Most important part of this story is that the house is “in a short sale”. This means the “owner/landlord” does not fully “own” the property which was “rented” to his “friend”.
And, since it is in a short sale the “owner” is the BANK. The Bank isn’t commenting here. The “owner” being the guy foreclosed on (assumedly, unless he is a proxy owner put there by the bank- since they do this nowadays so they will not have a “foreclosed” property on the bank’s books officially— really, they do this a fair amount, scamming the federal reporting system)— he was “renting to a friend who was moving out”... but then the friend goes on vacation in mid-moveout. Yeah, right.
The mysterious “realtor” is probably a buddy of if not the actual “owner” being short saled out.... and the dude needs cash. So.. rent it to fake renters for “cash” and voila!! Delay in the short sale. Someone had to have keys to get in, in order to change the locks. Which could also, btw, have been the BANK, for that matter. There are a lot of missing ingredients of fact here.
Maybe the bank did it to get rid of the “owner’s” renting pal in the interim since his occupancy may no longer be allowed.
Just a thought of several potential scams, or perhaps deliberate plans (by the bank). There are very entertaining comments on the cbslocal article, most of which are BS as to FL law.
The listing of ownership of properties as “street trusts” (for example on the tax rolls as, say “1234 Main Street Trust”) is a phenomena in a lot of places in the continuing disaster that is the real estate market (with the help of scammy Mae and scammy Mac). That and radio ads for TV “house flipper” wannabees. sheesh.
My guess is it’s just a scammer who did the ‘renting’. One exactly like this happened here in Destin last year.
A guy would look for foreclosed properties, break in and change the locks, then ‘list’ the properties for rent on Craigslist and local papers. He’d collect the First/Last/Damage Deposits and had the renters mail their monthly checks to some PO box. He took advantage of people who were new to the area and had all the legal type papers and everything for them to sign just like a realtor would.
These were really upscale homes, not run down neighborhoods, so the $$ involved was quite substantial..................