Looking for rental’s online is a much more difficult task than looking for Utah Homes for Sale. There isn’t a central database. No MLS that has all of the homes for rent in a standard format. People looking for rentals have to visit a variety of classified websites and newspapers. Now, the rental search has gotten even more complicated.
There are a bunch of “fake rentals” on craigslist. The thing so tricky about these is that they are real houses for sale, usually vacant. The scam artist copy’s the listing agents description, information, and photos, then post the properties as really inexpensive rentals. These scammers are even making up fake emails that are really similar to the listing agents real names. In one of the examples we recently had, Benjamin Brown’s Clearfield home for sale was posted as a craigslist rental ad for $800 and the supposed email the scammer made up was enjamin.brown@yahoo.com. Pretty deceiving.
Realistically, a house like this would rent for almost double what the scam advertised price is.
When interested renters contact the supposed landlord, the email reply says that the owners are currently out of town and can’t show them the house, but that the potential renters can just drive by the house, and if they like it they’ll let them live their for a month for free. All they need to do is send in the security deposit, and the “owner” will send them the keys.
Well, as you can imagine, what will really happen is that the fake landlords will cash the check, and no keys will ever be sent because the house doesn’t even belong to them, and is not for rent.
So if you’re looking for Utah rentals online, watch out for landlords who only provide email addresses as contact information,. especially if the rent price is too good to be true.