed him on LinkedIn
and I said hey are you the guy who is renting out that condo on Craigslist
I just want to make sure all the details match up and then he didn't write me back
and then the guy on Craigslist
didn't email me back either and I
checked Craigslist he actually refreshed and reposted that posting but he didn't
respond back to me you know in that same time frame and the sad thing is when
you're really desperate like when your lease is coming up and you've looked at
a lot of apartments like we have and you're not finding
the thing that you want but this Craigslist posting somehow seems really
good it clouds your judgment you know especially since he was an actual person
on LinkedIn, we actually started to really consider oh maybe we should live here
so you know we had our list of priority order of places we wanted to
stay and this Craigslist posting was actually first. We were actually thinking
about not renting at this other place because we were waiting to hear back
from this Craigslist guy. So we were looking on Craigslist still and I found
another listing - it's just a little bit under market value
it's not so big of a discrepancy that you go what this is clearly a scam
it said that it was in a certain community, it gave a community name so I googled that
community name and it says that it's like a community for people who are 55+
so I emailed the guy back and I said um isn't this for a community of 55+
and I wasn't clear but in my head I thought well maybe you
know you just need somebody who is 55+ to buy the place but maybe
they can let like their grandkids live there or something like that so maybe it
would be okay if we live there. It's like you know your mind concocts all
these justifications and what-ifs so the guy actually wrote me back and he
said no you can live here, people of all ages can live here, the open house is in
two weeks and since we're desperate and we're in a rush I go well could we go
see it tomorrow or the day after because we can't wait you know, and then the guy
goes well if you want to see it before then then you have to make a reservation
that's when the red flags went off in my head and I thought okay maybe I should
look up like Craigslist housing scams and it turns out there's like a ton
there's a ton of Craigslist rental scams just because I guess it's easy to grab
pictures from an existing listing and post them on Craigslist, you're
pretty anonymous, you can get people to pay an upfront
deposit and you can scam people easily that way and then the first guy
wrote me back he had his supposed realtor email me to
fill out a form and of course the form asked for all sorts of personal
information so I went and I checked out all the different info in here I tried
to find Joel Gibson as a realtor, just a lot of things started to not match up
and then I went and looked at realtyagent.com because that email looks really official
and I found out that other people report scams from this email so
you can pay for this realtyagent.com domain name and that's probably how a
lot of people get scammed and then I found out that they pulled these from existing listings
so not all Craigslist listings are bad
we actually found our current place which we really love it's really awesome
from Craigslist because it's from an actual apartment complex, they don't post
on apartments.com or any of those other websites so yeah we ended up not getting
scammed, thank goodness we didn't pay anything or give out any personal
information but we were like this close and we almost lost out on the apartment
that we're actually going to move into that we finally picked because we were
waiting to hear back from one of these Craigslist scammers, which is
really how much we were sort of attached to that idea and to what they were
selling so they're very convincing, I hope that this video helped you guys and
prevented you guys from getting scammed please like and subscribe if you like my
videos I'll continue to share any helpful tips connected to traveling and
booking traveling in the future when we come across them
see you guys next time