CALGARY – Rental scams continue to be a problem on online classified sites like Kijiji.
There are countless phoney ads posted on a monthly basis from culprits looking to get their hands on your money. They often impersonate a landlord offering a home to rent.
However, for the careful online shopper, there are ways to recognize them.
Crystal Radisic is looking for a larger home to rent; she found a five bedroom house in southwest Calgary for $1,100 a month on Craigslist. She replied to the poster via email.
The owner claimed to be on a construction job in Africa and couldn’t show the home himself. When she went to view the property, she discovered it already had tenants.
“The people that live there are actually renters of the people that actually own the house,” says Radisic. “She says the owner knows about it, we know about it. We’ve had a lot of people come by saying they want to rent the house.”
The phoney landlord scams use real rental ads from websites and post them on other classified sites or hold the information until a later date.
The tell tale signs include low rental rates and the landlord will always claim they are not in town and can only communicate via email. There will be no phone number listed and they will ask you to wire money to them.
“You’re never going to want to buy it unseen based on a picture and an ad and send money to some stranger in some different country,” says Gerry Baxter with the Calgary Residential Rental Association. “Once the money is gone, it’s gone. You’ll never get it back.”
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