The East Village place sounds like a scam. There was a similar scam going for a 4S Ranch foreclosed home awhile back. Be sure to deal with local people only – they should be willing to meet with you at the place and do the full “sell” – showing you the features of the place and letting you walk around the place. Be careful of the other scam as well – somebody pretends that this rental is theirs, and asks you for the deposit and first month’s rent, but later on you find out that person does not own the property. There were a few of these scams being done around last year, they may have popped up this year again.
To prevent such scams, you can ask for proof of ownership of the property and also conduct several visits at different times in order to establish that the property manager/landlord is authorized to work for that property.
As for craigslist, I’ve been using it pretty well to advertise my vacancies.
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