Apartment rental scams

You can always ask to see the owner's ID along with property tax notice to show proof of ownership if you are in doubt.

razorboy wrote: ↑ There seem to be a number of criminals who are advertising apartments and houses for rent, showing the property (somehow, with key,) taking first and last month's rent and then vanishing. This brings to mind a question: where do legitimate people advertise such things today? It used to be that if someone spent money to advertise in a newspaper, they were probably legitimate, but that is long gone, and criminals have lots of places to go fishing.

Most landlords work with a Realtor. Tenants should work with a Realtor to find their rentals as the fees/commission is paid for by the landlord (99.9% of the time). Many landlords find success on public forums such as kijiji or others. I don't have the exact stats, but I would estimate less than 2% of the public ads are scams, so probability is on the tenant's side. All stories in the media will cover the scams, the media will never cover success stories. But the problem is, you now have a bucket of cherries where you know at least one of them is poisonous, what do you do...

So my unit (downtown TO) was recently involved in a rental scam. The scammer posed as a realtor helping landlords rent out their units. Had their own website and advertised on rentals.ca. I'm the owner/tenant so I was quite surprised when people were showing up at my door asking for the key. They even had leased agreements that were docusigned with a fake landlord name. The rental listing pictures weren't even from my building but the ad had specified that viewings weren't available because a family was currently living there. The ad was up for 1 week between Christmas and New Years until I could get rentals.ca to take it down, I believe around a dozen people were scammed (my concierge stop letting people up). It seemed like most were foreign students who just landed, so their only communication was through email and text. Unfortunately, they had lost thousands in deposits and had to find a hotel instead but the price was probably too good to be true given our current rental market.

D-TRaN wrote: ↑ ...the ad had specified that viewings weren't available because a family was currently living there...

This should have been a big red flag for potential tenants.

realtorhome wrote: ↑ Most landlords work with a Realtor. Tenants should work with a Realtor to find their rentals as the fees/commission is paid for by the landlord (99.9% of the time). Many landlords find success on public forums such as kijiji or others. I don't have the exact stats, but I would estimate less than 2% of the public ads are scams, so probability is on the tenant's side. All stories in the media will cover the scams, the media will never cover success stories. But the problem is, you now have a bucket of cherries where you know at least one of them is poisonous, what do you do...

I have serious doubts that “most” landlords work with a realtor. Have any stats on this? I agree with the rest of your comment. Once, when renting a place that seemed too good to be true, I pulled the teranet search to confirm. That’s always a possibility (though more of a pain than just asking for ID).

blackhatt wrote: ↑ I have serious doubts that “most” landlords work with a realtor. Have any stats on this? I agree with the rest of your comment. Once, when renting a place that seemed too good to be true, I pulled the teranet search to confirm. That’s always a possibility (though more of a pain than just asking for ID).

No stats on market share, only concrete # of leased units on MLS which wouldn't say much. From experience, my group of friends have about 30 investment properties and all except one leases thru a Realtor. Disclaimer: the demographics and culture of this focus group is not very diverse. The one that does it themselves often have 1-3 month vacancy in between, not sure if he realizes the hit on his ROI. I've taken on clients who used to rent it themselves and decided to go with a Realtor. I haven't had any client who used a Realtor and decided to go it themselves (yet), but I'm sure there are many who learns the process and then DIY.