Tommy Karr

I am in the midst of an apartment search again.  It is truly the bane of my existence because it takes up every second of life.  In other parts of the country you can stop in to a complex, see a demo unit, sign a lease for something 6-months or more down the road and rest easy… knowing you will have a place to live when the time comes.  Not in NYC.

In NYC you have to look no earlier than a month before you want to move… and in some cases, the week you want to move.  There’s no such thing as casually shopping months in advance here.  You search the web (or the paper), see something that looks good and go see it immediately with all of the necessary documents in hand (just in case you want it) and sign that day.  If you don’t, it is gone. The vultures will have descended upon the unit like a fresh carcass and picked it clean before you’ve had a chance to “think about it.”

So, while perusing Craigslist, I was excited to find the ad below (click for a larger view): an apartment that was “reasonably affordable” and looked like a gem in the middle of Williamsburg.

I wrote to the person who posted the ad and inquired about the apartment but also did a Google search for 251 South 3rd Street #2-B and found that the very same unit was for sale.  Weird.

When Matt, who also wrote to the person about the apartment, received a reply, things got more suspicious (click for a larger view).

Thanks to some additional sleuthing from Matt, we discovered that this person, Mr. Michael Reed, has a history of scamming people with fake apartment rental ads on Craigslist.

I then wrote to the broker listed on the sales page for the apartment and inquired about the Craigslist ad and asked if the unit was, in fact, a rental or if it was still for sale.  The licensed broker wrote back, very quickly, to confirm that the unit is for sale, that the ad is not affiliated with his agency, Apts and Lofts, and that “the craigslist post is likely a scam”.  Case closed.

So, the lesson here is “renter beware”.  Craigslist has a great page on avoiding scams and the agency that helped me sort out this mess has a really wonderful Renter’s Guide.

So, back to the drawing board.  The right place will come along at the right price… I’ll just have to be cautious, prepared to do my research and have my documents on hand to stake my claim when the “diamond in the rough” comes along.