Buyer Beware - Craigslist is Crammed Full of Scams

The rental market in Reston has grown increasingly tight in the past several years. Scarcity tends to bring out the scam artists.

Not long ago I had a listing, a large townhouse for sale not far from Lake Anne and Reston Town Center. As a part of my normal marketing I created a virtual tour and posted the listing in all of the major real estate websites like Truila and Zillow. A day or two later I got a message from a young man calling about “the townhouse for rent” on Craigslist.

I quickly found that my listing for sale had been hijacked and turned into a fake listing for rent on Craigslist. The townhouse was being offered at a ridiculously low price by someone who claimed that they had been called out of the country on urgent business and they just wanted to find someone who would care for the home while they were gone. All one needed to do to secure the townhouse for their own was to send the first month’s rent and security deposit via cashier’s check and the owner would in turn have his friend drop off the keys.

Stories like this confound me on several levels. First off a four-bedroom townhouse in Reston with a 2 car garage for $700 per month? It’s hard to imagine that someone wouldn’t be suspicious based on price alone, but when you couple that with the whole “been called out of the Country” story it's hard for me to imagine that people actually send the money. But sadly, they do.

There are currently 85 rental properties listed with licensed agents in Reston ranging from $1,180 for a one-bedroom at Fairway to $3,800 per month for a large, three-bedroom condo in Reston Town Center. You can get a townhouse for around $1,800 per month.

A quick check of Craigslist shows another 250+ listings that include basement apartments and rooms for rent. The truth is, that housing is costly in our region and when people are feeling pressured they are at risk for being taken advantage of.

Craigslist scams are also used against property owners. I think that for every rental listing I’ve ever posted on the Internet, I have received an email from someone claiming that they wanted the property sight-unseen and were sending a check. The scam is always the same—the cashier’s check is always for more than what is needed and all I have to do is wire the difference back to them and mail the keys and the lease…I’ve been doing Real Estate long enough to know that no one ever takes anything sight unseen.

So the old adage is as true today as it always was: If it seems too good to be true, it is.