Property owners pay commissions to rental services for bringing them prospects. If a major property owner has difficulty getting a rental service to honor the Illinois Real Estate License Act’s prohibition against advertising without written permission, what chance do you as a renter have of getting fair treatment from that rental service?
I received the following yesterday by email from a major Chicago apartment owner that’s been working diligently to stop rental services from advertising its properties. I’ve edited the email slightly to remove specific address information.
I just talked to Zillow two hours ago and they are working on removing bad listings for us. We already made big progress but there is still work to do.
It’s impossible to just remove them since they keep feeding in, but Zillow is blocking their IP addresses. We already got Dwell Chicago down. I’m working on getting down the listings for Exit Realty, Homescout and iMove.
But here is the big issue. Brokers use wrong addresses. They will add 1 to the number of our property address and post it.
If you see a rental listing at Zillow that you know to be for a fictitious address, flag it. Better yet, just avoid Zillow.