Tips to avoid a vacation rental nightmare
If you’re starting to make summer plans, we have an important tip before paying for your next vacation.
“It was a complete fraud,” said Brian Fleischmann, a real estate agent in Colorado Springs.
Rental scams are back and scammers are targeting families planning those summer trips ahead of time.
Here’s how it works:
You find a rental online, make a payment with your credit card, and months later show up at the doorstep only to be greeted by the real homeowner, who’s confused about why you’re there.
It happens quite a bit. Just ask Brian Fleischmann, a local real estate agent.
“These people spend a lot of money on flights, a lot of time on planning, a lot of money on cars… and when they show their trip is completely ruined,” he said.
Fleischmann has also seen where people from out of state have shown up to properties only to see a “for sale” sign on the lawn.
“It’s vacant and they can’t get into the property as they were advised, it’s awful,” Fleischmann said.
Most of these scams are executed on sites like Craigslist but scammers also claim to work with sites like AirBnB, and Booking.com.
“It’s easy to copy and paste photos from for sale properties for the scammers and use those in their fake rental listings,” he said.
So how can you protect yourself?
Don’t exclusively use Craigslist, and if you do, find a way to verify the person you’re talking to has access to the property Double check the addresses of your rental Avoid third-party sites that aggregate listings, where scammers will claim to work with companies like AirBnB
Do you want to report a scam?
