Is it safe to rent a vacation rental through paypal?

[flyycutie07]

I am interested in renting a vacation rental apartment in Miami for spring break. The renter guy sent me an email with his paypal email to make the payment to. I am just paranoid with these types of transactions. I am supposed to pay a security deposit and the rest when I do go. But if this guy turned out to be a scammer would I be protected by paypal and get my money back?

[PayPal_Andy]

flyycutie07- I'm pretty sure I answered this somewhere else, but for the life of me I can't find it. So I'll be more than happy to answer it again. 🙂

While PayPal does provide purchase protection, services and real estate are actually ineligible. We'll gladly process the payment for you for simplicity's sake, but if there's any issues and you would need to open a dispute, we would not be able to make a determination on it.

You may want to check out section 13.3 of our User Agreement for the low down on the Purchase Protection. If you use us for the payment and everything doesn't turn out alright (and I sincerely hope it does), I would recommend using your credit card for payment so you have their protections as well.

Andy