Rent To Own Scams

The old saying, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” should always raise a red flag, especially with rent to own offers.  Craigslist, Trulia, Zillow, and many other public sites get these on a regular basis. 

Low prices for the neighborhood usually catch your eye.  Request for more information, normally by an email account, will give you a few basic clues, too. 

• ·         It is still available.
• ·         We have other interested parties.
• ·         You must act quickly.
• ·         The ‘owner’ uses a title like, Reverend, Doctor.
• ·         Emails are from free sites like yahoo, gmail, or hotmail and you are addressed as Dear Sir/Madam
• ·         You get pressured to make even a modest (but usually higher) deposit before seeing the interior of the house, to prevent others from beating you out on the deal, of course
• ·         Emails are in all caps, often have awkward sentence structure, or a lot of typos

Then there is the somewhat plausible reason for such a deal.

•         Had to move for work/family reasons
•         Family member is very ill and we need money
•         Can’t meet in person because they’re on an out of country mission trip

A request for you to fill out an application usually follows, which may require financial data so they can do a credit check or verify employment.  Really, they want your personal info.

A clincher could be something like, “if you see a sign in the yard don’t call them because I’m no longer working with any agent because it’s too expensive.”   Could it be that the agent will see their name doesn’t match the owner of record in about 20 seconds? 

Clincher #2 is for you to send money via Western Union and you’ll get the keys by way of FedEx.

A few things you can do to protect yourself are:

Ask a ton of questions.

Search property records. Many municipalities (cities, townships) have a public search function on their official websites.  Occasionally it might cost you $2-$5 to do this for a single property, but that’s money well spent – and it’s easier than going to the County Assessor’s Office.

If they’re not asking you a lot of questions about your needs, pets, number of family members that will be living there and such, but are focused on the money end, that’s a big clue, too. Always have an attorney review any contract.