For the last few years, real estate transactions over the Internet--where buyers need never set eyes on the property they purchase--have become increasingly common.
On
eBay, the biggest online marketplace, and dozens of other Web sites with names like
Bid4Assets.com and
Realestatesupermarket.com, sales involving tens of thousands of dollars can occur entirely online. EBay, for example, may have more than 1,800 residential properties listed on any given day--from multimillion-dollar vacation houses in Florida to thousand-dollar fixer-uppers in the rural Midwest.
But now, with plenty of buyers eager to get in on the real estate boom, such online sites have become perfect places for unscrupulous sellers who have bought dilapidated houses at, say, foreclosure auctions, to resell, or flip, them quickly for inflated prices. Many of the deals sound too good to be true. But the gullible are lured by nice photos and a belief that online transactions on big Web sites are generally safe.
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Read More / Source:
News.com
Mar 11, 2006, 10:34 PM
