Real Estate Editorial

I was watching the evening news a few nights ago, prior to my mini holiday and a story about a Rental Scam in Calgary was the headline.

Calgary is in a rental crisis as well as a home crisis right now and the local universities and colleges are sending out pleas for help to house their students. The beautiful thing about this country is that in times of need we do help our fellow countrymen and the response to help the next generation was unbelievably positive.

Since the Internet has become our medium for mass exposure every student society and university has a homes/rooms for rent website. This mass exposure obviously gets the word out to students, but also everyone else, especially those looking for it.

So here is a shout out to the woman who brought this to our attention and contacted the media when she was approached online. This is not the first time this has happened here in Calgary and other parts of the country, it is known as the rent a room scam or the tutor scam.

I hope this helps somebody out there keep his or her money. Here is how it works!

The Scammer will respond to a room for rent or home for rent ad found on the Internet. Through multiple conversations with the landlord to gain trust and some legitimacy the agreement is made for the student to rent off of the landlord. The scam comes in when the scammer offers to pre-pay for rent and sends a fake cheque or certified cheque, but it is an amount that exceeds the agreed upon amount. i.e. the agreement is for $4,000 and the cheque received is for $5,000.

Then the scammer will ask the landlord to send back the excess money because they misunderstood or they made a mistake when they wrote out the cheque. By the time bank comes back to the landlord and says the cheque bounced the $1,000 or whatever has already been wired back to the scammer and they are on to the next person.

Some things to watch out for, if you are contacted and in this situation. Don’t give out any bank or credit card information to anyone online unless it is a trusted source.

A lot of times these people present themselves as persons from over seas, this way tracking them down is virtually impossible. So be cautious if someone contacts you from Europe, Australia or Asia.

Put pieces of the puzzle together, does the person’s name fit where they live or how well they present themselves online. Does it make sense that they are actually coming to Canada to go to school.

Finally if you receive the cheque and this happens to you, don’t return the excess money, tell them you will pay them when they get here, or tell them you’ll send them the cheque back and they can pay you when they get there.

It is really too bad we live in a world where these kinds of things happen to good people, but it is the world we live in so be careful, if it smells fishy it probably is fishy.

Real Estate Scams, Real Estate, real-estate, Canada Real Estate, Canadian Real Estate, real estate blogs, real estate blog, real estate blogging, business, mortgage