ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The land had been passed down from her mother. It isn’t much to look at. No buildings, no utilities, and not really near anything else. Yet in early December, Patricia Waring discovered someone was trying to sell her land over the internet.
“Someone came to our gate and was asking about a piece of property that we had for sale out in east Orlando, and I said it’s not for sale,” Waring said.
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Patricia’s property had been posted, well below market value, on Zillow. The prospective buyer found that odd and decided to track her down before sending a Michigan title company money for the land.
“As a friend said, ‘what if you hadn’t been in town?’ ‘What if that man had not come by?’ ‘Would that sale have gone through?” Waring said.
READ: ‘What in the world?’: A warning about an online property listing scam
Waring contacted Zillow, who took down the listing within hours.
A Zillow company representative sent Channel 9 the following statement:
“Zillow strives to provide a safe online platform, and we go to great lengths to police activity and fully inform our users of the existence of scams and how to protect themselves. Our teams use a number of different tools to prevent inappropriate content from publishing, and if a listing is found to be fraudulent after it’s posted, it is removed from Zillow as quickly as possible.”
