Guard Yourself From These Common Real Estate Scams

By Author: Laffey Homes
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Recognizing common real estate scams and tricks can prevent you from falling into a victim. It can sometimes be difficult to know what is legitimate or not. Since real estate involves money, swindlers won’t stop to seize every opportunity they can in cheating would-be buyers or renters. Working with a reputable real estate agent is one way to ensure you will be on the right path but there are other ways to thwart these common real estate frauds and misleads.

1. Invitation to Fake Seminars – This is the most common trick being employed by swindlers. Invitations come in many ways: by phone, by email, a misleading ad or through word of mouth. Often you will get an offer to attend a “free” seminar only to find out that you need to pay to get exclusive access to whatever other seminars they have. They will hire a motivational speaker, an investment expert who will promise to give you an expert advice. You will be pressured to buy their book, even take you into the location of the property then commit you to the deal without giving you time to seek for independent advice.

2. Leasing Foreclosed Homes – ...
... Houses that have been empty for a long time like vacation homes often get subjected to scams by unscrupulous people. What goes is that the con artist creates an online advertisement pretending to be either the owner or someone authorized to rent on the owner's behalf. He then supplies a throwaway or fake phone number and never supplies the keys to the property. He may also collect a deposit from several victims at a time. In this case, the victim is out with both the money and a place to live.

3. Leasing an Occupied House For Short-Term Stay - This is another big one and it is nearly impossible to catch the perpetrator. For this one, the con artist will target out of town renters who are looking for a temporary home while visiting a city for work or while on vacation. The con artist will list a real home for apartment as a temporary rental and then ask potential renters to wire money to cover the security deposit and rent. The renter then arrives at their destination and finds out the property they rented is not actually for rent and they have no place to stay. Making it even more difficult, it’s just about impossible to recover the money that was wired as it is incredibly difficult to trace.

Real estate fraud can be a big problem. If you are just new to real estate investment, be sure to always transact with legitimate local real estate agency or broker who will have your best interests in mind.

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Laffey Fine Homes
Leading Real Estate Brokerage servicing Long Island and Queens
http://www.laffey.com