Hayward family's home listed for rent by scammer on Zillow
HAYWARD -- The owner of a Hayward Hills house put up a fraud-alert sign on her front door after potential renters showed up at her home asking for a tour. The problem: the home isn't for rent.
"I had somebody show up at my door and ask me about my house that was for rent and I was like 'my house isn't for rent' and she showed me a listing on her phone and I saw the pictures. I didn't really pay attention to the address. I just saw the pictures and the pictures were from the neighbor's house that had just recently sold across the street," said homeowner Kirstin Walker.
Walker sent KPIX the rental ad that appeared on Zillow.
Her home was incorrectly described as a 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 2,164 square foot home renting for $4,400 a month.
Walker said that, 10 minutes after the first person rang her doorbell, another showed up asking to check out the home.
One day later, the website stated that there were 15 applications in for her home.
She said the deposit was advertised as $4,800.
Walker said someone had claimed her property and the contact number went to a Google voice line.
"My concern was, OK is somebody going to show up at my door and say I have a rental agreement and I paid a deposit and now I want in?" Walker said. "It was a little concerning for me about our safety. Just what was going to happen down the road in the next couple of days until Zillow could sort it out?"
A Zillow spokesperson confirmed to KPIX the listing was removed:
"Zillow strives to provide a safe online platform with accurate information, which is why we go to great lengths to prevent inappropriate listings from being posted and to inform users of how to protect themselves from scams online and offline. Our teams monitor activity in several different ways, actively screening for suspicious content and, if a listing is found to be fraudulent, it is removed from our sites as quickly as possible.
"Our 'How to Recognize and Avoid Rental Fraud' page and 'Beware of Scams and Other Internet Fraud' page both explain how to look out for red flags online, such as requests for wire transfers or rental prices that seem too good to be true and provide other valuable information about how to avoid bad actors in the housing market."
"Zillow is basically opening up to people to scam others just by stealing somebody's listing and claiming it as their own and, when somebody's claimed it, I can't claim it back. I can't do anything with it until they release it," Walker said. "I had been trying to get them to do something about it. Until you guys contacted them, was when they finally jumped on it."
Walker was eventually able to claim her property, although she said the description still represents her neighbor's home.
"It seems absolutely absurd to me that anybody really can just claim a property," she added.
She hopes Zillow will make its process to verify ownership more rigorous.
When she asked what the requirements were ...
"Send my name and my phone number and they sent me a confirmation text that I then clicked on and they said, OK the property's yours and it was, like, seriously, that's it?" Walker recalled.