Business

Fake Craigslist ads, other rental scams cost Boise-area apartment hunters. What to know

By Joni Auden Land

Updated January 20, 2023 2:07 PM

Affording Boise: Rental housing

Soaring rents. Skyrocketing home prices. The double-digit rates of increase in the costs of Boise-area housing create increasingly urgent problems for low-income, working-class and even moderate-income Idahoans who need places to live. Affording Boise is a series of Idaho Statesman special reports on housing. This collection focuses on rental homes, including apartments. A separate collection focuses on homeownership.

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For Darrin Fuchs, a Boise real estate broker, it’s not uncommon for one of his properties to be listed for rent on Craigslist. But there’s one catch — he didn’t create the postings.

In fact, it has become a recurring problem for scammers to steal photos of Fuchs’ vacation rentals, and then create fake ads in an effort to trick would-be renters into paying money for rentals that don’t exist, he said. It’s been happening regularly for years.

“You go three months where I don’t get a notification, and a couple months ago I had three posts in one week,” Fuchs said by phone.

It’s all a part of what officials say is a growing trend of rental scams for Treasure Valley renters, as some grow increasingly desperate for housing in the Boise area’s tight market. Those who fall victim could lose thousands of dollars they’ll never see again.

Boise Police Department Crime Prevention Specialist Ed Fritz said there are a few signs that hint that a posting could be a scam:

It’s listed on a free site, such as Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.
The rentees will ask for payment using apps such as Venmo and CashApp, or with a money order or cashier’s check. They may want money sent through gift cards.
Scammers will sometimes copy and paste language from a property management or real estate website.
The owners can’t meet you in person or are unable to talk on the phone. They may also ask you to “drive by” a property to look at it yourself without a tour.
If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Even with the warnings, Fritz said Boise police still have received multiple reports of local residents losing thousands of dollars from these scams.

Fuchs said he’s heard other real estate agents tell stories about people showing up to an open house to tour a rental only to find out there’s no property for rent.

Boise real estate broker Darrin Fuchs posted this Craigslist ad warning that someone was using pictures of his North End vacation rental to scam would-be renters. He said the problem has been ongoing for years. Courtesy of Darrin Fuchs

Boise has 2nd-highest rate of rental scams

It’s a problem that appears to be hitting Boise especially hard. A 2021 study by Apartmentguide found that Idaho’s capital city had the second-highest number of rental scams per capita of any city. Idaho had the highest rate of any state.

In many cases, there is little that law enforcement can do. Fritz said catching a scammer is extremely difficult — getting someone’s money back can “be next to impossible.”

That’s because scammers often ask people to send money through Venmo or CashApp, which are much more difficult to trace. That means those who lose thousands of dollars from these scams will likely never see that money again.

Losing thousands of dollars in a scam means some people have to seek help to access housing.

Josh Lane, a case manager for Jesse Tree, a Boise nonprofit that helps people overcome financial barriers to housing, said he’s seen instances of people needing financial help after losing money to scammers. Lane said he has had clients who sent thousands of dollars in wire transfers and arrived at houses that weren’t for rent.

In one instance, a scammer contacted one of Lane’s clients, providing the code to a house so the applicant could tour the property alone. After that, the scammer sent dozens of harassing messages, saying the applicant needed to send money immediately or lose the property. The scammer even sent a fake lease with the name of a lawyer who did not exist.

“These are people who are on the verge of losing housing,” Lane said. “They’re willing to overlook a lot of red flags.”

In Boise, the median rent in Boise in March was $1,026 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,218 for a two-bedroom apartment, according to Apartment List, a listing service. The vacancy rate is 1.6%, far beyond the recommended 5% needed for a healthy market. The high prices and low availability have priced some residents out of the housing market, forcing some to live in vehicles or in shelters.

While Boise’s housing crisis has garnered national attention, the problem of rental scams is far from local. Fuchs said he’s seen his properties advertised to people in Montana, another state experiencing a housing crunch.

“It’s across the board,” he said. “You name a city — Sacramento, Butte, anywhere — you’re going to see a lot of fraudulent ads. I wouldn’t look on Craigslist for anything.”

This story was originally published March 28, 2022 at 11:00 AM.