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The is a long running ad, the people at craig's list are not willing to address this issue. Other large listing sites are also starting to have issues. They are selling advertising to the general public with few controls in place to determine if the actual owner is listing the property. I would not trust any ad on Craig's list and would be skeptical of any ad in the large MLS sites. You best choice is to work face-to-face with the an RE agent, or property manager. Also local MLS site tend to be more trust worthy.
The scammers seem to cycle around the country. We had a rash of these scams 5 or 6 years ago, and then nothing for several years and then a whole bunch again about 2 years ago, and then nothing since. The scam has been around for at least 6 years, but could be new in any given area.
I just put this in a comment, but feel like it's deserving of it's own thread.
I read a warning today that there are some clever scammers out there copying real listing information for rental homes and then posting fake ads on Craig's List, Trulia, etc. with the real photos and house information, but they've changed the contact information for applications, app fees, and deposits. They're advertising lower rents, so if you see 2 significantly different amounts on different websites, that may be the case. The scammers ask for completed applications, with all of your information, and money for deposits.
Do not submit an application to rent a home or pay a dime until you verify that it's going to the real owner or management company. The correct information can be verified through a legitimate source, such as a Realtor, MLS-direct feed site (like Realtor.com or an agent's website), or management company.
What a sneaky, dirty scam!
Not new, unfortunately -- been going on for at least five years in a lot of major markets where the rental prices are high, in conjunction with the proliferation of website advertising. They price it just at the "too good to be true" level so that someone can talk themselves into thinking they got a deal. Often, they are "out of country" but will "be back soon" -- they've already had sooo much interest but if YOU send them a deposit, they'll hold it for you, because you seem nice . . .
The is a long running ad, the people at craig's list are not willing to address this issue. Other large listing sites are also starting to have issues. They are selling advertising to the general public with few controls in place to determine if the actual owner is listing the property. I would not trust any ad on Craig's list and would be skeptical of any ad in the large MLS sites. You best choice is to work face-to-face with the an RE agent, or property manager. Also local MLS site tend to be more trust worthy.
MLS sites can be trusted 110%. MLS sites would include a real estate agent's personal website, the website of a real estate brokerage (Re/Max, Prudential, Keller Williams, etc., etc.), or some MLS systems themselves have public facing websites as well. What most people don't realize is that sites like Zillow and Trulia are not MLS websites. Z&T do get feeds from some MLS systems (not all) but they also get a lot of information from data scraping meaning they mine data from other websites. They own some of these sites (ex. Zillow owns Postlets.com) but I'm sure they scrape data from other sites they don't own. It's the data they get from these sites which is what makes Z&T and other sites like them so inaccurate.
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