Rental Scams: What Realtors Need to Know
Rental listing scams are rising, with hijacked and phantom posts using real agents’ photos and identities. Protect yourself by learning the risks.
WASHINGTON -- Rental listing scams continue to surge nationwide, and real estate professionals are increasingly finding themselves caught in the crossfire. Fraudsters posing as landlords or property managers are creating fake or misleading listings to steal money or personal information from renters and sometimes using real agents’ listings and identities to do it.
In the National Association of Realtors®’ Window to the law video, two types of scams that dominate the landscape are identified: hijacked and phantom listings.
Hijacked listings copy legitimate ads, including photos, descriptions and locations, but swap in fraudulent contact information. Scammers often create fake social media profiles impersonating real agents to make the posts look credible.
Phantom rentals, meanwhile, use photos of real homes but advertise them at false addresses, luring renters with too-good-to-be-true pricing or amenities.
These scams directly affect renters, but they can also damage an agent’s reputation if consumers believe the fraudulent posts are legitimate.
To help reduce your risk, experts recommend watermarking listing photos and videos, using tools like Google image search to monitor where your photos appear online, and clearly marking for-sale homes that are not available for rent.
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