Anyhow, the single most significant indicator of all rental scam is that the perpetuator is not going to show you the apartment in person.
Yup; never rent a house long-term without seeing it for yourself and meeting the landlord in person. Never sign anything sight unseen. And don't click on links in email.
Interesting that the scammer asked the author to search on airbnb themselves; that's what I'd do to avoid following a scam link. But if the house is not found, the victim will ASK for a link, increasing the chances they'll click on it by over 9000. And if the victim doesn't trust it, they'll just bail out - like with the poorly written emails, a good way to filter out victims.
Is it the liability issues (blocking content implies taking responsibility for the content instead of just being a middleman)? Is it fear of driving the scammers to make ever better listings? Is it that the costs to do this outweigh gains? Is that the tech would have too may false positives?
All of these 4 steps are technically automatible; what's stopping these companies from implementing them?
Heuristics that are easy for a human to apply aren't always so easy for a computer. How do you quickly judge in a programming language if a photo is of professional quality but nothing about the renting agent is mentioned? How do you judge if it's priced high enough to be vaguely plausible, but suspicious in context, by knowing intimate details of the local market in the way someone living there does?
I think detecting scams is much harder than most people really want to admit. Which is why stopping them is challenging.
Average one-bedroom rent in San Francisco is $3,520, and two bedrooms is $4,550. It's much cheaper elsewhere in the Bay Area. In Oakland, average one-bedroom rent is $2,470, and two bedrooms is $3,050. $4,300 is very plausible in Oakland.
Source: https://www.zumper.com/blog/2020/02/zumper-national-rent-rep...
To be more accurate, it is only a subset of SF residents (in the IT space) that get that kind of pay, I often wonder how is the life of those that do not belong to that elite and that do not make that kind of 6 figures money.
If we take these as valid data:
https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/occupationalem...
And set an arbitrary threshold at 45 US$/hour, the amount of people exceeding that are 31.1%, if we set it at 50 US$/hour they are 19.4%.
If we draw another line, those that get less than 25 US$/hour are 42.1% and those that get more than 25 but less than 45 are 26.6%.
So, even if we assume that 40% of people commutes for long distances (and BTW technically are not SF residents), since only between 20% and 30% of San Francisco workers can actually afford it, it still leaves us with 30%-40% of people that must be in a really tight spot.
I mean, if you live in SF and have a yearly income of "only" 50-60,000 US$ working some 2000 hours at 25-30 $/hour, and you live in a house that you can rent for roughly the same amount or that you can sell for (say) a million, what actually keeps you there?
Maybe you can find somewhere else a similar job, paid in the 15-20 $/hour range, you lose 20,000 on the job but get an additional 40,000 from the rent or from interests on the capital.
Classic perverse incentive, the only way to fix this is a drastic vacancy tax.
What does this have to do with not renting the apartment? Any business will deduct interest payments as a business expense.
1. All accomodations are available (w/d in unit, pets ok, wheelchair accessible, furnished!) - eliminating listings with all of these checked will nearly eliminate the scam listings.
2. The description doesn't include any information about who's the renter. Usually the landlord or property manager will mention something about themselves.
3. Professional photos. This in itself is not a giveaway, but given the above two clues, almost always indicates the photos were taken from another listing. A reverse image search can confirm.
4. The deal is too good to be true. Know the market. $4.5k may not be enough to get you a furnished luxury 3BR single family home in the Bay Area.
I've had to browse through a lot of CL listings in the Bay Area and these are the nearly guaranteed ways I've found to eliminate the scam listings.
If that's not enough, I start my emails with requesting times of showings. If someone isn't willing to commit to meeting and showing me the place, I won't go any further.