Jared Decker was driving to grab a quick lunch one otherwise unremarkable afternoon when an unexpected phone call abruptly diverted his attention and marked the beginning of what would become a prolonged and exasperating ordeal in the world of real estate. It was the autumn of 2023, a period when the rental market in Tampa, Florida, was bustling but increasingly vulnerable to deception. On the other end of the line was a distressed local businessman who had just made a shocking discovery: thousands of dollars had mysteriously vanished from his personal bank account. This caller, clearly agitated, explained that Decker’s employer—a reputable property management company responsible for overseeing more than six hundred rental homes—had been automatically charging him close to $10,000 in rent over several months, even though he had never signed a lease or set foot in any of their properties.
Perplexed, Decker quickly began searching for answers with the cooperation of his company’s owners. Their investigation soon revealed a disturbing truth. A cunning fraudster had rented one of their properties using an entirely fabricated identity, merging stolen financial information from the Tampa businessman with personal details stolen from yet another unsuspecting citizen in Pennsylvania. This elaborate deception allowed the scammer to occupy the property without raising immediate suspicion. Crucially, the con artist had secured the lease before Decker’s firm—Coastal Pioneer Realty—assumed management of the property, meaning the fraudulent tenant had never undergone the firm’s standard verification and screening procedures. The situation spiraled into a complex legal tangle involving eviction notices, courtroom appearances, and strenuous efforts to locate and recover the missing funds. In the end, the ordeal cost thousands of dollars in legal fees and lost rent, expenses largely absorbed by the property’s owner—a small-scale “mom and pop” landlord who relied on just a few rental units to generate income.
This incident, though dramatic, is part of a much larger and increasingly troubling pattern. Across the United States, landlords and property management firms are raising alarms over an upsurge in fraudulent rental applications. Scammers are inventing fictitious financial documents or appropriating entire identities to improperly obtain housing. In some hotspots—such as specific neighborhoods in Atlanta—executives at large management companies like Greystar report that as many as half of all applications are rejected for confirmed instances of fraud. Even high-profile figures are not immune: during a 2023 earnings call, the CEO of Camden Property Trust recounted how someone had attempted to rent an apartment in Charlotte using his own stolen identity.
While the precise scale of the crisis remains difficult to quantify—data often originates from real estate trade groups or leasing software companies with vested interests—the consensus among property managers is clear. Leasing fraud has evolved from an occasional nuisance into a significant and pervasive threat. Some observers might dismiss these complaints as the laments of wealthy property owners protecting their profits, yet that view overlooks the broader ripple effects on ordinary renters. As property managers adopt stricter fraud prevention measures, they increasingly rely on automated tenant-screening tools that are not always transparent or error-free. This technological tightening can translate into more invasive, complicated, and sometimes unfair application processes for honest apartment seekers—and, in certain cases, rising rents as owners attempt to offset losses caused by scams. Moreover, stricter screening does not always eliminate the risk of fraudulent tenants slipping through; unsuspecting renters might still find themselves living next door to someone operating under a stolen identity.
Leasing scams generally fall into two primary categories. The first, known as “first-party fraud,” occurs when an applicant submits genuine personal details but manipulates supporting paperwork—such as pay stubs, bank statements, or credit reports—to falsely appear more financially stable than they are. The second form, dubbed “third-party fraud,” is more insidious: it involves wholesale identity theft or the assembly of an entirely fictitious persona built from fragments of stolen information. Once a fraudulent tenant successfully gains possession of a property, their motives vary widely. Some simply inhabit the unit rent-free until evicted, others illegally sublet it to naïve tenants for quick profit, and still others exploit the space for illicit activities, including drug or sex trafficking, as warned in reports by RealPage, a major property-management software provider.
According to industry leaders such as Greystar’s senior managing director, Jamie Teabo, both the volume and sophistication of these fraudulent attempts have increased sharply over recent years. Several factors have contributed to this surge. The pandemic accelerated the shift toward virtual leasing processes, allowing scammers to hide behind screens and fabricated digital identities. Meanwhile, the rise of artificial intelligence has made it remarkably easy to generate convincing fake documentation that can fool even experienced verification teams. Smaller landlords, who collectively own more than one-third of the nation’s rental inventory, are particularly vulnerable because many lack advanced technological defenses. Combined with the influx of newly completed apartment buildings—often offering months of free rent to attract tenants—these conditions create an expansive playing field for fraudsters. Surveys conducted by the National Multifamily Housing Council and RealPage in late 2023 revealed startling trends: roughly three-quarters of property managers reported a clear uptick in fraudulent applications, and nearly one-quarter of recent evictions were linked to such deception. Each eviction can drag on for months, draining time and money from both management companies and individual landlords.
Industry veterans confirm how dramatically this situation has changed. A decade ago, fraudulent behavior was rare and usually limited to mild exaggerations of income or creditworthiness. Now, as Chase Harrington, president and COO of Entrata, observes, leasing agents increasingly question whether prospective tenants are who they claim to be at all. Fraud has become so ubiquitous that it appears to transcend location, property type, and local laws. Despite Atlanta’s reputation for favoring landlords through streamlined eviction rules, parts of that city stand out as epicenters of rental fraud. Greystar, which oversees nearly a million units nationwide, reports flagging approximately half of applications from certain Atlanta neighborhoods—especially midtown, downtown, and Buckhead—as suspect. Comparable though smaller fraud rates have surfaced in other metropolitan areas, from Salt Lake City to Boston.
This rising tide of deceit has spawned a booming market for technological countermeasures. Companies like Snappt, which specializes in detecting forged financial documents, have attracted substantial investment and manage fraud screening for millions of apartment units nationwide. While Snappt’s data suggests that around 6.5 percent of applications currently contain fraudulent material—a lower estimate than some competitors’ claims—the figures still translate into tens of thousands of tampered or wholly fabricated documents each year. Many originate from “template farms,” digital operations that mass-produce falsified financial forms, while others come from “advanced fraud rings” that alter document coding to slip past detection algorithms.
These issues extend far beyond the balance sheets of large property-management corporations. For every fraudulent tenant discovered, units remain tied up in lengthy legal proceedings, diminishing housing availability for legitimate renters. Increasing verification requirements also raise application costs, as property owners attempt to recoup losses by charging higher administrative fees. Experts such as rental housing economist Jay Parsons describe the situation as the “unspoken problem” afflicting the rental market: an invisible drag that compounds the broader affordability crisis already squeezing millions of Americans. Dismissing this issue as mere landlord complaining, he argues, overlooks how fraud removes valuable units from circulation and further constrains supply.
Tenant advocates, however, raise their own concerns. Stricter screening powered by algorithms can render rental applications opaque and exclusionary. Prospective tenants often have no understanding of what criteria disqualify them or how their background information is evaluated. Reports from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau highlight the prevalence of data errors and simplistic algorithmic “risk scores” that can reduce human lives to binary accept-or-reject outcomes. According to Marie Claire Tran-Leung of the National Housing Law Project, the escalating use of automated systems is locking many people out of the rental process altogether, forcing them to spend substantial sums on application fees with little realistic chance of securing housing.
Technology providers like Snappt defend their tools by emphasizing consistency and fairness. A company spokesperson asserts that their platform is designed to diminish human bias, not reinforce it, by applying standardized, evidence-based verification methods that disregard race, gender, or socioeconomic background. Yet critics argue that regardless of intent, the focus on fraud detection may distract from the deeper structural issue: the chronic shortage of affordable rental housing. While landlords tighten security to shield themselves from losses, national rents have risen more than 25 percent since 2020. Even with a wave of new apartment completions slightly cooling prices, research from Moody’s Analytics indicates that over half of American renters now devote more than 30 percent of their income to housing costs, a threshold officially defined as “rent-burdened.”
Thus, the debate surrounding leasing fraud underscores a paradox at the heart of the housing market. Property managers contend that sophisticated scammers threaten their businesses and indirectly drive up costs, while tenant advocates view such claims as exaggerated distractions from systemic affordability challenges. Both perspectives, however, converge on one undeniable truth: with digital falsification easier than ever—thanks in part to AI tools capable of fabricating realistic financial records—fraud will remain an ongoing and deeply disruptive problem.
For Jared Decker, the memory of his 2023 ordeal still lingers. He admits that while such cases are relatively rare, his office continues to battle new incidents that evoke the same frustration and disbelief. And every time a scammer succeeds, legitimate renters bear some of the fallout. What was once a straightforward application process has now become an exhausting marathon of paperwork, identity checks, and verification layers. “It’s become much more of a drawn-out ordeal,” Decker reflects, “with far more requirements placed on honest applicants—all because a few bad actors found ways to cheat the system.” In the evolving landscape of modern renting, combating fraud has become inseparable from the challenge of simply finding a secure place to call home.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-scam-leasing-fraud-landlord-apartment-application-screening-2025-10
