If you’re looking for renting a holiday apartment, the last thing that you want is to be a victim of a scammer. Enjoy Apartments, apart from being a renown rental company since 2005, rents only licensed apartments which are all personally checked and inspected.
Nevertheless there are a lot of sites and apartments out there, that can spoil your holidays severely. In this blog we are going to tell you about some warning signs there are, how you can protect yourself against rental scamming and why you always have to rent licensed accommodations!
Avoid the red flags
- The price is too good to be true.
Whenever you are searching for an apartment and there are a lot of promises like waterviews, swimming pools, queen size beds etc. etc. Just keep in mind that it might be not an realistic price for everything you’ll get.
- You have to pay before anything has happened
The company ask you to hand over money for a holding fee, viewing fee, security depost etc. You have to be warned of a red flag. Almost always these payments go by electronic transfer.
- The photo’s are of a very low quality
Whenever the photo’s on the site are of a very low quality it might be stock images or images from other rental companies. A professional rental company makes sure the pictures are good and that they show a good representation of the apartment.
Protect yourself!
- Keep copies of any e-mails
Whenever you don’t really trust the owner just save every way of contact from the person who you are dealing with. When it comes out that it’s a scammer you have a reference and can provide them to the authorities.
- Do thorough online research about the property and the company
Search the name of the contact person and the name of the company. Always check if they are licensed to rent apartments and maybe there are a couple of references and recommendations. When you can’t find anything about the owner or the company you better can stop the contact.
- Ask for the license number
When they can give you the license number of the apartment you almost always know that you can trust this company or owner. The license number represents a couple of guarantees, which are below.
If you are renting from a direct owner website such as Airbnb, HomeAway or other, be aware. If an owner offers to communicate outside the messaging module (to save you the booking commission), this should be Red Flagged. You will loose all control here and can never claim anything. Mostly used if the listing is a ghost listing.
Renting in Barcelona? Then you can check here if your accommodation is legal.
Why rent licensed legal tourist apartments?
- They have licenses proving they meet all legal requisites for your safety.
- The license guarantees optimum hygiene and shows the home is fully- equipped
- If you stay in an unlicensed tourist apartment, you will be unable to make any sort of claim relating to incidents or breach of agreement by the person renting out the home.
- The apartments are personally checked
Of course you can avoid taking this risk by booking through a reviewed agency with local knowledge, such as Enjoy Apartments 😉 We’re here for you.
Hope it helps preventing being scammed! Have a nice stay!
Did you experience a rental scam yourself? Tell us about it leaving a comment below.