Is this rental a potential scam?
Partner and I are looking at a nice single-family home in our area to rent. The price is reasonable but not exceptionally cheap. The landlord has been responsive, with no obvious typos or grammatical errors, and hasn't rushed us at all. If anything he's been very relaxed compared to most landlords we've interacted with! We have a tour of the place set up for tomorrow, he's sent us a lease to look over, and no money has exchanged hands. We even searched for other listings (this house isn't listed anywhere else) and looked up the tax records to find that this person's name matches.
However, what's setting off red flags for me is two-fold. He's asking for a 3-month lump payment towards rent at the start, moving to monthly afterwards. This isn't necessarily unreasonable, as my partner and I are grad students that get our income through lump loans each semester, and this was conveyed to him, so I can understand how he might want to verify we can consistently cover rent. Also, after initially setting up a time to meet, he moved it to the next day as he's "suddenly out of state" and is having "a very good friend" show us the house. Tax records show that he does in fact live in a different state, and he offered to facetime us during the visit and share his drivers license to confirm identification. He also has offered no personal information or way to contact him (other than through zillow) until we pressed for the ID.
I'm not sure what confirmation I could look for at this point, or what to ask him to use to verify, but if anyone has any ideas I would be glad for any input!