More Bad News

Although it's been awhile since I posted last (been busy, sorry), but, with the recent events happening this past month I felt I must say something.

FRAUDULENT TRANSACTIONS INVOLVING VACATION RENTALS ARE EPIDEMIC!

In the 5 years I have been renting vacation homes and condos I have received a handful of notices that others were trying to rent my home as their own. However, in the past week alone I have had 4 instances where people showed up at one of my homes saying they had rented it. Yet there was already a renter in the house that had previously rented my home - legitimately.

Due to the extreme level of supply and demand we experienced in March of this year, many desperate vacation travelers jumped at any opportunity to rent a home they found. Here's the thing... there were literally  NO legitimate homes available for these dates unless you had deep pockets (there were only homes available for $12,000 + per week). Those that did find homes at the last minute usually found themselves at the end of a "too good to be true" deal that went sour.

I've spoken about this before, but felt I must talk about it again due to the extreme nature of scams others have experienced this past week.

Please review my previous posts about how to protect yourself from fraudulent listings when attempting to book a vacation home or condo.

As always... caveat emptor!

Yours Truly,

Harry Johnson Jr.
Miami Beach Vacation Rental Homes Property Management
http://www.firsthomehelpers.com
786-548-2673

You Can't Be Too Careful!

Take a look at my previous post. I put out an offer for anyone that is considering renting in Miami Beach to contact me BEFORE you rent. Whether you are renting one of my homes, or even someone else's home that I do not manage.

Well, I just got a call from someone that did NOT contact me. And they learned the hard way that you MUST be careful when renting a vacation home.

Here are some details of what happened and how you can learn from this persons mistake:

1. They inquired about a rental from Craigslist.
2. While not all Craigslist ads are fraudulent (we advertise there as well), you do have to be very careful when choosing to rent from a Craigslist ad as this is pretty much the ONLY place where fraudulent posters post their ads
3. The person that called me sent a payment via Western Union. NEVER MAKE A PAYMENT THROUGH WESTERN UNION. If the owner/manager does not have an alternate way of accepting payments you should strongly suspect that this listing is fraudulent.
4. Talk to the owner/manager. If they sound foreign you should suspect this listing.
5. Do a search on the Miami Dade Property Appraisers website for the owner name of the property you are considering renting. You should ask the property manager for the owners name and it should match what you find here: http://gisweb.miamidade.gov/PropertySearch/ . Also ask for the owners name and contact information from the property manager. Tell them you must verify this information prior to you sending any deposit money. If they hesitate you should too.
6. Make sure you trust what your instinct is saying to you. Don't disregard it.
7. Ask the property manager if they have this property listed somewhere else or are they only listing it on Craigslist. Most, if not all, property managers/owners that have vacation rentals always have listings elsewhere. Either homeaway.com, VRBO.com, FLIPKEY.com, etc. At the same time ask them how long this home has been used as a vacation rental. If they are just starting out then maybe they haven't had time to list on other sites. But if they say longer than 9 months and they are not on one of these websites, you should question the legitimacy of this rental.

These are just some of the things you should do to make sure you are getting a legitimate rental.

Again, do not hesitate to contact me if you need help either for any of my rentals or someone else's rental. I have helped many in the past without hesitation.

Good luck!

In my attempt to help others about rental scams (from my post below), I've been told that now I, have become suspect as well... Sheesh!

I gave you all the tools in order to find out if the owner you're renting from actually is the owner (see a previous post below). But some people need a little more "hand-holding" I guess... ;-)

So, in order to verify my properties are actually my properties do the following:

1. Go to: http://gisims2.miamidade.gov/myhome/propmap.asp (this is the Miami Dade Property Appraisers Website).
2. On the upper left hand side you'll see a "Search By:" box. You can either search by my name, Harry Johnson (my full name is Harry J. Johnson Jr - so look for those entries - one is without my middle initial), or the property addresses. 4491 Prairie Ave, and 4532 Sheridan Ave, Miami Beach, FL 33140.
3. That's it!

Happy?
Feel more secure? lol...
You should..

NOW GIVE ME A CALL SO YOU CAN RENT OUT ONE OF THESE FABULOUS PLACES!

Harry 786-382-7757

Scamming Potential Renters Has Become Epidemic

Ok, but this world has now officially gotten crazy.

Just in the past week alone I've received 3 phone calls from potential renters that have told me about fraudulent transactions related to them trying to rent a home. Two didn't get taken, but one did and said their vacation for the year was gone because they sent money to an unscrupulous "landlord" for a home the "landlord" didn't even own!

Here's what someone had to do recently to verify that my property was in fact being legitimately rented by the owner of that property. And I believe the reason they did this additional investigation was because something sounded fishy from the beginning. REMEMBER THIS: If it sounds too good to be true, or if your gut is telling you something and you're not listening, then you could be the next victim... read on to find out how to combat this.

So it turns out my property was being advertised on a website I DID NOT pay to have it advertised on. Here is the website: www.world-rentals.com . And the prospective renters, after suspecting something, decided to investigate who the real owners of my property were.

First, they went to the local government property tax appraisers office online for my city and looked up the address to my home. They saw my wife and my name there, not the person claiming to be the owner. So they looked up my wife's name and got her phone number and called her. Imagine my surprise when she called me one day and said someone had called her interested in renting our home we have for rent on other sites, but "without" my wife's name anywhere to be found on those sites. I wondered why they called her phone number and not mine.

So I called them up and asked how I could help them. They said they saw my site advertised on www.world-rentals.com and were interested in renting it but said they person advertising it was the owner and wanted them to send him the deposit to book the home. I told them I had never heard of www.world-rentals.com and didn't know how my property got on there.

That's when they told me how they got my wife's number and traced backed to me who the real owner of the property was they were interested in renting.

While on the phone I asked them to wait so I could see for myself my property there. Sure enough, it was listed there, but for a price that was ridiculously low (too good to be true). And it was listed by a Miguel Sanchez with a phone number that had the correct area code, but was missing all the digits for a full phone number (2nd clue that should have alerted someone - what owner in their right mind would make this kind of mistake).

I told them this was a fraudulent listing, and of course they believed me because my name was on the property tax records. When I told them the correct price and whether they wanted to rent it they said they couldn't because it was out of their price range (after all, my home is a luxury rental that was being offered at Kia-like prices).

After I hung up I did some further investigation into the website where my property was fraudulently listed. I contacted the website and told them of the fraud someone was trying to perpetuate on their website and they need to remove this listing immediately. Guess what kind of response I got? Zero, zilch, nada. Now I'm not saying anything, but after a month of no response, I'd say this website was the actual perpetrator of these kinds of fraudulent transactions, what do you think?

If you scroll down to a previous post entitled "Beware of Vacation Rental Scams!" I wrote about some things you should do to help assure the home you rent is from the legitimate owner. I recommend following those steps to help assure you too don't get taken.

Gook Luck and have a great vacation!