BEWARE OF FRAUDULENT RENTAL HOME ADS -
ESPECIALLY ON CRAIGSLIST

"SCAM" ads often appear promoting a rental home, usually for half the real rental price. If you contact the advertiser, they usually say they are out of the country (often on a missionary trip in some place like Africa) and ask you to look at the house yourself.  If you like it, you are told to mail a cashiers check and they will mail you the keys.  If you question them about another ad for the same house, they often say they fired that agent and are now renting it themselves.  The simple rule to protect yourself is NEVER RENT FROM SOMEONE, OR SEND MONEY TO SOMEONE, YOU CAN'T MEET IN PERSON AT THE PROPERTY AND GET A TOUR.  

Since these ads indicate the owner is not home, they encourage you to look inside.  Please be very careful.  If the home is occupied and you attempt to enter or look inside, the current resident may call the police, or confront you.  It's fine to drive by but never go onto a property unless the owner or an agent is meeting you there.

We suggest you do a Searh, such as on Google, for the address given in the ad.   If there are other ads for the same house for substantially more rent, the lower priced ad is likely a fraud.   A few homes are legitimately advertised by more than one rental agent.  In those cases the prices should be the same or very close and the contact will be willing to meet you at the house.

These scams can appear on any advertsing site.   However, they are by far most common on Craigslist because Craigslist requires nothiing but an email address to post an ad.  Most other rental listing services require the advertiser to set up an account with full contact information that is verified, so it would be difficult for a scammer to avoid being caught.   On Craigslist, they can use a free email address which is deleted immediately after someone falls for the ad, making it hard to track them down.

The old rule applies: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.