Renting from Craigslist ads - precautions?

[TechMike]

My CL renting fraud prevention:

- Get the potential landlord's full name and address as well as the name of the company they might be operating under.
- Check the county assessor's property records online to verify the owner.
- If operating under a business name, verify with the Secretary of State's online records that the company is registered and legit.

If that passes, I pretty much assume it to be a legit operation.

[bgpeacock]

Hi. I have a question, been looking in the forums and could not really find what I was looking for. We may be headed to Denver and I have been looking at Craigslist in the homes for rent section. There seems to be plenty for rent but one thing I see pop up quite a lot are homes that say they are rent-to-own, usually for a pretty decent rental price. Other are straight rentals but very little info, just a craigslist email and some photos.

What I am wondering is how many of these posts are for real and how many are the dreaded CL housing scam? We are a professional family of 4 with pets so. I do find some that peek my interest but some fall into one of the categories mentioned above and I figured some of the good folks here are either landlords or are aware of scamming being bad in that area.

Also, any landlords who have advertised on CL or somewhere else who have property available, I would be interested in hearing from you if you have property available, looking for 3 br, not so much concerned as to the area atm as we just want to rent for a year roughly until we would sale our house and learn the area. Commutes are not a big deal nor is traffic (lived in ATlanta where at 12-14 mile commute took over an hour one way!) Anyway thanks in advance.

[bluescreen73]

Craigslist is great for selling small things like camping lanterns and used clothes but when it comes to big-ticket items like cars and rentals I personally would look for a better alternative.

The NAR website has an MLS portal on it, and you can search for rentals there.

Denver Homes for Rent and Houses for Rent - Denver, CO Rentals from - Realtor.com®

[sorryville]

In my experience if the craiglist ad has no phone number and just a short one or two sentence description that doesnt give you any real info, its a scam. Usually they will include the address, google it and 90% of the time you'll find it listed as a home for sale. If its too good to be true, it probably is (ie a gorgeous home for $600 a month).

[WiW]

This thread will give you other sites to check.
//www.city-data.com/forum/denve...e-rentals.html

When we were looking around this time last year, we found craigslist was the most comprehensive listing service. I wouldn't ever rent without seeing the property, meeting the owner (or a certified REALTOR) and checking credentials like a driver's license of the owner. Use checks, not cash.

You can find the owner of a property here:
Applications

You can verify a realtor's license status here:
Colorado Division of Real Estate Home Page

All the best.
c.

[bgpeacock]

thanks all and for the move into a good thread. not sure why I didn't fid this thread originally! Good info appreciate it all!

[80skeys]

Originally Posted by JrzDefector

I encountered a few scams when I was looking for a rental, but a lot of the ads are placed by professional real estate people, in addition to individual owners. If someone says they are going out of the country or will have to mail you the key, run - don't walk - away.

Lol. This is not necessarily a scam. I found and rented our first apartment in Sunnyvale from a craiglist ad without meeting the owner and without seeing the apartment first (we were living in Grand Junction, CO, at the time). The owner was a Chinese Google engineer who was going out of the country for six weeks. We sublet his apartment for a month and had no problems whatsoever.

To answer the original question of this thread, I would recommend using an escrow service for your security deposit, or some type of service like Paypal which offers Buyers Protection and will refund your money if things don't work out.

In addition to that, I would do basic and rudimentary investigation to make sure that the person placing the ad is who they say they are and have the authority to rent their place. You don't have to get complicated with this. Just place a few phone calls to their neighbors and their employer. Anybody who is not a "friend" and can provide unbiased verification. Google their name and address. Simple stuff to establish validity.

[chilaili]

For one thing, I wouldn't see the property by myself, I'd get a friend to come along. I'd also ask who is responsible for things like paying the bills and utilities incl trash pick-up, can the tenant make any cosmetic changes like painting or putting up shelves, what about pets and/or visitors?

[odie91]

Finding private rentals on CL sucks in Denver. I've lived in many other cities and found private renters through CL. But in Denver, over half of the CL listings you click on turn out to be mass listings by apartment complexes.