Massachusetts
“A living nightmare”: Massachusetts renters warned about apartment scams
By Mike Sullivan, WBZ-TV
WALTHAM — It is a rising development that the Higher Enterprise Bureau (BBB) expects to worsen when faculty college students return in September. We’re speaking about rental scams.
“A residing nightmare is the best way I describe it,” says Ashley Colindres, a Waltham resident searching for a brand new place. “They may all ask you to ship cash up entrance, inform you which you could go look within the home windows to see when you just like the place. In the event you’re nonetheless ship us a deposit, and we’ll mail you the important thing.”
To date, the BBB says 12 folks have been hit in Japanese Massachusetts up to now this yr, nonetheless there have been 270 folks impacted nationwide. The demand for lease in Boston is extraordinarily excessive, which is paving the best way for scammers to leap in. The BBB warns renters to be careful for advertisements that seem too good to be true.
“We’re speaking over $5 million which have been reported misplaced between the businesses in 2022,” tells Paula Fleming, the Chief Spokesperson for Higher Enterprise Bureau branches in Massachusetts. “I did affirm [the major rental search websites] do attempt to vet the postings, however as you’ll be able to think about, there are such a lot of postings day-after-day that it’s exhausting to do this.”
Typically scammers will copy photos from an previous advert to duplicate the faux. A 2018 examine from Stanford confirmed that 43% of renters encounter faux advertisements.
“I not too long ago had one final month the place a gentleman was telling me he was renting out this dwelling as a result of the lady who lived there, her husband handed away from most cancers. It turned out to be a rip-off,” tells Colindres.
The Higher Enterprise Bureau says youthful generations are sometimes the targets for all these scammers. In the event you suppose you noticed a faux advert you might be urged to contact the BBB, the Federal Commerce Fee, or the web site you noticed it on.