4 Ways To Catch A Rental Scammer - guest blog by Dave Dugdale

Note - the Landlord Law Blog has now moved to www.landlordlawblog.co.uk.

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I run a couple of classified rental sites in America, and while I do not live in England I know from monitoring Twitters search stream on rental scams, that America is not alone when it comes to dealing with rental scammers.

It feels like an on-slot of scammers have been using my sites to create bogus listings the past 10 months. They try to cheat future tenants out of their deposit money. I have been combating them for the past 6 months and I have learned a lot about how they operate.

I thought I would share with Tessas readers how I track down fraudulent rental listings.

Price Is Way Too Low:
If I see a rental listing come in that looks much lower than the others in the neighborhood, that is when my eyebrows go up and I pull up my chair for a closer look. Scammers are impatient, and with a low price they can get leads quickly.

Free Email Address:
The next step is to see if they are using a free email address like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail etc. Scammers only use free email services they can hide behind.

No Phone Number:
Most of the time the scammers will not list a phone number to call; they will only want to communicate by email. Most legitimate rental listings include a phone number. If none is listed, I look even further.

Exterior Photo Does Not Match Google Street View:
Google traversed American streets a few years back, getting a full street-viewto accompany their maps. I understand that Google has now started this project in England. This becomes a powerful tool for detecting scammers because many times they do not use the photos from the real house, so you can check the listing photos against Google Street View.

Duplicate Content Found On Another Listing:
Most of the scammers I deal with are from Nigeria. They want to blend in with the other listings so instead of writing the description of the rental themselves, they copy it from other rental ads. So, I Google paragraphs of the content to see if I can find a match with different pictures, address or price. This is a sure sign of a scam.

In conclusion
A good rule to follow to avoid becoming a victim in one of these scams is to deal with the owner of the property directly. When renting homes, meeting the property owner at the property is always a good practice. This helps you verify independently whether the offer is bogus or not.

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Bio: Dave Dugdale has been in the online rental advertising business for 5
years with his sites RentVine.com and PickRent.com. He was the first to write a blog on the rental ad industry, and the first to podcast interviews of industry experts in property management (all for a USA audience). Dave has also been leading the way in better detection of rental scams by sharing his database of blacklist email addresses with competitors.

Canadian landlords trample on tenants human rights, says survey

A newspaper report here, describes a survey in Toronto in Canada which shows that vulnerable people are regularly being discriminated against by landlords. To quote the article:

To test landlord compliance, the centre created five "renter profiles" – a single mother with one child; a black single mother with one child; a single South Asian man, a single man with a mental illness and a married woman on provincial disability benefits.

Volunteers posing as these vulnerable renters made telephone inquires about 982 apartments listed for rent across Toronto last summer. Each call was followed up within 1 1/2 hours by another volunteer with no discernable grounds for discrimination.

Each pair asked the same 12 questions and the landlords' responses were recorded and analyzed for mild, moderate or severe differential treatment.

For example, to gauge discrimination against the South Asian man, one caller used a distinct South Asian accent and name, while the second caller had no accent and used a Western European name.

Discrimination against the South Asian man ranged from not having his call returned to being told the unit was already rented when it was still available.

The South Asian man also faced extra application requirements such as being asked for postdated cheques. And 31 per cent of the time, he was offered fewer move-in incentives such as free cable TV, the study found.

"In some cases, the landlord makes the unit so unappealing that he doesn't have to turn the person down," said John Fraser, the centre's program director.

The centre's results are similar to those from studies in the United States, where community-based organizations regularly monitor discrimination in rental housing, Fraser said.

It would be interesting to see a similar study here in the United Kingdom.

Consultation on private housing in Northern Ireland

A report on the BBC web-site states that plans to overhaul the private rental sector are being considered in Northern Ireland.

The key proposals are -

• A central scheme for tenants' deposits so that landlords cannot simply refuse to pay back deposits for "flimsy reasons"
  
• Government deposit guarantee for vulnerable people who cannot afford them
  
• An independent body to manage disputes between landlords and tenants and encourage compliance with their tenancy agreement
  
• New fitness standards implemented by 2015. Landlords penalised if they do not meet these standards
  
• Much greater awareness of the rights of tenants and the responsibilities of landlords
  
• Longer periods of notice to quit for long term tenants.

You can read more about it in the press release from the Department for Social Development in the Northern Ireland Executive.

Guest article – a view from the United States, from Kelly Kilpatrick

The Landlord-Law blog being a British blog, generally only looks at housing in England and Wales. However, this article, kindly provided by Kelly Kilpatrick, gives a transatlantic viewpoint. Note that the opinions expressed in this article are those of Kelly and do not necessarily reflect mine. If you are outside England & Wales and would like to write something about housing in your country, please contact me.

Consistency in Policy Regarding Tenant-Landlord Relations

Over the last several years, much has been done in the United Kingdom to reform Housing regulations. First came new laws to license owners of HMOs (Houses in multiple occupation). The reasoning behind this was that the owners of these properties were able to make a great deal of money without having to adhere to any sort of standards in regard to their tenants’ conditions.

Many HMOs were seen to be in poor or shabby condition, not providing the necessary function nor were they providing the amenities that the tenants were paying hard-earned money for. Although some landlords are still unlicensed, much progress has come with these reforms, benefiting both tenant and landlord.

The benefit of licensing an HMO ensures that the property in question meets certain standards and criteria. The tenant benefits by having a place to live that meets legal criteria and is suitable for habitation, making it worth the money spent on rent. The landlord, in turn, fixes up his property to meet the criteria and increases the value of his property as well as the amount of rent he is able to charge.

How does this compare with what is done in the United States? Each state handles its dealings with housing quite differently. What’s done in New York is handled in a completely different way than it is in Texas, for example. Housing authorities exist, but deal primarily with government-subsidized housing projects for those who live beneath the poverty line.

Generally speaking, there is a whole variety of ways tenants and landlords deal with one another in the states. In Texas, for example, the landlord of a rental property can ask for references or may not. He can ask for a deposit, and does not have to prove this deposit is protected, unlike the new tenancy deposit protection laws in the UK require landlords to do. Additionally, tenant and landlord can agree upon the terms themselves or sign a leasing agreement. None of this, however, is required by law.

Conditions in housing in the States also vary quite greatly from locale to locale. Since there is no standard law to which all landlords must adhere, the system is quite flawed, filled with fraud and unsettled disputes, much like it was in the UK before these wide-sweeping reforms were put into place. It is common practice to put shabby materials in a rental property, only to be able to subtract it from a tenant’s lease at the end of the term.

Predatory leasing is not practiced out in the open, but many apartment complexes and leasing companies use the old bait and switch to get people in the door in order to lease them something different. Many times, paperwork gets “lost,” and the terms of the lease have been changed, only to be discovered by the tenant at an inopportune time.

Naturally, most people who wish to spend their money with someone who is reputable and has established guidelines for the leasing agreement, as well as terms by which the deposit is released once the rental term is up.

Although it was a tough transition for many Britons, the HMO licensing act, as well as the tenancy deposit protection legislation has provided safeguards for both tenant and landlord alike. This has ultimately changed the face of tenant-landlord relations into a market that is now more consistent than ever before.

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This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of the colleges for criminal justice. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24 at gmail dot com (although please also post feedback on this blog!).