Managing all of the rental property scams can be quite challenging. This has become a serious problem due to the rise in digital marketing and the use of social media for marketing rental properties. RENEW Real Estate Services has been a Nashville Property Management Company for over a decade. Through the years, we have learned a thing or two about preventing people from getting scammed on our properties. Continue reading for some tips and tricks for saving people from scammers.
Watermarks
One of the first things scammers do is steal your property listing photos from the actual listings. They will simply copy and paste all of your pictures, and use them for their own scam listing. A great way to prevent this from happening is by adding watermarks to all of your pictures. Here at RENEW, we simply put our company name and website all over the pictures in a transparent font. We do this in hopes that potential tenants will see the watermarks, and do a bit more research. If you are a private landlord, consider putting your contact info on all of the pictures as a watermark. That may prompt potential tenants to contact you rather than the scammer.
Signage
Potential tenants often want to view the property in person before paying the deposit or signing the lease. A simple but effective way to help prevent them from getting scammed is putting a sign in the yard. By putting a "For Rent" sign in the yard with your name and contact info, you are increasing the chances that a potential tenant will notice this, and contact you rather than the scammer. Make sure to put the sign in a place that is easily visible. You want to ensure that your name and contact info is on full display.
Stickers
Similar to putting a sign in the yard, adding stickers to the front and back doors can also be a great way to prevent scams. At RENEW, we put a "Scam Warning" sticker on the front door of all of our available properties. We make sure to include our company name and contact info. Write something similar to this: "If you are speaking to someone other than RENEW Real Estate Services, you are at risk of being scammed!" We put this on the front door in hopes that someone will see that sticker and call our office before moving forward.
Tours
We utilize a self-touring system through Rently. When signing up for a self-tour, Rently has added a "Scam Warning" page in the sign-up process. This puts yet another warning in front of a potential tenant's face in hopes that they stop to do more research before moving on. Oftentimes, the scammer is aware of the self-touring process and will ask the potential tenant to view it. Doing so makes the victim believe that the scammer is legitimately the owner or manager of the property. Because of this, you want to put as many warnings in front of the potential tenant as you possibly can. We actually include another sticker inside all of our lockboxes that say "Beware of scams! Anyone other than RENEW Real Estate Services is likely a scammer!"
Although it requires a larger commitment of time, guided tours are a great way to prevent scams. By keeping the keys to yourself, you are forcing someone to go through you directly in order to view the property. This ensures that you, or a trusted representative, are guiding every tour of your rental property. Because of this, you may actual deter a lot of scammers from using their listings, as it makes it more challenging for them to build credibility in the eyes of the scam victim.
Social Media
More often than not, scammers are using Facebook and Craigslist to post their scam listings. It has been challenging for us to get Facebook/Craigslist to remove these scams. We always report the scam listing, but it is wise to also comment on the post to try and stop people from falling for the scam. With enough reports, you may be able to get the scammer removed from Facebook/Craigslist, although we have not had much luck with that.
Bottom Line
At the end of the day, you should try to put as many scam warnings in front of someone as possible. Of course, there will still be people who overlook these warnings and fall victim to a rental property scam. By using signage, stickers, self-touring warnings, and social media, you are greatly reducing the amount of people getting scammed on your properties. In turn, you hope to turn these people into potential tenants for your rental property. Scam prevention is an ongoing process. At RENEW Real Estate Services, we do everything we can to stop people from falling victim to these scams. If you own rental property in the Nashville area, reach out to RENEW for professional advice or property management services!
