Article takeaways
- Narrow your search by specific neighborhoods, set up notifications for new listings, and research buildings thoroughly for violations or crime before signing the lease to any property.
- While Craigslist offers unique rental opportunities that apartment websites might miss, protecting yourself from scammers requires recognizing red flags like unrealistic pricing, poor communication, and upfront payment demands.
- Common fraudulent schemes include hijacked legitimate listings, phantom properties that don’t exist, and bait-and-switch tactics using photos from different properties to lure unsuspecting renters.
- If your perfect Craigslist apartment is smaller than your current place, SelfStorage.com can make downsizing financially feasible without sacrificing your valued possessions by providing affordable storage space near your new apartment.
It’s time to go apartment hunting, but you don’t know where to start. Craigslist can be a great tool if you know how to use it safely for your apartment-hunting needs. You never know what unique apartments you and your roommates will find with a bit of digging.
That said, you don’t want the wrong people to get your personal information or even worse, steal your money. There are lots of rental scams on Craigslist,
Knowing how to find an apartment on Craigslist without getting hit by a rental scam starts with learning how to spot the red flag listings and familiarizing yourself with the most common Craigslist rental listing scams.
But first, we’ll review how to find an apartment on Craigslist safely using some top apartment hunting techniques.
After, we’ll reveal how SelfStorage can help you move into your newfound rental property on the cheap!
Is It Safe to Rent an Apartment off of Craigslist?
You can find just about anything on Craigslist, but you may ask yourself, is it safe to find your next apartment or condo off Craigslist compared to one of the apartment websites?
Renters want to know that they are on top of all the best potential apartments, and if you limit yourself by not looking on Craigslist, you might miss out on a great place to stay.
Craigslist can be a place for honest local people, real estate agents, and rental companies to advertise their available listings, but it can also attract rental scammers.
The good news is that if you look for red flags in apartment and condo advertisements, you can work to protect yourself from falling victim to some common rental scams.
How To Find An Apartment On Craigslist Using These Top Craigslist Apartment Hunting Hacks
There are a few things that you can do to help make your Craigslist apartment search more manageable.
For starters, you’ll want to narrow your search by specifying where in New York City you’d like your apartment to be located.
Picking a particular neighborhood can help you pinpoint a smaller geographic area. This narrows your search to ads specific to the local housing market in that neighborhood.
You can set up a Craigslist notification to inform you when new ads are posted that match the details of your search.
You’ll also want to do your homework about the building. Find out if there are any building violations, problems, or recent crimes in the area.
How to Avoid Rental Scams, Real Estate Scams, and Fake Rental Listings while Craigslist Apartment Hunting
Checking out Craigslist apartments can be an excellent way to find hidden rental market gems or great deals, but there are also a lot of rental fraud scammers out there running hijacked ads, so how can you be sure to skip the rental scams before you sign a lease?
First, we’ll take a look at the red flags of Craigslist rental scams. Then we’ll run through the most common Craigslist rental scams so you can learn to recognize them.
Rental scammers do certain things to trick people into giving them a deposit and sometimes even the first month’s and last month’s rent for fake rental properties that either they don’t own or never existed. Some rental property red flags for Craigslist rental scams include:
- Extremely low monthly rent that’s much lower than the average market rent and too good to be true
- Advertisements with no pictures
- The property manager isn’t willing or “able” to meet you in person
- Avoid the middleman scam where the owners are conveniently unavailable
- They ask for bank account numbers or social security numbers before you get to view the apartment
- The property manager only wants to communicate by email, probably using an email alias, and won’t give out a phone number
- They want you to give them sensitive personal information or a security deposit up front
- Asking for a money wire transfer, such as Western Union, before you meet in person
- Anything else that seems too good to be true: being pre-approved without having to fill out a rental application, a credit check, a background check, or a rental screening process, probably means it’s a scam
Protecting yourself from Craigslist rental scams often requires you to do a little research. And recognizing these red flag listings puts you ahead of the rental scammers. It also helps if you’re able to recognize the most common rental scams on Craigslist:
- Hijacked Ads: Scammers will steal legitimate property listings and turn them into fake rental opportunities on Craigslist. You’ll often see this happen with homes that are actually for sale and listed by real estate agents.
- Occupied Home: In this rental scam, scammers attempt to get potential tenants to put down a deposit on a real property that is already occupied. They’ll often say the current renters are moving out soon, and encourage them to do a quick drive-by. They’ll be eager to collect a security deposit, and once they do, they’ll disappear.
- Phantom Rentals: Phantom rental property listings are apartments or houses that don’t exist. The rental listing may include fake photos, but not always. Sometimes they won’t even use a real address.
- Missing Amenities: These rental listings are real, but promise potential tenants extra features like a pool, gym, or parking that aren’t actually available with the overpriced rental property they’ll be getting.
- Showing a vacant property: Some rental scammers will actually break into empty properties to give “tours.” They’ll tell apartment hunters that they’re the property manager or landlord and say they’re eager to start a landlord-tenant relationship with you. They may apologize for the unclean condition of the stagnant rental property, but assure potential tenants that the maintenance team will clean it before you move in. Then, they’ll collect the potential tenants’ deposit and disappear.
- Bait and Switch: With a bait and switch rental scam, the captivating photos in the property listing aren’t actually of the place potential tenants will be renting. These rental scammers use pictures of a completely different property to lure hunters in.
As you can see, while some scammers are simply looking to sell your email address for spam emails, others are out to steal your hard-earned money.
If something sounds too good to be true or you can’t find any personal information or a real estate website on the realtor or business offering the rental property, it’s probably a scam.
Doing your homework can prevent you from losing money on fake listings.
How To Find an Apartment on Craigslist Using SelfStorage.com to Downsize
Did you find the perfect apartment or condo on Craigslist, but it isn’t quite as big as your old place? You’re not alone. The high demand and rising rent prices caused by vacation homes and the Airbnb market make downsizing a popular way to reduce the cost of living.
Moving into an apartment without giving away our sentimental and valuable belongings is easier said than done.
SelfStorage.com can help you find the best storage unit for your particular storage needs in a few ways. First, use our storage unit guide to figure out the sizes and amenities you need.
Then, enter the zip code of your new apartment into our signature SelfStorage.com unit search tool. We’ll show all the storage unit rental listings in your chosen search radius to find the storage unit size you decide you want with all the amenities you think you’ll need.
You can make moving easier by booking your unit before you move and using the empty unit to stage your packed boxes. That way, you can pack at your leisure, loading the boxes into storage as you go.
Then, on moving day, you simply transfer everything from the unit to the moving truck to save big on time and rental truck money.
So take your first step toward financial freedom now by searching SelfStorage.com. We’ll browse more than 20,000 storage facilities nationwide to find a cheap storage unit near you and compare prices and unit sizes.
Our storage unit search bar uses amenity filters you set to isolate the storage units in your zip code that have precisely what you need. You can contact the storage facility through our site and book your storage unit today.
