What are the risks involved when you do a home exchange?

Well, there´s been a lot of bad press about the 419 scam. A horrendous scam it is, but it´s pretty easy to avoid, now that it´s so well known.

So, here´s the juice. Someone gets in contact with you and says they can´t do a home exchange, but would like to rent your home for a few weeks, offering a price of a few thouand dollars. They send a cheque through, with an over-payment. The over-payment exceeds the initial price by several thousand dollars. So they get in touch and ask you to wire the excess over. The money goes, but when the bank processes the cheque, it turns out it was all fake. But the wired money is gone, never to be seen again.

Wow. Quite incredible, huh. For anyone who´s been a victim of this, it´s really gotta suck. It´s an awful invasion of trust, and it´s a lot of money to lose.

However, this is not a reason to be afraid of home exchange. There are some simple rules that we can follow that will always protect us from this kind of fraud.

1) Never wire or send money to someone that you don´t know
2) If someone offers to do a rental and they get in touch with you through the home exchange site, you should be suspicious
3) If people contact you via the internet offering to give you vast amount of money, be on your guard
4) If you are unsure of the tone or the demands of someone who is contacting you about a home exchange, then you shouldn´t get involved with them.

There´s no reason to be afraid. In order to protect yourself from any potential fraudsters, you just need to be alert. And now that you know about the 419 scam, there is practically no chance at all that anyone would be able to fool you into anything similar.