Fake rental listings: how to spot one before you pay

A rental listing is almost certainly fake if the "owner" wants money before you've seen the place or signed anything. Don't pay a deposit to a personal account until you've visited, or had a live video tour, checked who owns the property and signed a contract. For vacation rentals, book and pay only inside the platform's own app or site, never through a link someone sends you.

How fake rental listings work

These scams appear on Facebook Marketplace, classified ad sites, WhatsApp groups and vacation rental platforms. The details change, but the pieces repeat:

What you see	What is usually going on
Great photos, a price well below the area	Photos and text copied from a real listing, with the contact details swapped for the scammer's
"I'm abroad, I'll send you the keys"	There is no owner nearby because there is no rental. The keys never arrive
"Many people are interested, pay today to reserve"	Pressure so you pay before you check anything
A deposit to a personal account, a payment app or crypto	Money that is hard to trace or get back
"Let's skip the platform's fees, I'll send you a booking link"	A fake booking page on a domain the scammer controls
Photos of your ID, payslips and bank details up front	Data that can be used to take out loans in your name

The last one matters even if you never pay. Before you send any document, read how to find out if someone took a loan in your name, which explains how to watermark copies of your ID.

Before you pay: check the listing

1. Search the photos. A reverse image search finds other places where the same picture appears online. Use Google Lens, Bing Visual Search or TinEye: upload the photo or paste its address. If the same apartment shows up in another city, at another price, with another owner or on a vacation rental site, walk away.
2. Search the address, the name and the phone number. If the same address appears in other ads with a different owner or agency, or the number shows up in scam complaints, that's a strong sign. The US Federal Trade Commission lists these checks in its advice on rental listing scams.
3. See it in person, or live. Visit, or send someone you trust. If that's impossible, ask for a live video call, not a recorded video: ask them to walk from the street to the door, show the building number and open a window you choose. An owner who can't do any of that doesn't have a rental to show.
4. Check who owns it. Ask for proof of ownership and compare it with the public property registry where your country has one. In Colombia, the certificado de tradición y libertad from the Superintendencia de Notariado y Registro shows the current owner; you can buy it online with the property's registration number (matrícula inmobiliaria). The name on the contract should match it.
5. If it's an agency, check the agency. Confirm it's a registered business with a real office, call the number on its own website, and check that the property is listed there. Pay only to the company's business account, not to an employee's personal account.
6. Sign first, pay after. Pay when you sign the contract, to the person or company named in it, and get a receipt. Avoid cash deposits to strangers, gift cards, wire transfers and crypto. In Colombia, for urban housing, the law doesn't allow landlords to demand cash deposits as a guarantee (Law 820 of 2003); a co-signer or a rental insurance policy is the usual guarantee instead.
7. Ask about the message. Paste the ad or the chat into the scam checker. It recognizes common scam scripts and checks any links. The text is read in your browser; only the links go to our server (api.ethorns.com), which follows them and checks when their domain was registered, and results are kept for up to an hour.

Vacation rentals: check the booking page

With holiday rentals, the usual trick is to move you off the platform. The "host" writes on WhatsApp or by email and offers a discount if you pay directly, or sends a link to a page that looks exactly like a well-known booking site. Airbnb, for example, warns that a host asking you to pay outside its platform may be a scam, and a host who insists is a warning sign on any site.

1. Don't book from a link in a message. Open the platform's app, or type its address yourself, and find the listing there.
2. If you already have a link, find its real domain: the name just before the first single slash, read from right to left. The guide is this link safe? explains how.
3. Paste the domain into the lookalike domain checker. It shows letters from other alphabets that imitate a real brand. It runs in your browser and sends nothing. A green result doesn't prove the page is real: yourrental-booking.com uses only normal letters.
4. Check the domain in the domain age checker. The domain goes to our server (api.ethorns.com), which asks the official registry through RDAP (the modern replacement for WHOIS, the public record of when a domain was registered) and keeps only the result for an hour. A "booking site" registered last week is fake. Some registries, like .co, don't offer RDAP yet, so a missing date isn't a warning by itself.

For more on checking a site, see how to spot a fake website.

If you already paid

1. Call your bank or wallet right away, using the number on your card or in the official app. Tell them it was a scam and ask whether they can stop or recover the payment. If you paid by card, ask about a chargeback, a reversal the bank can open when a card payment was a fraud. The sooner you call, the better your chances.
2. Stop paying. Scammers often come back asking for a "key delivery fee", insurance or a refundable charge. Anything more you pay is lost too.
3. Save everything: screenshots of the listing and its address, the chats, the receipts and the account you paid into.
4. Report the listing to the site or app where you found it, so it gets taken down before it catches someone else.
5. Report it to the authorities. The "scammed or hacked? what now" tool gives steps by situation and the official places to report in your country; it runs in your browser and sends nothing. See also where to report a scam.
6. If you sent ID photos, check your credit report now and again in a few weeks.
7. Ignore offers to "recover" your money for a fee. That's a second scam.

Quick checklist

• The photos don't show up elsewhere with another owner, city or price.
• I saw the place in person, or on a live video call following my instructions.
• The owner's name matches the property records, or the agency is real.
• I'll pay only when I sign, to the account named in the contract.
• For vacation rentals, I'm paying inside the platform, not through a link.
• I haven't sent ID photos to anyone I haven't verified.

Frequently asked questions

Is it normal to pay something before signing?

Some agencies charge a fee to review your application, but a legitimate one is a registered business that gives you a receipt. Paying a "reservation" to a private person for a place you haven't seen is how most of these scams work.

The owner lives abroad. Is a video call enough?

Only if it's live and they follow your instructions, and you've also checked who owns the property. Ideally someone you trust visits it before you pay.

The ad is on a big, well-known site. Isn't that safer?

Not by itself. Marketplaces and classified sites let anyone post, and they can't check every ad before it goes up. Judge the listing, not the site.

How can I tell if a booking link is real?

Don't rely on how the page looks. Open the platform's app yourself and look for the same listing. If you must check a link, look at its real domain and how old it is.

Try it

• 1.1Is it a scam?Paste a message or link you received and see its warning signs: brand look-alikes, new domains, short links, scam wording.
• 1.8Domain age checkerSee when a domain was registered, when it expires, its registrar and nameservers.
• 1.7Lookalike domain detectorCheck a link or domain for look-alike tricks: letters from other alphabets, digits for letters, a hidden real domain.
• 1.13Watermark an ID copyStamp who a copy of your ID is for, and the date, across the whole photo or PDF, then download a smaller copy with no photo data.