Scam leads never make it to your inbox.
Every incoming listing runs through Renthound’s pattern heuristics before it reaches you. Off-platform wire requests, units priced well under neighborhood comps, duplicate photos, and templated listing copy are flagged at ingestion and dropped — the only leads you see are the ones that survived the filter.
Counted across the listings Renthound pulled this week from Zillow, Zumper, Hotpads, Apartments.com and Realtor.com, then blocked at intake by the pattern filter.
Three real scam patterns we reject.
These are the patterns Renthound flags most often. Each was lifted verbatim from a listing a renter almost acted on — the language is unedited so you can spot the same shape in your own inbox.
- Pattern 1
Below-market listing requesting wire before viewing
“Spacious 2BR in Park Slope, $1,800/mo. Send $600 deposit via Zelle to hold the unit. Keys will be mailed after payment clears.”
How Renthound handles it: Flagged for being 30%+ under the neighborhood median and asking for off-platform payment before any viewing.
- Pattern 2
Duplicate photos across listings
“Same kitchen, same bathroom, same living room shots — reused verbatim across three "different" units in three Brooklyn zip codes, all posted the same day.”
How Renthound handles it: Flagged by photo-hash reuse across multiple listings and inconsistent addresses against the photos in the listing.
- Pattern 3
Copy-paste listing text
“Lorem-style boilerplate that reads like an SEO block, not a real landlord. Drive-by "we're out of the country, contact my assistant" framing and a Gmail or Yahoo reply address.”
How Renthound handles it: Flagged by templated-description heuristics and off-platform or free-mail reply addresses that don’t match the property owner of record.
Every lead, vetted before you see it.
Renthound pulls listings from the major platforms, runs each one through the pattern heuristics described above, and only forwards what survives. The rejected units never appear in matches, never generate a draft email, and never reach your inbox.
- Price too low for the block. Listings priced more than 30% under the local median for the same bedroom count are blocked.
- Off-platform payment requested. Any listing that asks for a wire, Zelle, PayPal, Western Union, or Cash App deposit is rejected outright.
- Few, duplicate, or reused photos. Listings with one photo or with the same photo set reused across multiple listings get blocked.
- Templated description text. SEO-stuffed boilerplate, copy-paste bodies reused across listings, and free-mail reply addresses for a property owner of record are flagged.
- Anomalous neighborhood pricing.Outlier units that don’t fit the comp set are surfaced for review rather than pushed straight to your inbox.
Join the early scam-alert beta.
We’re building a weekly email digest that names the scam patterns we caught in the listings you almost chased — the same heuristics that protect your inbox, surfaced as a plain-English briefing. Drop your address to lock in a beta slot.