Before you pay

Who are you paying, and how?

Paste the listing or the messages, then answer four questions. Most rental scams give themselves away in how they ask to be paid, so that is what decides a Stop. Your text is checked on this device and never sent to us.

Paste what they sent you, then say how you’re being asked to pay.

You’ll get Stop, Verify first or No red flags found, with each trigger quoted from your own text and the official source behind it. Stop only ever comes from how the money would move.

Owner of record (match-only)

Compares the name you’d be paying with the public owner record. We answer match, partial or no match and the owner type. We never show the owner’s name.

Live owner records cover New York City, Cook County and Philadelphia. Add an address and ZIP under “Optional” on the left.

Somewhere else? Official county lookups

Outside New York City, Cook County and Philadelphia, look the address up on the county’s own property site and compare the owner name yourself. The FTC suggests searching “city or county tax assessment websites to learn who owns a property, then check the landlord’s ID.”

Not listed? Search “{county name} property appraiser” or “assessor” and use only a .gov or official county site. Guide: how to verify a landlord owns the property.

Fair Rent band

Add a ZIP code, the bedrooms and the asking rent to compare it with HUD’s FY2027 Small Area Fair Market Rent for that ZIP.

Report a scam, or get help

Report it to the FTC: ReportFraud.ftc.gov Report it to the FBI: ic3.gov Already paid? FTC: what to do if you were scammed Shared your SSN or ID? IdentityTheft.gov

Why the payment path decides a Stop

A listing can look perfect, the person can be friendly, and the photos can be of a real home. What a scam can’t easily fake is a payment you can get back. The FTC’s rental-scam advice is blunt: “If anyone insists you can only pay with wire transfers through Western Union or MoneyGram, gift cards, or cryptocurrency, it’s a scam.” So housr gives a Stop only when the money would move in a way that is hard to trace or reverse, or would go to someone other than the owner or manager before a lease exists.

Everything else, like an owner who is “out of the country”, a self-guided tour, pressure to decide today or a request for your Social Security number, is a Verify first. Those are common in scams and also turn up in honest rentals, so we quote them back and say what to check.

What “match-only” means

In New York City, Cook County and Philadelphia, public records list who owns a property. We compare the name you’d be paying with that record, and in New York City with the building’s registered managing agent, and answer match, partial or no match. We never show the owner’s name, because a scammer could use it to sound legitimate. A match isn’t proof either: owner names are public, and the FTC describes scammers copying real listings and swapping in their own contact details.

The library behind the check has 46 trigger groups and 158 phrasings, each with a plain reason and an official source, checked 2026-10-05.

Scam patterns, explained

All 12 patterns

Sources

Sources checked 2026-10-05. Information, not legal advice.