This week in Tabloid Tuesday: South Africa's horrifying crime statistics haven't made property hunters and investors streetwise.
The case of the desperate landlord. A shrewd con artist will always tap into the big fears and greeds of the day. Take the panic about plummeting house prices and recessionary conditions: most people know that landlords are desperate people, right? And that they will offer their properties for low, low rentals to the first person who presents a cash deposit?
That certainly seems to be the thinking of Mischievous Melissa, a fraudster who has been successfully getting house-hunters to part with lump sum deposits for rental homes she doesn't own.
Table Talk, a popular freebie tabloid that circulates around Cape Town's Western Seaboard, reports this week on how Melissa has a dossier of cases building up against her at police stations in the Western Cape thanks to hoodwinking desperate home-seekers out of cash deposits.
Here's her apparent modus operandi:
· Step one. Look for a rental property available on the market.
· Step two. Advertise that property for a rental vastly below the market norm, on websites, in newspaper classified advertising sections and on shopping bulletin boards;
· Step three. Tell the droves of people who arrive to view the premises that she doesn't have the keys, but that they can look around the property and peer through the windows to get an idea of what's on offer;
· Step four. SMS eager tenants looking for a good deal, urging them pay their deposits fast;
· Step five. Move to another suburb and start again;
· Step six. Enlist others to help widen the scam.
Nicholas Walker, who is among the landlords who discovered a "fake ad" was placed in the Cape Argus, said a neighbour smelt a rat at his Monte Vista property. He told Walker he "saw lots of people coming to view the house, and they would all walk around the side and go through the gate to enter the back".
Commented Walker about the prospective tenants who have been losing money through this scam: "For R4 500, you must think that something is fishy. Rentals in the area range from R7 000 to R9 000. Why would you pay a deposit before seeing the house or making contact with the owner" Walker asked, adding that Melissa is "preying on people who are desperate".
Police spokesperson Captain Frederick van Wyk is reported as saying although "many people" have been conned, they are investigating "only" 10 cases where charges have been laid.
The good news for those hoodwinked is that the investigation, says Van Wyk, is "at a very critical and sensitive phase". That's detective speak for: "We have a good idea of who is running this scam and are about to make an arrest.
Thieving tenants. The shoe is often on the other foot. Tenants are often the perpetrators of crime and landlords the victims. Recent advice from TPN, an organisation that provides information services to landlords, highlights the perils of being a buy-to-let investor.
One of the first signs of trouble, warns Michelle Dickens, MD of TPN: "The tenant requires the property immediately, usually on a Saturday afternoon after banks are closed and wants to pay by cheque. The tenant signs a lease and says they will pay your rent in cash on the 1st, the landlord meets the tenant at the property to hand over keys and does an incoming inspection. The tenant has a ‘story' and promises to pay via EFT the next day. The landlord hands over the keys in trust and does not receive rent."
Whichever way you look at it, it seems like when things seem too financially easy, there's a catch.
Speaking of smoke ‘n mirrors. Investors who ploughed R300m into a property syndication scheme and creditors hoping to get some money back fast from the City Capital/Capital Investments set-up have been dealt an irritating blow. At the end of last week, syndication operators had a bunfight with liquidators, not over the millions tied up in property, but over the second-hand office furniture that together with a bakkie and trailer might at most fetch have fetched about R300 000-R400 000 last week on auction.
"In a last minute effort to stop the auctioning off of certain movable property, specifically office furniture, an urgent application was yesterday made to the Western Cape High Court by Dividend Commercial (Pty) Ltd against the liquidators of Capital Investments (Pty) Ltd (in liquidation). City Capital (also in provisional liquidation) effectively owns 15% of the Div-Vest group, of which Dividend Commercial is a part," said law firm Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs. The application was dismissed, and the furniture will be auctioned at a later date.
One wonders whether there's money hidden in a secret drawer, or stuffed in a chair cushion as, amid all that money being thrown at lawyers, no-one seems to have been actually using the furniture.
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