Short-term rentals: Spotting red flags

We do have fall in full swing right now, a bunch of big ballgames, festivals, other events happening across central Texas. So some visitors are turning to short-term rentals for their stay, but the Better Business Bureau says scammers may be trying to get involved with that. Yikes. Jay Amazawa with the Better Business Bureau joins us this morning with details you need to know. This happens a lot in Texas and our local communities. We've seen a lot of hijacked real estate listings. They're real properties that may be for rent or on the housing market. But instead, heinous bad actors, schemers simply copy and paste the pictures and the listing on top of their contact info. So when you reach out for, let's say, a big game or just the holidays and you're looking for a short-term rental, unfortunately, it's a fake listing. So you get set up with fake keys or a fake code. And when you show up that day, it doesn't work. And unfortunately, this goes south many, many times. Fake rentals can be promoted through social media. They end up in our emails or they end up on legitimate websites. and it may take days for the platform to recognize it, take it down. So just be mindful. You've got to go beyond just what's on the screen. You've really got to ensure that you know who the owner of the property is, maybe a quick property search. See if that same photo and that same listing appear on other websites with different contact. That'd be your first tip off. If you see different information for contact details on different platforms, always high pressure. They're always trying to get you to sign or make a deposit or get money into the mail as quickly as they can. That way, you know, they can rush you through this without doing research. And reviews go a long way. We've seen a lot of great stories where people read the reviews and end up backing out of a deal because of an owner or renter that's just hard to deal with. And again, those listings that have limited history, they don't have a lot of reviews. Be leery of those too, because potentially that could be the sign of a just created ad or just created listing that hasn't gotten traction yet. And unfortunately, it could be fake too. One of the hallmarks of a scam artist online was trying to remove you from a platform where you communicate and pay and you stay protected. But when you communicate off-site, when you go to a private message or a phone call or even a chat app that's not connected to the website, you lose protection, you lose some guarantees. And by doing that, you really have to play defense because now you have to prove that fraud existed. So again, if you're on a rental platform, stay, pay, and communicate only to that platform. The second they take you off, that should be a red flag to avoid that communication. I like to look for the bad reviews and see how an owner responded and see how they corrected the issue. And that might be a better scenario for us. So, again, if you're looking at reviews, you might want to double-check that they have a history of reviews, see how the owner responds. And in the end, if there are no reviews, consider that maybe just a little bit leery just to enter that agreement. Well, we want to know what people are experiencing out there. If they see fake rentals in the Austin area, we want to know about those. Let us know. bbb.org we can report a scam 24 hours a day even if you didn't lose money we still need the data we still need the names emails they used the story because they can be duplicated across certain platforms if we catch it early we can we can definitely double down and say this is what's happening in our area so report it even if you feel ashamed don't feel ashamed let us let others know you tripped up on a listing i think it's real this time of year people are getting into you know big games fall concerts festivals even the holidays are booking ahead of time so it's that time of year when I think we see a little genuine spike in this kind of fraud, travel fraud, rental scam. So just be extra vigilant and don't let your guard down.