Has your property listing ever been stolen for a rental scam? Learn how to legitimize your rental business so your true listings stand out and prevent scammers from using your property listing to trick renters in this chat with Rentec Direct’s Kaycee Miller and Brentnie Daggett.
Rental scams are an unfortunate reality of the rental process, and one that landlords and renters alike often fear. It isn’t uncommon for would-be renters to lose time and money to scammers pretending to have a rental unit at a much better price than their competitors, and many landlords lose business to these scammers who have stolen their home listing.
As such, it is a natural fear for many in the rental industry. Fortunately, there are a few easy ways to minimize the risk of having your property used for rental scams. In this discussion, Kaycee Miller and Brentnie Daggett will discuss a few ways you can protect your property from scammers.
Key Takeaways
- Business websites add legitimacy to your business
- Keep your pricing appropriate and competitive
- For-Rent signs often provide helpful information
How to Avoid Rental Scams – Video Transcript
Brentnie:
Hi, this is Brentnie Daggett with Rentec Direct, and I’m here with Kaycee Miller from Rentec Direct.
Kaycee is a landlord herself and a real estate and rental expert, and we are going to talk about some landlord questions that we are seeing online. And we just want to address them and hopefully help anyone that has those burning questions at home as well.
Kaycee:
We get asked all the time for our advice as real estate professionals and experienced in the field, like “What would you do in this situation?”, so we thought it’d be fun to kind of hear from each other about what’s going on. This is actually how we come up with the content for a lot of our articles, is “What are people asking? Let’s answer it through written content”.
We’ve had our Rentec Direct blog online for almost 20 years now, and we’re really excited to do different styles and do this video content, for you to kind of help people get the information they want and need in whatever format is best for them.
Brentnie:
All right, well, let’s hop into it.
Question: How do I protect my property from rental scams?
Brentnie:
So I came across this question on Reddit, of all places, and I thought it was a really interesting one because I feel like it is a very common concern that a lot of landlords have.
So this person is asking for advertising help. They’re saying, “I’m getting ready to list a condominium and would like to write an ad that does two things beyond the typical property description.
- One: I want to make scammers trying to use my place for whatever reason move on to the next listing.
- And two: I want to give potential renters confidence that my rental is not one of the many scam or fake posts out there.
Besides requiring all renters to come do a walkthrough, any verbiage that you’ve seen that can accomplish these goals? There are so many evolving scams that I might not be aware of some new ones.”
Kaycee:
Scams are the worst. It’s so unfortunate that rental ads are getting targeted for this.
So, I love this question because people are proactively thinking about how they can be taken legitimately by prospective tenants, but also being worried about like “hey, I don’t want my property to be used in some rental scam”, because that is super unfortunate when that can happen because I mean, it’s happened to one of my properties before and there’s not much I could do about it once you see it online listed for a rent price that wasn’t legit, or a rental listing that wasn’t legit.
Rental Business Websites
Kaycee:
So yeah, when I think of this, my first thought, and I’m curious if you have the same one, Brentnie, is make sure that you have a website for your rental properties or rental business. Even if you’re an individual landlord, call it Kaycee’s rental properties dot com. Register it. URLs or domain names are super affordable to get these days.
Property management software might even provide a free rental website like Rentec does. But basically, set up a web page, a very simple one that establishes yourself as a rental property owner. You could even have a shell rental property company, like we own our properties under an LLC. That’s how we manage them. But that makes it really easy to legitimize yourself, say, “This is my business. Here’s the contact information. Here are the properties that I have.” And that can just make anyone reviewing your rental listing see that you have a website. It just gives that one extra layer of validation. So that’s one of the things I can think of to help you seem a little bit more legitimate online. What are you thinking, Brentnie, now about that?
Brentnie:
Yeah, it’s so funny that you mentioned that because that was absolutely my first thought as well. Unfortunately, for the first part of this person’s question, there is really not a lot of recourse to make sure that scammers just don’t use your listing.
But what you can do is make sure that what you’re providing for potential applicants is verifiable, and this landlord is saying that they do require renters to come in for a walkthrough. I do think that there is some merit to that because, a lot of scams are, it’s all online, and there are definitely some red flags where the person will show up eventually at the property thinking that they’re going to move in, and that’s the first time that they see it, and it’s either already rented somewhere else or, sometimes even homes for sale are used in that respect.
So I do think that having your information available for your business is going to be key because the renters that, unfortunately, have been through the scam process before or know to look out for it, that’s what they’re going to be looking for. There are renters that aren’t going to be able to come for an in-person walkthrough all the time, so having other means to show that you are a legitimate landlord is going to be, I think, key.
I also think that, you know, there are a lot of instances where these scammers are taking your entire property description. So if you have information in there about where they can find out more about you and your business as a landlord, if you have information about your website, there’s a good chance, and hopefully it will happen, that whole spiel is just gonna be pulled by the scammer that isn’t doing their due diligence and like doing that extra work. And so that’s going to send those potential renters to your actual website. And I think that is the number one thing that we recommend.
Kaycee:
That’s a good point. So I think what you’re saying is they might literally just copy and paste a rental listing description from your legitimate rental ad and put it into a new one with a different price. So if you have your business contact information and your website in your rental listing ad, then that gets put into this illegitimate one, so someone can follow that and see these two things don’t match up. So while there aren’t ways to say like, “scammer, move on”, there are ways to make it harder for them to take advantage of rental applicants using your legitimate rental listing.
Learn more: Do I Need a Website for My Single Rental Property?
Appropriate Pricing
Kaycee:
And another way, just make sure your stuff is priced appropriately, that can help renters feel confident. Like always, make sure you’re doing stuff at market rate. Feel legitimate with your business and that rental website, and then have your responses feel valid. So this is what we’re seeing with scammers; they’ll be really urgent about getting someone in and make it sound too good to be true.
And that’s what we’re trying to educate rental applicants on, as if this feels too easy, too exciting, like, you know, that rental is priced $200 below market, $300 below market, and the potential landlord is like “I’ll meet you, don’t worry, it’s fine,” that can feel legitimate. But if you’re almost making it too easy, that’s what we warn rental applicants about.
So, for you, just do your business appropriately. Don’t accommodate them too much because that almost makes it seem too eager, but just set up your plan. Show them the property and think about ways that feel legit on your end, so you’re not making too many accommodations for these renters that might be hesitant about it. And have your phone number ready, your email address ready, and that website, and a rental application process.
What was the other one I saw? I knew a rental applicant who was asked to just take a picture of their credit score and email it to a potential landlord. And I was like, “That’s weird. No legit landlord would ever ask that.” That’s too easy to fake. If it’s a real landlord, they would do a full credit report and do legitimate tenant screening.
So, for you, the landlord, make sure you’re doing legitimate tenant screening and not just asking for easy-to-produce documents. You can do like pre-qualifying questions, but you wouldn’t want to do something that doesn’t seem legitimate.
Brentnie:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, unfortunately, there’s always going to be scams. They’re always evolving. And the best thing that you can do is just follow your best practices as a landlord. Especially if you are working with new tenants, new applicants, be reminding them of what to look for when it comes to scams. I think that the more that we can educate tenants out there, the more that landlords and tenants are going to have an easier time with this process.
Learn more: The Importance of Rental Property Appraisal for Landlords
For-Rent Signs
Kaycee:
This is a California landlord who’s asking this question, so it depends on your market and where in your market you’re posting these rental advertisements. But in our town, we’ve had, like, really good success with just for-rent signs because people will drive around, see the address, and then look it up to see if there’s like a legitimate rental listing, or how to contact the landlord. So put your for-rent sign in the window on the lawn with your phone number that then matches your rental ad online, I think that can be a great way to prove that legitimacy.
Or you could even say, “serious inquiries, drive by the property, get the flyer, and contact me that way”. So then there’s like that one extra step of serious inquiries that could be like an interesting way to do it if there’s no current tenant.
In your rental ad, give them just an easy step that kind of can act like that fraud filter of “Okay, if they’re doing this step, they’re going to be serious”, and that can help legitimize both sides of the equation for you and for them.
Brentnie:
Yeah, that’s great advice.
Kaycee:
But good thinking on ways to help your ad not get in the hands of scammers, because that is just so frustrating and so sad for all the rental applicants who become victims of these scams, even if it’s just wasting time. Sometimes they end up paying so much money to someone who is not a good person, and that makes me sad.
Brentnie:
Okay, well, thank you so much!
Kaycee:
As always, we’re happy to offer this and more advice, and follow us for more landlord-related questions so we can help make our industry a better place.
