Possible Real Estate Scam

All 3 of Joe's kids are in the process of looking for a new place and one of them mentioned a possible scam they were dealing with. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So you described a possible real estate scam earlier.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Well, all three of my kids have been looking for
new places, and one of my daughters said, we just
took a virtual tour of the apartment we applied to.
Really liked the look of it, although the virtual link
the realtor called through was kind of screwing it, making
it difficult to communicate. Then we tried to call each other,
but the call failed. They say reception was the problem.

(00:25):
It was the virtual link that was the problem, and
my daughter's worried about not being able to call them
at the time. Should we go through with it? The
security you deposit blah blah blah, And I said, no,
not yet. It's just appealing to people. Does that sound
like a scam toy or not.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
We got this text time a residential real estate agent.
People scrape my listing photos and descriptions often and then
post them on Craigslist as rentals for cheap So that's
where they come up with They go to. They tell
people they're called out a country in business. Just send
me a cashier's check and off FedEx you the key,
which of course doesn't work. I always tell people to

(01:02):
meet potential landlords at the property first to see if
they actually have access to the property, then asked to
see their ID, and then cross check that against public
records for who actually owns it. A real landlord will
understand and do it freely.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
You see, Wow, could you copy and paste that to me? Sure?
But great.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
The other side of that, though, is I don't know
I'm getting well. I know that this is true for
rentals because I helped somebody look for a rental not
that long ago. Like I've been looking at houses and
you show up at an open house and you got
to wait in line to get in the door with
other people who a looking at the houses. The real
estate agents are in the kitchen on their phone because
they don't need to talk to you. I got a

(01:42):
million people there are gonna make offers you. It's not
you know, like you know, if you've ever gone to
an open house and you're the only person there in
the real estate agents like I want to massage your
feet or get you a drink because they're just so
desperate to try his life. It's not like that now.
And I know as helping somebody rent a place recently,
and it was similar with the rentals. Every rental looked
at was just a stream of people. So the whole

(02:04):
meet me there, I could see how there might be
a number of landlords. You're like, nah, I'm I got
other people who don't make me take time off my
job to go meet them there. I'll rent to them.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
So that's yeah, well that is a problem. But yeah
no no access, no look see no rent. You can't
appreciate the advice though, Thank you friend,