Are you dreaming about the beach and palm trees? If so, it’s time to start planning your vacation for next year.
However, if you’re thinking about renting a house or condo, be careful. You could have great results… or you could rent a dud or get scammed.
This year, the Federal Trade Commission received thousands of complaints from consumers related to vacation rental scams.
Some complaints are from people who wired money to lease a vacation property, and then learned that the person they were dealing with wasn’t the actual owner. Other complaints are from renters who were asked to pay upfront using PayPal. They found out later that PayPal doesn’t offer the same protections for services – such as real estate rentals – as for physical items. In both of these types of cases, the people wanting to rent a vacation property lost money.
Here are tips to help you avoid these schemes:
- Be careful if you wire money. It's the same as sending cash. If you wire money to a person you’ve never met, you have no way to trace it or get it back. If a property owner asks you to pay in full upfront and requires payment via MoneyGram, Western Union, or Green Dot cards, it could be a scam.
- Don’t be rushed into a decision. If you receive an email pressuring you to make a decision on the spot for a rental, ignore it and move on.
- Watch out for low prices because the lower the price for a premium vacation property, the more likely it’s a scam. Rip-off artists love to attract people’s interest by offering below-market rent.
- Get a copy of the contract before you send any deposit money. Check that the address of the property really exists. If the property is located in a resort, call the front desk and confirm the location of the property and other details on the contract.
If you responded to an ad for a vacation rental property and think you were scammed, report it at ftc.gov/complaint. You also can contact the fraud department of the website where you found the ad. You may not get your money back, but you can help others by getting the ad removed.
