Nowadays, the real estate market is saturated with scammers who use various techniques in order to take possession of the homes of gullible citizens. Moreover, what has been said applies not only to buying or selling operations. You’ll want to use a safe roommate finder or rental search platform to avoid being scammed. In this publication, the experts of the portal will tell you what types of fraud exist when renting an apartment, how to recognize a swindler, and what to do if the tenant is “divorced” when renting an apartment.
Fraud with apartment rent: crooks and their tricks
On the Internet, in newspapers, and on television, you can find information about a variety of methods and schemes of fraudulent rental of residential real estate.
Its authors are not only the real and imaginary owners of the apartment but also the tenant, who further improperly disposes of the housing. For example, the property is being subleased on illegal grounds.
When scammers act, renting an apartment is extremely attractive for them. Indeed, it is often extremely difficult for the injured party to prove the wrongfulness of the actions. This is especially the case when housing is rented for a short time. Fraud schemes for renting an apartment are also practiced by some firms calling themselves real estate agencies.
For example, a client enters into a contract and pays a certain amount. In return, he is given a set of addresses of “leased” apartments. But according to the coordinates provided, there can be no question of any lease. If you want to buy an apartment on rent in or around Denver, United States, please check out apartments for rent Cherry Creek CO as they are very safe to choose and trusted by thousands of customers.
A distinctive feature of this scheme is that the contract is legally correct. Therefore, it is almost impossible to return your money to the injured party through the courts or law enforcement agencies.
Property deception – scammers among homeowners
Collusion between the owner and the agent
One of the most common types of rental fraud is agency earnings. The scheme is quite profitable: the owner of the real estate and the realtor rent out the apartment, divide the agent’s fee, and then evict the tenant under a far-fetched pretext. After that, they look for new unfortunate tenants and double the profit. The profit is rather big: usually, the agent’s rate is equal to the monthly cost of living.
The standard lease indicates that the landlord can terminate the agreement without financial loss in four cases:
- If the tenant is three days late on payment
- Due to damage to property
- Due to systematic violation of the rights of neighbors (noise, unsanitary conditions)
- Due to the use of the apartment for other purposes
Greedy homeowners come up with surprisingly clever schemes to keep honest tenants ahead of schedule. They spare no effort to create unbearable conditions for the tenants. On the forums, you can find stories about secret damage to furniture, bribery of local homeless people who pretend to be “friends” of the tenant, make noise in the entrance and set up neighbors against him, and even artificially provoked public accidents. After that, the owners arrange an inaccurate check at the most inopportune time, act out righteous anger and force the tenants to move out.
In communal apartments, neighbors can collude. The methods of dealing with conscientious tenants can be the most unsightly – up to dead mice in soup in a shared kitchen.
Rent bypassing relatives
It is not uncommon for tenants to become victims of family conflicts. They rent an apartment from the owner, check all the documents, conclude an agreement .. But they do not attach importance to the fact that the apartment is shared by several people. Later it turns out that one of the owners decided to rent out the apartment without the knowledge of the other and not share the profits, a scandal arises.
In most of these situations, the landlord does not consider himself a fraud. He really was not going to deceive the tenant .. He just hoped for “maybe”. And another interested party unexpectedly came to visit or learned about everything from neighbors.
In any case, there is little pleasantness for innocent residents. At the very least, a scandal awaits them at the first meeting, and possibly communication with the police. Then everything will depend on whether the relatives will be able to settle the matter peacefully. Otherwise, tenants will either be forced to move out (the contract is not valid without the consent of all owners), or they will be required to pay more for housing – taking into account the interests of the other owner.