Rental and Holiday Let Scams: What to Check First
Launch library · evergreen read
Listings for rentals or holiday homes that look unusually good for the price, sitting in a genuinely popular area, with photos that seem just slightly too polished, are always worth some extra scrutiny before you commit. Scammers often copy real listings taken from other legitimate sites and simply repost them at a lower price to attract fast, eager interest from house hunters.
A common tactic involves refusing any in-person viewing at all, citing overseas travel or a tenant supposedly still moving out, while pushing hard for a deposit to "secure" the property before anyone else can supposedly beat you to it. The manufactured urgency exists specifically to skip the exact step where the scam would otherwise be discovered by a cautious renter.
A reverse image search of the property's photos can quickly reveal whether the same listing already appears elsewhere under a completely different name or a different asking price. Insisting on an in-person viewing, meeting an agent face to face, or paying only through a recognised platform offering genuine buyer protection all meaningfully reduce this particular risk.
If a landlord genuinely cannot be verified and refuses any form of video call or local, checkable contact, it is far safer to simply walk away from the deposit entirely than to send money securing a property that, in the end, may not actually exist at all.