As a homeowner with rental properties, the threat of rental scams is a serious concern. At Firefly Property Management, we understand the complexities and risks involved in renting out your property, and we are committed to helping you secure your investment. This comprehensive guide offers effective strategies to prevent rental scams, ensuring that you and your potential tenants are protected from fraudulent activities. Here’s what you can do to fortify your rental property against scams:
1. Set Up Google Alerts for Your Property Address
One proactive step you can take to monitor the usage of your property's information online is setting up Google Alerts. By doing so, you will receive notifications whenever your property address is mentioned on the web. This can help you quickly identify and respond to unauthorized listings.
How to Set Up a Google Alert:
- Visit google alerts
- In the search box, enter your property address.
- Choose “Show options” to select how often you get alerts, the types of websites you want to watch, your language, the part of the world you want information from, and how many results you want to see.
- Click “Create Alert” to start receiving alerts for your property address.
2. Always Watermark Your Photos
Watermarking your property photos is a simple yet effective way to deter scammers from using them. A watermark can be your company logo, your contact information, or any text that identifies the photos as your property. This doesn’t just make it difficult for scammers to use these images without authorization, but it also signals to potential tenants that the listing is legitimate. There are many resources online that can watermark your photos for free such as watermarkly but they usually also advertise on your photos.
Tips for Watermarking:
- Use transparent watermarks that don’t obscure important features of the property.
- Place the watermark in a central part of the image, or multiple areas on the image to make it harder to crop out.
