A rental listing looks too good. How to check it

The problem

You find a rental that looks ideal. The photos are bright, the rent is lower than similar places, and the owner replies quickly. Then comes a reason you cannot visit yet, and a request to send a deposit or an application fee to hold the place.

By the time the truth is clear, the listing has often been taken down and the contact has gone quiet.

How it can happen

The FTC describes two main patterns. In one, scammers copy a real listing, including photos, descriptions and virtual tours, swap in their own contact details, and repost it elsewhere. In the other, they post fake listings for places that are not for rent or do not exist, often with unusually low rent or appealing features.

Their goals include collecting application fees, deposits or rent, harvesting personal data such as Social Security numbers or photos of a driver's licence, and pushing paid credit monitoring.

The red flags the FTC lists are:

• Rent much lower than similar places nearby.
• Pressure to decide quickly.
• An owner who is out of the country or makes excuses not to show the property.
• A home listed for sale instead of for rent.
• Requests for sensitive information before you have agreed to rent.
• Requests for your credit scores.
• Demands for payment by wire transfer, gift card or cryptocurrency.

How to avoid it

1. Search the address. The FTC suggests searching the address with the owner's or company's name. Different owner names attached to one address suggest a scam.
2. Check where it is listed. See whether the property appears on the rental company's own website.
3. Search the owner or company with words such as complaint, review or scam.
4. Check identities. Verify an agent's business card and ID against company records. Private landlords can be checked against city or county tax assessment records.
5. See the place. Visit in person, or ask someone you trust to do so. For a vacation rental, get the contract before paying a deposit, confirm the address exists and call the resort's front desk if there is one.
6. Use contact details you already had, not details supplied by the person who contacted you.
7. Hold back personal data until you have verified the person and agreed to rent.
8. Do not pay by wire, gift card or cryptocurrency. The FTC says these work like cash and are usually hard to recover.

If you paid, follow the payment steps in how to report a scam in the US. Contact the company or bank you used right away and ask for a reversal. Report the listing to your local law enforcement, the website where it appeared, the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and your state attorney general.

Things to watch

• A landlord who wants money before a viewing.
• A story about being abroad, with keys to be sent by post.
• A price that seems like a bargain.
• Pressure that other applicants are waiting.
• A request for a Social Security number, ID photos or credit scores at the first contact.
• A conversation that moves from the listing site to private messages.

The same care applies to goods bought through marketplaces: check the seller yourself, and be wary of any request for an unusual payment method. A related text-message pattern, in which a stranger starts an innocent chat, is covered in the wrong number text.