Rental Fraud: A Landlord’s Guide To Finding & Catching Rental Scams

While the internet is great in so many ways, it is also a hotbed for scams. Seemingly innocent emails might actually be a way to steal your personal information - and you never quite know if that fraud alert from your credit card company is real. Rental listings are by no means immune to fraud.

What looks like a great potential candidate on paper may be a nightmare tenant with an inability to reliably pay rent each month. Finding a trustworthy and reliable tenant is no small feat, but it’s the highest priority for every landlord. Finding the right tenant can be challenging with the growing prevalence of application fraud, but if you take precautions and know what to look for, you can avoid accidentally renting your property to an irresponsible renter.

From our offices in Lithia, the property management professionals at Eaton Realty help our clients place tenants and manage rentals through our comprehensive property management services. We can handle just about everything except paying your mortgage and HOA fees. When you work with our team, you can be assured that you won’t be scammed - and that we will help you find quality applicants you can trust. Reach out today to learn more about how we can help you manage your rental properties in West Central Florida.

Make Managing Your Rental Properties Easier. Speak With Our Property Management Team › 813-672-8022

What Is Rental Fraud?

Rental fraud can occur when a property owner, tenant, or rental applicant misrepresents themselves or a property. For the purpose of this guide for landlords, we’re focusing on fraud committed by rental applicants and tenants.

Rental fraud has become increasingly common across the United States, including here in the Tampa area. Understanding what these rental scams involve and how to avoid fraudulent applications is the best way to protect your investment as a rental property owner.

Common Types Of Rental Fraud

Fake Credit & Background Reports

Naturally, the largest concern among landlords when vetting potential new tenants is the applicant's ability to pay rent on time. Landlords will review credit scores and criminal history as metrics to determine whether or not an applicant is responsible enough to pay rent. A study from Avail found that 39% of landlords consider credit score to be the most important application item to screen for while 38% of landlords prioritize screening for criminal history. As aresult, renters with low credit scores or criminal history often have an exponentially harder time finding a place to rent.

Desperate applicants will take desperate measures and may resort to producing fake credit reports or background checks. Sites like Paperwork Master or Banksy allow users to generate fake credit reports, or customize pre-made templates. Online websites even sell the holograms used on various State Driver’s Licenses to create realistic fake IDs.

How To Avoid The Scam

The best way to avoid fake credit and background checks is to initiate the checks yourself instead of accepting reports from applicants. You might think you’re saving money by accepting an applicant's credit report instead of paying for your own check, but you may lose thousands of dollars to lost rent and eviction fees down the road.

Research screening services and make sure to choose screening agencies that are FCRA compliant. Browse reviews for the services you’re considering and evaluate pricing to select the option that makes sense for you.

Not all applicants who insist on providing their own credit report are intentionally trying to scam you. Some applicants may offer to provide a report to avoid a “hard credit check” if they’ve applied or intend to apply for multiple rental units. Too many “hard” credit pulls in a short amount of time can be viewed as someone preparing to accumulate debt and can negatively impact a credit score. If you run a “soft credit check” as opposed to a “hard” check, you avoid the issue altogether.

Falsified Proof Of Employment

Much like credit and background reports, applicants will sometimes forge documents to prove employment. In order to increase the odds of being approved for a rental, an applicant may generate fake pay stubs, fake employment references, or a fake W2.

Services like checkstubmaker, ThePayStubs, and FormPros are commonly used to create falsified pay stub documents. There are even companies like Career Excuse that will provide applicants with fake references and have set up virtual company websites to make non-existent places of employment look real.

How To Avoid The Scam

Asking for documentation proving employment isn’t enough. Make sure to cross-reference the employment history in the background check with the employers listed on the rental application to verify that the information is correct.

You’ll also want to research a place of employment beyond their website. Is the company mentioned anywhere else on the web besides its own website? Does the Corporations Division publicly list the company in the state they claim to operate out of (you can search corporate records for Florida using the Sunbiz search tool)? Is anyone listed as an employee of the company on LinkedIn? The more information you can find online about a company, the greater the chance that the company exists. Scammers often won’t go beyond creating a fake company website to give a fictitious company an online presence.

You can call the references listed on the application to obtain more detailed information about the applicant’s work history. However, you should be aware that the applicant may provide falsified references. The better alternative would be to work with a professional screening company instead of trying to verify an applicant’s work history on your own.

Falsified Service Animal Letter

A survey conducted by the American Apartment Owners Association found that 90% of renters have a pet. Yet, a study conducted by FIREPAW, Inc found that only 53% of rental properties allow pets. With so many renters in need of pet-friendly homes and so few pet-friendly rentals available, some applicants have found ways to work around landlords’ no-pet policies.

Some applicants will forge fake service animal letters or emotional support animal letters to be able to keep their pets. Even if you have a strict no-pet policy for your rental, you may still have to accept emotional support animals or service animals. Both Florida law and the federal Fair Housing Act prohibit landlords from discriminating against those with disabilities. With few exceptions, landlords often have to accept service animals and emotional support animals to avoid discrimination.

How To Avoid The Scam

According to the ADA, there are two questions that should be answered to determine whether or not an individual qualifies to be able to claim their pet as a service animal:

1. Does the individual have a mental or physical impairment that substantially limits their ability to partake in one or more major life activities?
2. Does the animal provide emotional support, or perform tasks or services that help to alleviate symptoms or effects of the individual’s disability?

If the answer to these two questions is yes, the tenant or potential tenant may be within their legal right to live with a service or emotional support animal. Review your pet policy and make sure your policies are clearly defined in your rental agreement. You’ll want to also add that an emotional support or service animal letter is required from a licensed medical professional to allow the animal to live with the renter. If an applicant or renter provides you with a letter from a medical professional, you can try to verify the authenticity by contacting the medical professional.

The realtors and property managers at Eaton Realty are not lawyers and cannot provide legal advice. If a tenant or applicant is trying to move an animal in and you believe a letter to be falsified, or you’re unsure of your rights as a property owner, you should consult a local real estate lawyer for advice on your obligations and responsibilities under local law.

Unauthorized Tenants

Sometimes applicants will lie about who they intend to have living with them. It’s common for an applicant to omit planned roommates with a prior criminal history or a poor credit score. Tenants may also sublease rooms to help cover rent or make additional monthly income.

Tenants who aren’t on the rental agreement can be problematic. While a lease agreement can still be legally binding through actions and conduct, the lack of a tenant’s name and signature on the agreement can create more complex legal disputes and potential litigation issues. Evictions in particular, can be more difficult with an unauthorized tenant.

How To Avoid The Scam

You can avoid issues with unauthorized tenants by creating a thorough lease agreement. Make sure your agreement has a clause that states that all occupants over the age of 17 must be included on the lease and screened before tenancy. You should also cover your policies with subleases in your agreement. Some questions to consider while drafting your policies in your sublease section include:

1. Will you allow subleasing?
2. If you do allow subleasing, will you be approving subleases on a case-by-case basis, or will all subleases be automatically approved?
3. Will you be screening sub-leasers or leave that responsibility to your tenants?
4. What are the tenant’s responsibilities and liabilities with regard to the sublease and sub-leaser?
5. How long are visitors allowed to stay on the property?
6. When does a tenant need to discuss visitor occupancy with you?

Formulating answers to the questions above can help you write more comprehensive policies on subleasing for your rental. Make sure that your agreement specifies that any beach of policies may be grounds for terminating the agreement.

Past actions can often be a good indicator of future actions. The last thing you can do to pre-emptively avoid unauthorized tenants is review an applicant’s rental history. Ask for names and contact info for previous landlords in the application and contact the previous landlords to gain more insights into an applicant’s prior rental history.

Avoid Rental Scams With Experienced Tampa Bay Property Managers

Finding the right tenants to fill your rentals can be stressful and time-consuming. Moreover, selecting the wrong applicants for your rentals can cost you a full year’s worth of profits or more. Working with seasoned property management professionals for tenant placement and property management can save you time, help you avoid headaches, and prevent lost profits. Rental nightmares can happen, but most are preventable when you work with the right team.

Eaton Realty helps landlords manage rentals throughout Hillsborough County. Our Tampa property management team brings over 250 years of combined real estate experience to the table along with a network of vetted home service professionals and management processes driven by cutting-edge software. Many of our team members own investment properties themselves, and we’ve built solutions to address our collective frustrations with the industry. Our property managers stay updated with industry trends and the latest rental application fraud scams to help our clients avoid bad applicants. We’ve seen firsthand the different tactics and tools applicants use to misrepresent themselves and actively help our clients filter out fraudulent applicants during the placement process. We believe your rental property isn’t just a space to fill. Rather, we look at it as an asset worth preserving, and we’ll work hard to protect your property.

Are you interested in turning your rental properties into truly passive sources of income? You can speak with our property management team about your rentals by calling 813-672-8022 or filling out an online contact form. We’ll explore your properties and explain how we’d manage them with integrity. We can also provide a free rent analysis to help you determine if you’re currently undercharging in rent.

Additional Reading For Landlords

• Common Tenant Complaints & How To Handle Them
• Who Is Responsible For Appliances In A Rental?
• Tenant Screening Questions