All Forum Posts by: Vic French

Never without meeting them first.

Property Managers often don't work in the best interests of the landlord and will never take care of your property as well as you do. I used one once when attempting to rent my property during the recession and learned a valuable lesson.  The woman never brought me any good, solid leads and she had a peculiar schedule. She didn't work weekends when most prospects are out searching. She certainly wasn't bringing home the bacon in my situation. I let her go after two weeks.   

This has happened to me. The scammers lifted the photo of my property and ad (copy/paste), then manipulated the language to their advantage using a reduced rent that was too good to be true. Prospective tenants fell for it nonetheless. The story the scammers usually use is they are out of town, some emergency and beware if they tell you they are a church elder, then ask you to do a drive by. My property was vacant, and though I lived in another house on the property, the only thing that alerted me to a scam was when one of the prospects came knocking on my door asking about the front property.  The scammers are usually operating out of some other state or country. They ask the prospect to send the deposit and they will send the keys...which never happens.  On a sidenote to all prospective tenants: IF SOMETHING SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE IT USUALLY IS A SCAM.     

Be careful if you are in California.  Check out the laws regarding daycare. It's a gray area and you could be sued for discrimination. I had a somewhat similar situation develop with a tenant already renting my property; things change, people change. The tenant wants you to take on the liability of their "business"; umbrella policies are not cheap I might add. Make sure renters have Renters Insurance and have them send you a copy annually of their updated policy or have them contact their insurance company to arrange for you receiving a copy of the policy renewal as an "interested party." 

It really depends if you want quality tenants or are trying to fill a vacancy fast. I prefer to take my time but not over 60 days to fill vacancy.  I rarely ever choose the first ones that apply; instead I prefer to collect several applications and review thoroughly before making my decision. My experience many times is that the first that apply are often desperate. Listen well and you will learn a lot about people.  I go with the people that have the best credit, job security, have a little humility and are ambitious and don't display neurotic tendencies. I never go with the whiners or the ones that display "victim" mentality.

....and odd smells like pot growing inside a unit or worse smells to indicate someone may have passed, pets that continually bark that may be locked up for days and in distress. 

Gas leaks, earthquakes and natural disasters that disrupt water lines and services, overflow toilets, shut-offs that are corroded and don't work.

I would be really careful with this one; especially if they are from out of the country and want to give you a deposit up front. Myself, I would never rent to people I hadn't met first. Intuitively, my gut tells me a lot about people and nothing beats an interview to size the situation up and gather information.  There are scammers out there that use this angle to get the keys.

I only had this problem once with my last ad about a year ago. Zillow was where the scammer was working his magic though. I don't think I would ever advertise on that site again. I believe it will be important for me in future postings of vacant property to post an addendum at the end of the post restating the price, only meeting them at the property for an inspection and only accepting the deposit in person. To my recollection I think I had to delete my original ad on Craigslist and repost with some kind of disclaimer. I dropped the Zillow ad altogether.

I had the same thing happen when I posted to Zillow. The scammers did a screen shot of my ad on Craigslist and posted their own price (lower than mine) and contact information saying that they resided out of state. I posted a notice in my original Craigslist ad that a scammer was at work. The prospective tenants that responded to the fictitious ad were able to give me phone info and suspected location of the scammer but by that time the ad had been posted for three days and the crooks were probably long gone.  I reported it to the police department; the location was someplace in the southern U.S. The story the scammer gave the prospects was that he was a missionary and had relocated out of state and if the prospective tenant would send him the deposit money he would send them the keys and have someone to let them in to inspect the inside of the property.  Of course by that time the scammer would be long gone.  I can't believe people would be this trusting but I suppose there are folks out there desperate for a good deal even if it sounds too good to be true.