<prompt> Human: Hey Reddit,TLDR at the bottom.Me and a friend are currently trying to rent an apartment in the Netherlands, but, the owner of the apartment currently resides in Switzerland, causing her to be unable to actually meet us in person. As a solution to this problem, she told us that we could use HomeAway:To rent the apartment, you just need to receive the keys and contract. You will receive them in 3 working days. The solution is to use Homeaways services. They handle rentals for people all over the world providing secure services for both tenants and hosts.Finally we request a 2 months payment 1 month deposit 1 month of rent.At this point we started to doubt a little. She is being very unclear about how HomeAway should help us out. The last line makes me feel kind of uncomfortable. She later pointed out that we would pay 2 months of rent 1560 to HomeAway. We received another mail shortly after our reply:Let me inform you about the steps that we must follow in order to conclude the deal.You will need to make the payment to Homeaway using bank transfer. The payment will be for 2 months 1 month deposit 1 month of rent 1560euro.- To start the reservation I need your full name and address so I can know where to send the keys and the rental contract;- As soon as I receive these details, I will inform Homeaway, in order to send the payment invoice;- After you will receive the payment invoice, you have to make the payment to Homeaway. Your money will be in their custody until you will inspect the apartment;- As soon as Homeaway confirms that the payment is in their custody, I will start the delivery of the keys and contract;- Homeaway will release the money only with your approval and only after the apartment inspection. After the apartment inspection, you will have 24 hours enough time to decide whether you will rent the apartment or not.Sadly, I dont know whether or not this is how renting an apartment from someone in a different country works. I personally think she could have given us way more information about HomeAway, like a contactperson or something like that. We need a little convincing, since our possible host is not being very specific. So Im left with the following questions:Are her demands normal? Is HomeAway used a lot in the renting world? Is this not some kind of scam? Sorry if I havent been very clear, I might have missed some important information. I will be home in an hour so I might have more information coming then, may this be needed.TLDR; Trying to rent an appartment, owner lives in another country so she cant meet with us, and requires us to pay a 1560 deposit to HomeAway, of which I dont know how legit it is. EDIT: Editted lay-out. EDIT2: Thanks for the help guys! I checked on the site where I saw the add for the apartment, and her account had allready been flagged for scamming. Oh well.  <response>: I cant speak for HomeAway but this is a very standard scam on Airbnb. 