Scams, Spam and Illegitimate Listings

At HotPads, we're constantly working on ways to ensure that we provide up-to-date, quality real estate listings to you, our users.  It's an endless struggle, but our largest and sharpest weapon against spammers, scammers and illegitimate listings is our community of educated users. 

Humans can easily detect spam.  For example, when you're browsing listings and the contact information reads "Sleazy Stan's Spamming Systems", you know to ignore the offending listing and move on.  One thing you may not know, but will help keep your browsing experience at HotPads as pleasurable and effective as possible, is that you can report these listings.  Each bad listing you report helps us learn the patterns and similarities between bad listings, and improves our ability to automatically keep them out of our system.

You can report spam, scam or incorrect listings on HotPads by clicking "report this listing" on the offending listing page.

Scams are more difficult to detect, but knowing how to detect a scam saves you money and embarrassment. To this end, Dan Daugherty recently launched a blog called rentalscams.org to document the latest scams perpetrated by both tenants and landlords.  Most of the scams we uncover at HotPads come in the form of fake listings, which we explain more in a short guest post on Dan's blog.

While not technically scams, unlicensed landlords (in areas where licenses are required) can cause renters just as much grief.  Properties offered by unlicensed landlords likely haven't been inspected to ensure compliance with safety regulations, so they may be unsafe to inhabit.  In the District of Columbia the Department of Consumer and Regulatory affairs is running a campaign called thisshouldbeillegal to educate college students about the district's landlord licensing requirement.

Help us combat scams, spam and illegitimate listings by remaining vigilant and keeping yourself informed.