[kevinoconnor7]

Given what's in the Medium post, there's zero evidence for that. The author is assuming that a scam took place, but another plausible explanation is that the author had a missed rent payment on their record and the management company auto rejects those applicants. Sure, that record might be wrong, but it's still not a scam. Everything else they mentioned is pure speculation.

I think the author, if they feel strongly about this, should reach out to the local community to try to see how common rejections might be. They would also need to establish that CoreLogic is in cahoots with the management company.

[eloisant]

Even though, when I was living in US and rent from an appartment complex, it took them 5 minutes to clear my credit check on their computer.

Even if the author did in fact miss a payment, why should they be able to keep $250 from an tenant they rejected?

[kodt]

Non refundable application fees are normal. Usually to pay for the credit check. $250 is high though.

[throwaway91111]

Well, if they don't actually rent any apartments, they misled them and people spent money based on that lie. They paid for an application that would be accepted. How is that not fraud?

[dsr_]

You don't need to keep all the apartments empty in order to carry on a scam like this, you just need to have one of each type that you're advertising.

You also don't need to actually be the owner of the apartment complex. The property manager can execute this all by herself: keep an apartment open, take the credit card payments directly rather than via the corporate account, deny all the prospective renters.

$17,000/month isn't an amazing amount of money for a corporation that owns apartment buildings, but it's a very nice supplement to the property manager's salary, if she runs it that way.

[tedmiston]

> Well, if they don't actually rent any apartments

Citation needed that they don't actually rent apartments as opposed to the author of the post making this assumption without establishing it with reasonable proof.

[jack9]

> Given what's in the Medium post, there's zero evidence for that

Except the stated facts (if you're just gonna call anything posted a fiction, what's the point of stating it's this and not that?). It's certainly not a conviction, but would specifically be evidentiary and a judge can make a ruling from the bench with contingency.

[kevinoconnor7]

Here's my take, there's two parts of this story:

1) Their experience trying to rent a unit. 2) Their outline of the scam.

I'm going to take all of (1) as facts, albeit it's only one side of the story. So maybe parts are missing and it might be biased, but I'll assume the core points are true.

(2) is where things become less factual. A large part of their support for it being a scam comes from two parts: it could be profitable, and it appears they didn't sell any units that week. The problem is just because a scam is profitable doesn't mean it actually took place. If I get shorted change at the deli I can't call it scam simply because it was profitable for them to short me. I would need to show that the problem is systemic to prove that.

The other supporting evidence was that they didn't rent any units that week. The problem is that they don't actually know that. Maybe the website inventory is stale? Maybe they just happened to not lease any units that week or they're still pending lease signing.

So I would say they absolutely got rejected for an apartment due to the report from CoreLogic. Everything beyond that is unsubstantiated and merely circumstantial.