San Francisco’s already cutthroat rental market has a new villain — social media scammers swiping legit apartment listings and flipping them into viral bait for desperate renters.
Fraudsters are stealing real apartment tour videos from Bay Area realtors and reposting them on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, but with one major twist: they slash the rent to jaw-dropping prices, according to a report by SFGate.
In one case, a TikTok account dubbed “Budget Friendly Homes” (aka for_rent_sanfrancisco) racked up nearly 12,000 followers by posting glossy walkthroughs of trendy units near Alamo Square — advertising one-bedrooms for as little as $1,800 a month. That account has since been taken down.
Scammers lifted the footage directly from real estate agents’ social media pages, sometimes even impersonating the agents themselves by copying their names, headshots, and even license information.
By the time victims realize something’s off, the scammers have already asked for deposits or application fees before “showing” it, then they vanish.
“It’s always when the market gets really busy — rents are going up — when there’s limited inventory and a lot of demand, then the scammers come out,” local real estate agent Dave Chesnosky told SFGate.
Agents told the outlet that the problem has exploded alongside the rise of social media as a marketing tool. A Bay Area agent for Sotheby’s International Realty, Marsha Abrahams, has even been forced to confront the fraud on her own social media page, warning clients that she isn’t the one offering luxury lofts for pennies on the dollar.
“The accounts using the handles @for_rent_sanfrancisco and @marsha_abrahams are not affiliated with me in any way,” she posted on her Instagram. “I do not advertise rental listings or request deposits through TikTok, WhatsApp, or text message.”
An agent with Compass Realty, Nick Abraham, has also had his identity used fraudulently, and he only learned of it after a stranger messaged him asking if he received a deposit–after the victim, a hopeful tenant, contacted “him” via TikTok. Except Abraham didn’t use TikTok.
“I looked it up and they had taken my actual picture, my actual department of real estate license number and were impersonating me,” Abraham told SFGate. The bandits even set up a sham email account with his name misspelled.
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Experts say the rule for renting remains the same, regardless of where you’re based: if you haven’t stepped foot inside the front door, keep your wallet in your pocket.
“I tell people, it’s really easy to figure out if they’re a scam,” Chesnosky said. “Just say you want to see the unit in person. That’s all you’ve gotta do.”
