Vacation Home Rentals: How to Avoid being Scammed

Vacation Home Rentals: How to avoid being scammed Whenever you’re planning a vacation for your family and want to stay in a holiday home or any other vacation home rentals, you will be asked for an advance payment upfront.

This might appear like a bad idea since identity thieves are very busy nowadays stealing money from your hard earned savings. But, as they identity thieves are slowly increasing so does the number of ways on how to avoid them. Listed below are some tips on how to make your finances safe and make your vacation a perfect one.

In the event that you have found the vacation home rental that you think will be ideal for your vacation, you should make an extra research to ensure it is legit. Check the website of the property for contact information such as phone numbers or email and contact them. If you try calling and no one answers on different day and occasions, then the website where the property is listed surely is not as legit as they claimed it to be. Most of the times vacation home rental owners are real estate agents or home owners that will love to get in touch with you. They will provide you with up-to-date information with regards to the property and payment options are all presented clearly. This is one of the things that you will know that the property is legit and your payment will be safe and secure.

Another way to know if the property you are eyeing is legitimate is by browsing through their reviews online. Usually if this property is legit, it will have a number of reviews from past customers or guests that stayed in the property. If you found that there is no single review, have a look at the day is it is listed and if it is there for quite some time now and still doesn’t have a review, take it as a warning sign and pick another vacation home rentals for you and your family to stay.

Credit cards are the most popular way to pay for vacation home rentals and usually used to make and advance or reservations. Most home or property owner prefers this method of payment due to the strict process that a credit card company enforce to verify the identity of the owner of the said card. Which is

both beneficial for the both parties. And in case there is in doubt or complications arise you can easily call the credit card company and reverse a payment to avoid being scammed.

Nowadays, it is a normal practice to pay for vacation home rentals by depositing payments and other extra fees into a neutral account which will hold the property until such time that you check out the property and you like it as it is. This type of payment usually refer to as “trust but verify�. This keeps the property owner or real estate agent honest about the property since they will not get your payment if you don’t like the property, that way they should tell the truth about it and hope that you will like it.

Lastly, always keep away from direct and wire money transfers unless you really know the person that you are dealing with. Also it will be much safer if you purchase a travel insurance. Your travel insurance can certainly help you if something happen that is not according to plan.