Sarah is packing up after just four months living in a home she had hoped to eventually buy.
“It’s horrible. Why would anyone do this to anyone?” she said.
Sarah asked 11 News not to use her last name.
She’s so nervous about the people who keep circling her home, asking questions as she packs up that she’s put a metal bar behind the front door.
“It’s a nightmare,” she said.
The nightmare started when she got a notice to vacate the house she had been renting. Only then did she learn the man she had been renting from didn’t actually own the home.
He told her he did.
She even checked.
“His name was very similar to the actual owner of the house’s name, and you know when I went online and looked it up, I assumed it was him and I just assumed the county had misspelled it,” Sarah said.
Sarah said she felt better about the transaction because the man who said he owned the home happened to live right next door. He told her he owned that house too.
But in mid-January, he skipped town. He didn’t say why.
Two weeks later, the eviction notice showed up.
“It’s a common type of fraud,” Lester Blizzard of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said.
Blizzard, a prosecutor for the county, said renters should always check out a property’s owner before they sign anything.
“Do they demonstrate the ownership to the property… Do they have keys to the property … These are common sense things you ought to look at when you plunk down some money,” Blizzard said.
“I had no idea. No idea whatsoever what was going on until we got this letter that said hey you guys need to leave immediately,” Sarah said.
So now she’s out $5,000, and has to pack up all over again.
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