Be Smart and You Won't Get Screwed

... hopefully. Well, the hubs and I are on the prowl for a new place to live. We like our cozy one bedroom apartment but we're not so fond of the noisy apartment life. There's the screamer next door who yells profanities into his phone and through our bedroom wall all day, then late at night the moaner makes her appearance- I've never heard someone have such loud and loooong sex in my life- it's kinda weird, and definitely uncomfortable. And when the people on our other side got into a loud fight we heard every word of it- and so did our shelves when they slammed the door. When we take a nap mid-day there is always some group of people or children or cars making so much noise that we're woken up and then they continue to make noise right outside our apartment so it's nearly impossible to get back to sleep. I am a grummmpy person when I'm woken up from a nap- you don't wanna be the one to do it or you'll get your face eaten. Just a warning...


SO all that to say we'd love to find a townhome or condo or single family home for about the same price we're paying now- which isn't easy. But there are deals to be found and we thought we might have found one last week. Craigslist was where I found the amazing house my sister and I rented my senior year of college, so after little luck on the rental sites I returned to it. Saw a townhome that looked nice on the outside and asked the lister for more info and pics of the inside. He then sent a suspiciously long email 1/2 of which was about renting his place- the other half was some random info about the USAid he apparently worked for with his wife overseas. A few red flags went up but the place and price were ideal so I thought I'd continue to look into it. I spent the whole next day at work using all my connections to find out if this guy was the actual owner or just a scammer. After 5 hours of researching I found the house listed with a realtor so after work I called the company and asked them about. As I suspected the house is actually bank-owned and NOT for rent.


What did we learn? DO YOUR RESEARCH! Especially in this economy people are desperate and out for themselves, be careful who you buy from or rent from make sure they're the true owners and the property isn't under foreclosure, etc.


The next day the guy emailed me offering me the house and all this BS about how he trusts me to take care of it and suddenly his grammar/ spelling/ english was getting really bad. No real owner would EVER turn over their home to some random person who just emailed them some basic info about themselves- and I hadn't even seen the place or anything.... of course at this point I knew he was a scammer but I was then aware of how bad of a scammer he is. He said that he would send me the payment info so I could send the money and after verifying the payment he'd have his mother in law come give me the keys. What an idiot- yeah I'm gonna pay you with a money transfer MORE than you originally said without ever seeing the inside and just take it on good faith that your "mother in law" is gonna deliver the keys. Idiot. So I know I shouldn't have done this, but I emailed him back saying we're no longer interested and certainly not interested in being scammed because we know the home is bank owned. And that I reported him to the police, craigslist and the agent selling the home and wished him good luck dodging all that.  I did call the police but they weren't gonna do anything cuz it's so common but I figured I scare him anyway- scumbag deserves it. Be smart, dolls!