Member Opinion

Heather Brecl

by Heather Brecl

Spring Fever? Ready to move? Spring in Colorado is the perfect time to make moves. The real estate market is percolating, that bright Colorado sun is out, and people are deciding where to move next when the school-year ends. Whether you are selling your house and need to downsize, or are just tired of being bogged down by all of your belongings, it is time to get busy and start the big purge. Almost all of us are drowning in holiday decorations, keepsakes we inherited, enough clothes for the next 10 years, and every other imaginable item that we couldn’t possibly live without. But as every real estate agent (myself included) and mover will tell you, when you decide to make a move, it is time to shed all of those unneeded items and start anew.

With a plethora of online marketplaces for selling your belongings, it can be a real challenge to navigate the best way to make the most money and stay safe. What you may not know is that selling your items on places like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist doesn’t come without a great deal of risk. While you do reach a much larger audience than a traditional garage sale, and you potentially get more for items because you have a forum to educate buyers about the items you are selling, if you venture into the online marketplace, you better be ready to outsmart the ones trying to take you for a ride. My recent personal experience on FB Marketplace was fraught with fraudsters and scam artists around every corner. Three out of 20 people asking to purchase items were genuine and great transactions — the rest were all scam artists trying to find an angle to swindle.

My moving crew from Denver moving company, Box Pack ’n Move, gave me very simple instructions before my move — the more you purge, the less we’ll have to move, the more money you’ll save, and the happier you’ll be! While they treasure my treasures, they also wanted to make sure I wasn’t moving things I really don’t need. Taking that to heart, and wanting a clean slate in my new spot, I managed to separate all of the furniture and items I was prepared to find a new home for with someone else. Having taken photos and measurements of each item, and crafting detailed descriptions, I ventured out into the online world to do what I thought would be quick and easy sales. As an experienced user of social media and a real estate agent with LIV Sotheby’s International Realty since 2015, I figured I had my finger on the pulse of how to pack, purge, and move without a hitch. I’m an expert in every other part of the moving process, so why should selling my items online be any different? Honestly, I wondered why everyone seemed so frustrated selling on FB Marketplace if thousands of people were still doing it. Now I know.

Naturally, being in the moving business as a real estate agent and showing homes to new people I don’t know, I have a heightened sense of awareness for making sure I know who I am meeting, and in this case, who is coming to my door. Listing my belongings online I knew brought some exposure to my personal location and things that I needed to guard. What I didn’t expect was the crazy path I would need to go down to ever get to the point of worrying about who was actually coming to my door to get an item if and when it was a legitimate buyer.

For those who haven’t ventured online to sell something on FB Marketplace, this is how it goes: post the items and then wait to get messages in FB messenger — then the games begin, especially for high-ticket items like a large couch over $500. Not suspecting in the beginning that I was getting fake offers, I was so excited to get someone immediately interested in purchasing the couch. “Hi, is this item still available?” “Yes, of course.” “Great, I’ll Zelle you the money and my cousin will pick it up. I’m not in town. What’s your email address?”

If it sounds too easy to be true, then it is. This is how it went from there — the alleged Buyer sent an email allegedly from Zelle saying that my account required that more money to be sent by the purchaser to reach a certain threshold and that that amount was more than the cost of my item. But not to worry, all I would need to do is to send back the balance. Of course, a quick internet search of Zelle and FB Marketplace fraud led to endless articles on scams on FB Marketplace.

Unsuspecting users don’t see that the email is not actually from Zelle and might send that money “back” to the alleged Buyer. It happens everyday — I hadn’t seen it before, but I’m well versed in fake emails for wire fraud so some careful reviewing showed me that the emails were not from Zelle. Can you use Zelle to get paid? Certainly, but proceed with caution and know who is sending you the money. Zelle will never send an email that is misspelled or poorly written. Also note what the transactions say directly in your Zelle account — if something smells fishy, it is.

The other scam my alleged buyers were running was to say that they would like to text me or call me on the phone. At first a phone call seemed like a more solid option, as I would get to actually hear the voice of the buyer and decide if I thought it was legitimate. Of course, upon calling the number, the buyer never picked up and said they needed to send me a six-digit code to verify my number. Another quick online search revealed that the Google Voice six-digit code verification scam is rampant in online marketplaces. Fraudsters send a code hoping that people will sign up for a Google Voice account that they, the fraudster, can then hijack that account to get personal information.

Of course, if you do have the luck of finding a real buyer on Facebook the final step is to get the item safely to the buyer and get paid. Fortunately, I was able to talk on the phone with three buyers who were real people and good ones, at that. I found a safe time and place to exchange the item and received funding all on the up and up. No item is worth more than your safety, so be sure to pick a place to exchange goods that is safe ground. Public locations like the Glendale Police Station are excellent spots to choose to meet someone during the day in a public setting that is monitored.

The lesson to be learned — collect fewer things, treasure what you have. When the time comes to purge or move keep your wits about you and find partners in the real estate industry who you trust to help you navigate the waters. Moving can be a beautiful liberating process when you are in the right hands.