Foreclosure Epidemic Infecting Rental Market

Deborah Leggett, a former mortgage underwriter, said she asked about prospective landlords' mortgages while searching for a new rental. She eventually rented a place owned by a management company, not an individual. (By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)
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In recent months, Cahoon, the Legal Services attorney, said her office has been swamped with so many calls about rip-offs and scams, "they doesn't even faze me anymore." Police in the region do not specifically track fraud or theft cases that stem from rental housing, so the trend is difficult to chart.

Still, the problem is concentrated in immigrant communities, where victims are often unaware of their rights and too fearful of the authorities to report crimes, advocates said. "People claiming to be representatives of banks will bang on doors at 11 p.m. at night, demanding that tenants leave immediately. If they're [illegal] immigrants, they'll threaten to have them thrown in jail," Cahoon said. "It's getting really depressing."

Tenants with damaged credit are especially vulnerable. Landlords who advertise "no credit check" might demand large upfront payments in return.

When Fairfax County resident Deborah Leggett began searching for a place that would accept her Section 8 federal housing voucher, she said, some landlords asked for huge sums in advance. A former mortgage underwriter who is now disabled, Leggett said she double-checked landlords' names against property records and repeatedly found disparities.

"I'm suspicious of the majority of people who respond to me off Craigslist," Leggett said. As a strategy, she began asking for a letter from landlords' lenders stating that their mortgages were in good standing. "If you have a right to investigate me as a tenant, I have a right to investigate you as a landlord," she said.

Most of them balked, but Leggett eventually found a place to live, one owned by a property management company, not an individual.

Prince William County police spokeswoman Erika Hernandez said there are several things prospective tenants can do to protect themselves, including checking property records and looking in the phone book to confirm whether the real estate agent works at an established business.

"Try to get as much information as you can," Hernandez said. "If you go to a house and the Realtor shows up in a car, write down their tags and the type of car they were driving."