New Rental Scammers claim to

Be the National Association

of Realtors®

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, the National Association of Realtors® has issued a new consumer warning for anybody looking to lease out a property that you can read by Clicking Here.

According to the warning…

The scam claims that on receipt of a deposit, NAR will deliver the keys to the property to the tenant. Prospective tenants are instructed to send money via Western Union to NAR’s purported agent in the United Kingdom.

Some of the listings have been posted on Craigslist, which reportedly has had difficulty in tracing the original listings. NAR does not have an escrow service, or function as an intermediary to receive rental deposits.

Quite an interesting scam and much more clever then most of the other ones that I’ve been told about from potential tenants that I’ve worked with since they are using a recognized name.

Other Rental Scams

My last rental clients told me about their experience in attempting to secure a rental from the popular third party site, Craigslist for a property being advertised that seemed too good to be true.

Upon responding for more information, the supposed owners told them to send a money order to some foreign country and they would mail them the keys once they received it. They gave up on searching on their own and decided to call a knowledgable Las Vegas real estate agent to help them out.

Keep in mind there are a lot of vacant properties in Las Vegas and it’s not too hard to find them if you know what you are doing and where to look. When looking for a rental, be careful when searching on third party websites with little regulation on what can be posted. If you are not comfortable taking that chance, use a licensed Nevada real estate agents IDX search like what we have on our Las Vegas Real Estate Search where you can search thousands of rentals available for lease.

These are properties that come straight from the Las Vegas MLS and are listed by Las Vegas real estate agents that will actually have the keys….

Yes… we do rentals for clients and it’s a free service to you. The owners pay us to bring them qualified tenants and chances are, you’ll end up with a more professional lease then one of those downloaded from the internet leases that are shoddy to say the least.

Paul Francis, CRS
Las Vegas Real Estate
702.592.3058