Potential rental scammer: [email protected]

Hi, can you all verify the email content whether the landlord is a scammer or not.

Hello,

Thanks for the email and since you are not moving in now,We will have to sign a Rental agreement contract and you will pay the Refundable security deposit for the reservation of the property.This is because there are lots of time wasters on here and i dont wanna regret reserving my property for anyone and regret it again.

Last month i spoke with a couple who promised me they are interested in my property.After normal conversation i agreed to reserve the property for them because they said they are interested.They never showed up again and refused to even pick my calls and explain there excuses which is the most painful aspect of it.So before i can proceed we will need to sign a Rental agreement contract and you pay the refundable security deposit for the reservation of the property.

Brittany

This sure sounds scammy to me, I agree. The whole narrative of "I need you to pay me a deposit so that I don't waste my time, once someone reserved the apartment and then they screwed me and it was really horrible for me..." appears to be a standard one in these things and I have certainly never seen it from any of the legit landlords I've rented from in the past. The purpose of these stories is to elicit your sympathy, casting the scammer as a victim and thus making you see them as trustworthy and vulnerable rather than as someone who might be lying. ("I couldn't scam you, I was scammed!") Any correspondence containing something like that, especially when they include anecdotes about "other tenants/prospective tenants," or the phrase "time wasters" rings warning bells for me.

The strange grammar and punctuation is also worrying, redundant phrasing "i don't wanna regret reserving my property for anyone and regret it again", weird colloquialisms ("wanna"), the capitalization of Rental and Refundable. These all point to someone who is not fluent in English but is doing a poor job of trying to appear so.

Above all, however, is the demand for a deposit before you move in or are granted access to the property. It's one thing to pay a security deposit to a landlord upon move in (after signing a lease); it's another to be asked to send money before you have physical custody of the keys. No reputable landlord or agency would demand money up front like that. Do NOT send this person any money!

Those are my thoughts.

Definite scam.