Renting without ever meeting someone in person - normal or suspicious?
I'm moving from NYC where I've always rented in big buildings with in-house leasing etc, so I'm not sure what's normal when renting in LA from a much smaller operation (the unit is just one of 4 in a small building). Lease is already signed but I just need a sanity check before sending the deposit...
We found the apartment on Zillow and it's also listed on all the other sites that draw from CRMLS. All our communication has been with the listing agent who seems to be legit; we've called & texted the phone number for him from zillow and it matches the one on his parent company's page, his instagram, youtube, etc; his license # also checks out. However, for the tour he gave us the combo to a lockbox on the entry gate and we let ourselves in without meeting anyone (apparently this is not uncommon?). And they said we'll retrieve our keys out of the same lockbox once the lease starts.
They actually didn't charge us an application fee but just had us send screenshots of our own credit reports; I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative sign. There's been no pressure from their end and in fact they were a bit slow to approve and send the lease over. The owner name on the lease match property records online, as do the phone numbers, but of course that information is available to anyone looking for it. The deposit & rent are to be paid via zelle to a gmail account (the account name does reference the name of the owner's mother which I found doing a deep dive into deed records).
So if this was a scam, I'm not sure at what level it would be perpetrated, and I don't see any super obvious red flags, but once that money is zelle'd then its gone so I just want to know if I'm overthinking this or is there actually something to be suspicious of?