Apartment Hunt: the Fear of God

Searched Craigslist for a while and came up with three potential apartments I deemed worthy of further inquiry:

The first apartment was actually a whole house.  It listed at a price that couldn’t possibly be correct and did not specify its exact town of location, but there were pictures, and it looked nice, so I sent an e-mail (through Craigslist;  no other contact information had been provided.)  I received an immediate, courteous reply, in perfect English, discussing the property and the evaluation process for prospective tenants at length.  The reply had weird paragraphs full of punctuation symbols at the top and bottom, came from a random-letter Hotmail address, and contained a number of plausible reasons why the Craigslist ad was short on such specifics as the property’s exact address.  It asked me to submit to a pre-certifying credit evaluation and search for prior evictions before meeting with the evaluating agent, by going to a specified website, using a link they provided, and filling out a quick form there.  (It also mentioned that some people were not comfortable with this process, and if so, they certainly understood, but that they wouldn’t waste time showing me the apartment without it.)  The website had a very similar name to another credit-check organization, but generated no hits or identification itself when searched on Google.

My friend Pigbristles did a quick search or two on my behalf, and by all accounts, this is almost certainly an identity theft scam:  had I provided any information on their “credit-check” site, it would have been used to open accounts in my name, etcetera, and I would never have heard from them again.  Or perhaps they would have shown me the place the pictures were of, then “corrected” the price to something outrageous, so I would’ve gone away angry at the misunderstanding, oblivious to their true purpose.  Either way, I didn’t bite.

The ad for the second apartment provided a direct-contact e-mail, so I sent them a letter, too.  I received an animated reply the next day, heaping blessings upon me and revealing to me the actual address of the property–  but also discussing at length how they were looking for an upright soul with the “Fear of God” whom they could count upon to treat their house as their own, and whom they looked forward to becoming not only their tenant, but their “future friend”.  I sent them a brief response claiming that I had found a different location that better suited my needs, and wishing them luck.

The ad for the third apartment allowed one to contact through Craigslist, or call directly by phone.  I sent an e-mail through Craigslist.  I haven’t heard back from them yet.

In the meantime, I have discovered that the widow two doors down the street has a nearly identical apartment to the one I am living  in now at her house, and is losing her tenant on Saturday, and is looking for a new one.