A compiled reference of 41 verified statistics on vacation rental fraud and guest screening, covering what federal crime data actually records about rental and real estate fraud, how much is lost to holiday booking scams, the scale of platform-side screening and enforcement, what chargebacks and first-party fraud cost merchants, and how few operators screen at all. Every figure is drawn from a named first-party source (the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, Action Fraud and City of London Police, the Airbnb Newsroom, Chargebacks911, and Truvi) and independently checked against the original before publishing. Figures that could only be traced to SEO aggregators or unattributed vendor claims were excluded rather than repeated.
Key statistics
6 highlights from this report
Key statistics
Key takeaways
Fraud against and around rental bookings is measured well in exactly two places: national crime reporting, and the enforcement disclosures of the platforms themselves. Both are pointing the same direction. Losses are climbing fast in the official data, platforms are screening at a scale most operators have no idea is happening beneath them, and the money that leaks out after a stay is now more often a disputed charge than a stolen card. Meanwhile most individual operators screen nobody.
Real estate fraud caused $275.1 million in reported losses in 2025.
Real estate fraud losses rose 58% in a single year.
UK holiday fraud cost victims £11.2 million across 6,066 reports in 2024.
Airbnb blocked or redirected over 20,000 US bookings in one holiday weekend.
Merchants say roughly half their chargebacks are friendly fraud.
71% of surveyed hosts had never heard of rental risk management.
How we built this report
Every figure below was compiled in July 2026 from named first-party sources and verified against the original document before publishing.
- First-party sources only
Government crime statistics (the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center annual report), national police reporting (Action Fraud, run by City of London Police), platform enforcement disclosures published by the platform itself (the Airbnb Newsroom), and survey research whose sample size and method are stated by the organization that ran it.
- Unsourceable figures were dropped, not repeated
Fraud and chargeback statistics in this category circulate widely with no traceable origin. Every candidate figure that traced only to an SEO aggregator, a content-marketing roundup, or an unattributed vendor claim was excluded from this page rather than laundered through one more citation.
- Only explicitly stated figures
We include only numbers a named source states directly, and attribute each one inline at the point it appears. Year-over-year percentage changes are the one exception: those are computed from two figures published in the same source table, and we say so.
- Vendor and survey data labelled as such
Where a figure comes from a company reporting on its own market or customers, we say so on the card, along with the sample size where the source states one.
- Independent review
Written by one co-founder, reviewed by the other before publishing.
Scope caveat: complaint data measures reports, not incidence. IC3 and Action Fraud both count what victims chose to report to them, so their totals are floors rather than estimates of true loss, and year-over-year movement partly reflects reporting behaviour as well as underlying crime. Platform enforcement figures are self-reported by the platform and are not independently audited. The survey figures carry the sample sizes their publishers state, which are small. Confirm any figure against the specific named source before relying on it commercially.
Rental fraud and guest screening, by the numbers
All 41 figures, grouped into five themes, each drawn from a named first-party source and independently verified against the original in July 2026.
What federal crime data actually records
The only US dataset that counts rental and property fraud consistently year to year is the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. According to the 2025 IC3 Annual Report, IC3 received 1,008,597 complaints in 2025 carrying $20.877 billion in reported losses, a 26% increase in losses over 2024, at an average of $20,699 per complaint. Within that, the real estate category, which the report describes as primarily wire fraud connected to closings, recorded 12,368 complaints and $275,110,419 in losses, against 9,359 complaints and $173,586,820 in 2024. The category that most closely maps to a booking scam is non-payment and non-delivery, which the same report puts at 56,478 complaints and $503,373,587 for 2025.
Statistic 1
The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center received 1,008,597 complaints in 2025.
FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report (2026)
Statistic 2
Reported losses reached $20.877 billion in 2025, a 26% increase over 2024.
FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report (2026)
Statistic 3
The average reported loss per complaint was $20,699.
FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report (2026)
Statistic 4
Real estate fraud accounted for 12,368 complaints and $275,110,419 in losses in 2025.
FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report (2026)
Statistic 5
Real estate complaints were 9,359 in 2024 and 9,521 in 2023, so 2025 volume rose 32% year over year.
FBI IC3, three-year complaint comparison (2026). Percentage computed from the report's own table.
Statistic 6
Real estate losses were $173,586,820 in 2024 and $145,243,348 in 2023, so 2025 losses rose 58% year over year.
FBI IC3, three-year loss comparison (2026). Percentage computed from the report's own table.
Real estate fraud reported to IC3, three-year trend
Complaint volume rose 32% in 2025 while losses rose 58%, meaning the average real estate fraud incident also got more expensive.
Complaints
9,521
2023
9,359
2024
12,368
2025
Reported losses
$145.2M
2023
$173.6M
2024
$275.1M
2025
All six figures from the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center 2025 Internet Crime Report, three-year complaint and loss comparison tables. Bar heights are proportional to the 2025 value in each panel.
Statistic 7
Non-payment and non-delivery accounted for 56,478 complaints and $503,373,587 in losses in 2025.
FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report (2026)
Statistic 8
Credit card and check fraud accounted for 18,774 complaints and $282,670,235 in losses, up from $199,889,841 in 2024.
FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report (2026)
Statistic 9
Phishing and spoofing was the single most-reported crime type at 191,561 complaints, with $215,843,126 in losses.
FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report (2026)
Statistic 10
Cyber-enabled fraud accounted for 452,868 complaints and $17,697,074,980, which is 45% of all complaints and 85% of all losses.
FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report (2026)
Statistic 11
Complainants aged 60 and over filed 201,266 complaints with $7.748 billion in losses, including 2,473 real estate complaints worth $123,671,936.
FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report, elder fraud section (2026)
Statistic 12
Complaints flagged with an artificial intelligence nexus numbered 22,364 and carried $893,346,472 in losses.
FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report, descriptors (2026)
What this means: There is no federal statistic for "vacation rental fraud" specifically, which is exactly why the invented ones circulate so freely. The honest read is that the two categories touching property transactions and paying for something that never arrives together account for roughly $779 million in reported US losses in 2025, and that the real estate line moved much faster in dollars than in volume. When average incident size grows faster than incident count, the scams are getting better targeted rather than simply more numerous.
Holiday and booking fraud, where it is actually counted
The UK is the only major market that publishes a dedicated annual count of holiday booking fraud, through Action Fraud, the national fraud and cybercrime reporting service run by City of London Police. According to the Action Fraud holiday fraud alert issued in February 2025, there were 6,066 reports of holiday fraud in 2024 with combined losses of £11,183,957, down from £12.3 million in 2023, but with the average loss per victim essentially unchanged at £1,844 against £1,851. Oliver Shaw, Commander for Fraud and Cybercrime at City of London Police, warned in the same release about fake holidays promoted "often with suspiciously low prices," and the release notes that more than 50% of reports mentioned a social media platform.
Statistic 13
There were 6,066 reports of holiday fraud made to Action Fraud in 2024.
Action Fraud and City of London Police (February 2025)
Statistic 14
Holidaymakers lost a combined £11,183,957 to holiday fraud in 2024, compared with £12.3 million in 2023.
Action Fraud and City of London Police (February 2025)
Statistic 15
The average loss per victim was £1,844 in 2024 and £1,851 in 2023.
Action Fraud and City of London Police (February 2025)
Statistic 16
July was the heaviest single month for holiday fraud reporting, with 647 reports.
Action Fraud and City of London Police (February 2025)
Statistic 17
More than 50% of holiday fraud reports mentioned a social media platform.
Action Fraud and City of London Police (February 2025)
What this means: Total losses fell while average loss held flat, which means the drop is a volume story rather than a severity story. The operationally useful detail is the seasonality and the channel: reports peak in July, and over half involve social media, meaning the fraud largely happens outside any booking platform's control surface. That is the same structural reason platforms push so hard to keep payment and messaging on-platform, and the same reason off-platform payment requests are the single loudest red flag an operator can train staff to escalate.
Platform screening and enforcement at scale
The largest guest screening system in short-term rental is not a vendor product, it is the platform layer, and Airbnb publishes numbers for it. According to the Airbnb Newsroom, its holiday anti-party defenses blocked or redirected more than 20,000 people in the US from booking an entire home listing over the July 4 weekend in 2025, with approximately 3,100 in Florida, 3,100 in Texas and around 2,500 in California. Roger Kaiser, Vice President of Fraud and Safety Operations at Airbnb, described the July 2026 deployment as the fifth consecutive year of the measure. Airbnb also reports that fewer than approximately 0.06% of US stays in 2025 resulted in a party report, and an over 50% decrease in the global rate of party reports in the five years since the disruptive party ban was introduced. On the listing side, Airbnb said in its spring 2024 update that nearly 1.5 million listings had completed verification across the US, Canada, Australia, the UK and France.
Statistic 18
More than 20,000 people in the US were blocked or redirected from booking an entire home listing over the July 4 weekend in 2025.
Airbnb Newsroom (June 2026). Platform self-reported.
Statistic 19
That July 4 total included approximately 3,100 people in Florida, 3,100 in Texas and around 2,500 in California.
Airbnb Newsroom (June 2026). Platform self-reported.
Statistic 20
Nearly 11,000 people across the US were blocked or redirected over Memorial Day weekend in 2025.
Airbnb Newsroom (2026). Platform self-reported.
Statistic 21
That Memorial Day total included approximately 1,750 people in Florida, 1,650 in Texas and 1,310 in California.
Airbnb Newsroom (2026). Platform self-reported.
Statistic 22
Over New Year's Eve, more than 20,000 people in the US and more than 3,000 in Canada were prevented from booking an entire home listing.
Airbnb Newsroom (December 2025). Platform self-reported.
Bookings blocked or redirected by holiday weekend
Airbnb publishes a US total plus a partial state split for each holiday deployment. Segments are drawn to the stated figures; the remainder is every other state combined.
All figures published by the Airbnb Newsroom and self-reported by the platform. Florida and Texas lead both US holiday deployments, which tracks their share of large whole-home inventory rather than any special local risk.
Statistic 23
Fewer than approximately 0.06% of stays on Airbnb in the US in 2025 resulted in a report of a party.
Airbnb Newsroom (2026). Platform self-reported.
Statistic 24
In the five years since the global ban on disruptive parties, Airbnb reports an over 50% decrease in the global rate of party reports.
Airbnb Newsroom (December 2025). Platform self-reported.
Statistic 25
The July 4 anti-party deployment ran for the fifth consecutive year in 2026, and the Memorial Day deployment was first run in 2022.
Airbnb Newsroom (2026)
Statistic 26
Nearly 1.5 million listings completed verification across the US, Canada, Australia, the UK and France.
Airbnb Newsroom, 2024 spring update. Platform self-reported.
Statistic 27
Airbnb removed 100,000 low quality listings under its updated hosting quality system, including 12,000 in the first three months after the April 2023 launch.
Airbnb Newsroom, 2024 spring update. Platform self-reported.
Statistic 28
Host cancellations fell 36% in the final quarter of 2023 following policy and tooling changes.
Airbnb Newsroom, 2024 spring update. Platform self-reported.
What this means: Two things follow for a professional operator. First, a large amount of screening is already happening upstream of you, and the 0.06% figure is a post-screening residual rather than the underlying rate of risky booking attempts. Second, all of it evaporates the moment a booking moves direct or off-platform, which is precisely where the growth is. If you take direct bookings you have inherited the screening function that Airbnb is running at the scale of tens of thousands of blocked attempts per holiday weekend. For party frequency and party damage costs specifically, see our separate reference on vacation rental party statistics.
Chargebacks and first-party fraud
The money most operators actually lose is rarely a stolen card. It is a legitimate guest disputing a legitimate charge, which the payments industry calls friendly fraud or first-party fraud. According to the 2026 Chargeback Field Report from Chargebacks911, built on proprietary survey data from more than 250 merchants, merchants estimate that illegitimate disputes account for approximately 50% of the chargebacks they receive, and 83.4% of enterprise merchants said friendly fraud had increased over the past three years. Monica Eaton, founder and CEO of Chargebacks911, put it plainly in the accompanying release: friendly fraud "has moved from being a back-office inconvenience to a material business risk." The report also finds that 38% of merchants say chargeback costs have influenced the prices of their goods or services, up from 32.5% in the previous edition.
Statistic 29
The 2026 Chargeback Field Report is built on proprietary survey data from more than 250 merchants, with a focus on card-not-present commerce.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report. Vendor-published survey.
Statistic 30
Merchants report on average that illegitimate dispute losses account for approximately 50% of the chargebacks they receive.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report
Statistic 31
83.4% of enterprise merchants reported an increase in friendly fraud over the past three years.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report
Statistic 32
Among all respondents reporting a change in first-party fraud over three years, 73.7% said the problem had increased.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report
Statistic 33
74.4% of merchants describe friendly fraud as a moderate or significant concern.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report
Statistic 34
More than 61% of merchants say chargebacks have increased over the past three years.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report
Statistic 35
38% of merchants say chargeback costs have influenced the prices of their goods or services, up from 32.5% in the previous edition.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report
Statistic 36
Merchants estimate abusive requests account for 27.1% of all returns, and 62% describe refund abuse as a moderate or significant concern.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report
Statistic 37
26.7% of merchants currently use AI-based fraud prevention tools and another 37% plan to adopt them.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report
Statistic 38
Nearly one quarter of merchants report internal, employee-initiated fraud, and more than half say they have little to no knowledge of card network rules.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report
50%
Share of chargebacks merchants attribute to illegitimate disputes
83.4%
Enterprise merchants seeing friendly fraud rise over three years
27.1%
Share of all returns merchants believe are abusive
26.8%
Merchants who actively monitor TC40 fraud records
Statistic 39
Only 26.8% of merchants say they actively monitor TC40 fraud records to help track their Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program ratio.
Chargebacks911, 2026 Chargeback Field Report
What this means: This is cross-industry merchant data rather than lodging-specific data, and we present it as such, but the mechanics transfer directly. A short-term rental charge is card-not-present, high-value, delivered as a service rather than a shipped good, and disputed weeks after the fact. Those are the exact conditions the report identifies as highest exposure. The practical defense is the same one that wins a damage claim: contemporaneous, timestamped evidence that the service was delivered as described. See how damage waiver claims work for the operator-side version of that evidence chain.
What operators actually do about it
The gap between the sophistication of platform screening and the sophistication of individual operator screening is enormous, and it is measurable. According to Truvi, formerly Superhog, reporting on a survey run with the property management and acquisition firm For The Host, 71% of the 165 hosts asked had never heard of short-term rental risk management, and 68% of those surveyed said they had felt ignored by large online travel agencies when damage occurred. The sample is small and the publisher sells screening, both of which we flag on the cards below. Even so, it is the only published survey we could verify that asks the question directly, and the direction is consistent with what claim data shows: our reference on Airbnb damage claim statistics puts platform claim frequency at well under one percent of stays, which is exactly the environment in which operators quietly stop screening because the base rate feels negligible.
Statistic 40
71% of the 165 short-term rental hosts surveyed had never heard of short-term rental risk management.
Truvi (formerly Superhog) with For The Host, host survey, n=165. Vendor-published survey.
Statistic 41
68% of the same hosts, typically running one to four properties, said they had felt ignored by large online travel agencies when damage occurred.
Truvi (formerly Superhog) with For The Host, host survey, n=165. Vendor-published survey.
What this means: Screening is not a product category most operators have opinions about, it is one they have never encountered. That matters more as portfolios shift toward direct booking, because direct is precisely where the platform's screening layer, its verified-listing infrastructure and its dispute mediation all stop applying at once. The commercial market that prices this risk most explicitly is the damage waiver market, which is why our comparison of damage waiver providers and the waiver provider partnerships page are the natural next reads.
Why screening and condition evidence are the same problem
Every theme above converges on one operational fact: the disputes an operator loses are the ones where nobody can prove what state the property was in. A guest disputes a damage charge, a card issuer sides with the cardholder, a waiver claim gets denied for insufficient documentation. In each case the screening question ("should we have taken this booking?") and the evidence question ("what did the unit look like before and after?") are two halves of the same risk file, and only one of them is usually staffed.
Screening is preventive and it is upstream. It is also, per the numbers above, mostly being done for you until the moment you go direct. Condition evidence is the part nobody else can do for you, and it is the part that decides outcomes after the fact. Most managed properties are already generating it: cleaners and inspectors photograph these units after every stay, which means the record exists and is simply not being read. That is the gap automated damage detection closes, and it is why damage waiver providers care about verified condition at a known point in time for exactly the same reason a card network cares about compelling evidence.
Cite this study
Academic or press use: copy a ready-made reference. RapidEye is the publisher.
Quick FAQ
How much money is lost to real estate and rental fraud each year?
Real estate fraud reported to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center caused $275,110,419 in losses across 12,368 complaints in 2025. That is up 58% in dollar terms from $173,586,820 across 9,359 complaints in 2024, and up 89% from $145,243,348 in 2023. Separately, non-payment and non-delivery complaints, the category that captures paying for something that never arrives, accounted for 56,478 complaints and $503,373,587 in 2025.
How common is holiday booking fraud?
Action Fraud, the UK national fraud and cybercrime reporting service run by City of London Police, recorded 6,066 reports of holiday fraud in 2024 with total losses of £11,183,957. The average loss per victim was £1,844, essentially flat against £1,851 in 2023. July was the single heaviest reporting month with 647 reports, and more than 50% of reports mentioned a social media platform.
How many bookings does Airbnb block for party risk?
Airbnb states that its holiday anti-party defenses blocked or redirected more than 20,000 people in the US from booking an entire home listing over the July 4 weekend in 2025, nearly 11,000 over Memorial Day weekend in 2025, and more than 20,000 in the US plus more than 3,000 in Canada over New Year's Eve. Airbnb also reports that fewer than approximately 0.06% of US stays in 2025 resulted in a party report.
How much of a merchant's chargebacks are friendly fraud?
Merchants estimate that illegitimate disputes account for approximately 50% of the chargebacks they receive, according to the 2026 Chargeback Field Report from Chargebacks911, built on proprietary survey data from more than 250 merchants. Among enterprise merchants, 83.4% said friendly fraud had increased over the past three years, and 74.4% of all merchants surveyed described it as a moderate or significant concern.
Do short-term rental hosts actually screen guests?
Most do not, and many have never heard of the concept. In a survey run by Truvi, formerly Superhog, with the property management firm For The Host, 71% of the 165 hosts asked had never heard of short-term rental risk management. In the same survey, 68% said they had felt ignored by large online travel agencies when damage occurred.
Is rental fraud getting worse?
In the official US data, yes. The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center received 1,008,597 complaints in 2025 with $20.877 billion in reported losses, a 26% increase in losses over 2024, at an average of $20,699 per complaint. Real estate complaint volume rose 32% year over year and losses rose 58%. Cyber-enabled fraud alone accounted for 452,868 complaints and $17.697 billion, which is 45% of complaints and 85% of all losses.
Data sources
Every figure in this report traces to one of these named first-party sources, each checked against the original before publishing. We name each source and show its domain as plain text rather than linking out, so this page stays the citable reference.
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center2025 IC3 Annual Report (Internet Crime Report), including the three-year complaint and loss comparison tables and the elder fraud sectionic3.gov
Action Fraud, City of London PoliceDon't let fraudsters trip you up this summer: new alert issued as people look to snap up online holiday deals (February 2025)actionfraud.police.uk
Airbnb NewsroomOur anti-party system returns for July 4 weekend (2026); Rolling out our anti-party system for Memorial Day weekend (2026); Launching our anti-party technology for New Year's Eve stays (2025); Airbnb 2024 spring updatenews.airbnb.com
Chargebacks9112026 Chargeback Field Report: A Real-World Look at Chargeback Management in the Card-Not-Present Payments Space, and the accompanying June 2026 announcementchargebacks911.com
Truvi (formerly Superhog)Truvi for the Short-Term Rental and Hospitality Industry, reporting a host survey run with For The Host (n=165)truvi.com