I'd say definitely ask a lot of questions if you can't find the property listed in the county records!!!
I recently finished the process of narrowing down and then choosing a home.....it was a long process,
When I'd finally narrowed it down to my top 7 houses, I asked the owners of each for the street address. One refused to give it to me without a signed rental agreement, would only give me crossroads. So I tried searching with the name, but came up empty. While I can understand some caution, I eliminated them from my list, leaving me 6 that gave me exact addresses. I used the addresses to look up the property instead of the names of the owners. It was very interesting....2 of them had totally different names from what I was given. Of course it could be that it's a family owned home or something and the person I was dealing with was family but not the registered owner...or something, but it brought my confidence level down a notch for those two...I left them in our choices because I figured if we decided that was the first choice house I'd ask more questions....didn't seem like I should ask a lot of questions if we weren't going to choose them, almost felt like prying.
Another one of the addresses though was very interesting....I couldn't find it in the registrar at all, by address or the last name of the person I was emailing.....thought, ok, maybe it was on the border of the counties and I was looking in the wrong county records. SO I did a mapquest search...and it wouldn't find even the STREET in the city given......so I had my husband use his professional GPS to try to locate it (mapquest isn't 100% reliable as it all depends on updates and these are in new subdivisions, or so my logic went). DH's GPS on the other hand is updated weekly....and it couldn't find the street name either. So I wrote to the seller, hoping he'd just made a spelling error or something, even thought I'd tried a few variations. He was almost rude in telling me he knows his address.....and that obviously my "devices" were wrong.
I asked my MIL who lives in south FL to get a map of the area, and she couldn't find it listed either. So I eliminated that one from my list too.
For all I know the two with different names were just fine....and the one with the address problem could have been us......but they all just left me very worried about their legitimacy.
I had printed out all the information I had from each owner, and the websites and had my family look through it and each of us listed the pros and cons of each house and then ranked them in order. I didn't tell anyone about the houses that had my concerned...figured I'd only cross that bridge if one of them was our top choice. Thankfully, the house we chose checked out on all fronts, and to boot it was the one that I personally felt the best rapport with by email.
So...long response to say....keep checking and let your intuition guide you as well....if you can't verify it like most DISers do....then ask more questions of the owner. If it leaves you feeling nervous, reconsider! I went searching for "bad news" stories so I'd be prepared on what to check for, as most bad stories had something about "should have known because....". Well, some of them were so sad and scary that it almost turned me off renting! But there were so many more positives that I just couldn't bring myself to worry so long as I was diligent in checking things out.
There are sooooo many houses out there...if the one you're checking can't be verified, I'd seriously considering trying another. Even if you're only going a few days it's not only a lot of money to lose, but a ruined vacation, so it pays to do your worrying before you choose!
Good luck. I'm really looking forward to our trip and hope that our stay is so great that I'll come back and plaster their name and address on DIS and fill up the rest of their year with bookings!
