There are many people who do not want to cooperate with real estate agents. And such mistrust is completely justified. Incompetence, the desire to sell something more expensive and worse, to quickly get a commission and dissolve - this is roughly how most realtors work. And they charge considerable prices for their services.
Suppose there is a certain local real estate agency "Address". Or "Key". It positions itself as a team of professionals, 25 years on the market and knows everything about real estate in its city. He wants to take a lot of money for transactions that a priori he cannot carry out competently. And all because the team of professionals is made up of former salespeople, general laborers, and maybe 1-2 more or less adequate people, one of whom even knows what the Administrative Code and Civil Law are.
This is a typical portrait of most real estate agencies. All they can offer the client is to sell something that can be bought without them. So below we’ll talk about what tricks realtors use to close a deal profitably for themselves. But not for you.
Read, analyze, put into practice.
Scheme one: agreement in favor of the agent
How it works: the owner of the property places a post on some bulletin board saying that such and such an apartment is for sale for so much money. Almost immediately after publication, he gets a call from a buyer who is ready to take it, holding the money in one hand and the contract in the other.
And during the inspection of the apartment, it turns out that the buyer is a real estate agent. And for some reason he no longer likes the apartment, although he is looking only for himself. But he has a buyer who was looking for just such an option.
In reality there is no buyer. A realtor doesn't need an apartment. The trusting seller is taken to the agency’s office, where they offer to conclude two contracts: one for the provision of legal services, and the second for the deposit of the imaginary buyer. This is what comes out:
- The ghost buyer is ready to take the apartment; according to the contract, he gives a deposit of 15,000 rubles.
- And under the contract for the provision of services, this buyer was brought by an agent, and the seller must pay him a commission, the amount of which is equal to a penny to a penny deposit.
In fact, the seller not only does not receive the deposit, but also gives away his 15,000 rubles. And it seems like there’s no way to undermine: the agent’s services actually seemed to be provided.
Then there are two possible options: either the realtor disappears from the buyer’s radar, or he really starts looking for a buyer.
What to do in this case? Don't sign anything and don't go anywhere. If the agent really imposes his services, then:
- Ask to see the buyer. Talk to him at least in the presence of an agent. During the conversation, it will become clear whether he is really the buyer or a figurehead.
- Ask for documents to review. And if the agent does not give them, then the matter is not clear.
In general, it is better not to sign anything until a lawyer you trust has studied everything and given his expert opinion on the transaction.
Forgery of a will after death
In this case, we are again talking about the risks of buying a house in the case of a deceased owner. You may encounter scammers who, after the death of the owner, forged a will in their name and sell the house without having any rights to do so.
Sooner or later, the true owners of the property, for example, close relatives of the deceased, will come to the unsuspecting buyer. Or if there are none, then the property should pass into the hands of the state. Both relatives and the state will be able to win real estate from you in court, because the documents are fake.
Scheme two: the illusion of active selling
The essence: the realtor tells the seller a fable that he has a unique secret base of buyers and there is a crowd of people interested in your apartment. There may indeed be a large number of calls. But what good does this do to the agent?
The fact is that according to the contract, the realtor does not always have to sell the apartment. He can assist in the sale. And since there are responses, potential buyers too, he earned his fee. Sort of.
What to do in such a situation. Don't trust an agent who convinces you that there is some kind of secret base. Such databases do not exist. A good realtor can really have a large base of clients: some sell, others want to buy.
If the agent has nothing to hide and he honestly helps sell the property, he will provide a report without any problems: what kind of advertising, where they gave it, what kind of feedback on the property, and so on.
You can also ask the agent to draw up apartment viewing reports. This will show how many clients actually came to look at the apartment.
Imposing an exclusive contract
There is nothing wrong with exclusive agreements with real estate agencies - on the contrary, it shows the company’s serious intentions and desire to make every effort to sell your property (after all, without an exclusive agreement, the sale of your home turns into roulette for agents - “whoever is faster gets the slippers”).
However, the exclusive agreement should be carefully analyzed by you regarding the costs and responsibilities of the parties: who is responsible for what, which responsibilities are yours and which are the agency’s. And, most importantly, it must be urgent. Typically, the period of exclusive rights is limited to 3-6 months, after which you have every right to terminate the contract unilaterally.
Scheme three: false information in advertisements
How it works: a realtor publishes an ad that may contain fake photos, incomplete descriptions, or deliberate concealment of defects.
Or: they indicate a floor that is profitable from the point of view of sale, but in fact there is no such apartment and never existed. When a client comes to look at the property, the realtor tells him something like this: “Oh, we just bought this apartment, we just left to close the deal. But there’s another one for sale in this house, let’s see so that we don’t go in vain.”
In this case, the realtor does not really count on him to sell the apartment. But, he will receive another contact in his database, which can then be converted into a client.
What to do: if you hire a realtor, make sure that he provides accurate information about the apartment for sale. Request that the text and photo be approved by you before publishing the ad.
The realtor's request for an advance payment before the transaction
Typically, real estate agencies work without commission and do not ask for any advances or deposits until the purchase and sale agreement is signed.
If a realtor insists on an advance before the transaction, it is better to refuse the services of this agency. Perhaps you are dealing with a scammer or a shell company. And having paid an advance, you may never see these people again.
Scheme four: a discount in the realtor's pocket
If the home needs to be sold urgently, the seller is ready to give in on price. But, this discount often does not reach the buyer's pocket. Along the way, they get lost and end up in the pocket of a dishonest real estate agent. How does this happen:
- The seller sets the price for the apartment. For example, 2 million rubles.
- The agent convinces the seller that this is an unthinkable amount and that they need to reduce at least 50,000 rubles, and see how it goes.
- The seller agrees.
- The agent finds the client, but tells him the amount without a discount. He agrees, we can make a deal. But, already during the signing of the contract, the agent says that he takes the difference in price for himself, as if for additional work.
Of course, the seller may refuse, sending such an agent to hell. But, this way he may also lose a buyer, and this is not always a good option.
The buyer does not suspect anything and pays more than he could.
What to do: fix everything related to pricing in the agency agreement. Although the ideal option in terms of payments would be to do without an intermediary altogether.
How to choose a real estate agency so as not to become a victim of deception?
Here are some recommendations:
- Try to choose an agency based on reviews and recommendations, ideally on the advice of your friends and acquaintances who have used their services;
- Read the contract carefully before signing it. It should indicate both your responsibilities and rights (it is best to consult with lawyers if possible);
- All money should be transferred directly into the hands of the seller, and not through an intermediary;
- Check: whether the documents for the property are drawn up correctly;
- Be sure to discuss the amount of his commission in advance with the agent. And never give any advances until the agency provides you with an agreement with the owner, as well as the original documents.
On average, the commission of real estate agencies in Moscow and the Moscow region today ranges from 2 to 5% of the cost of the property; this amount must be specified in the agreement between the client and the agency. Payment of the commission takes place only upon the fact of the transaction; if the transaction did not take place or violations were identified, you do not have to pay for the services.
Thus, summing up all of the above, I would like to once again remind you of vigilance at all stages of the transaction, so as not to be deceived. As they say, “God protects the careful,” and there is no need to rush here - it is better to do everything slowly but carefully: check not only the agency, but also the agent, counterparty, contract, real estate. And then the transaction will go through without problems.
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Scheme five: the agent does not have authority to provide real estate services
The problem here may lie in the following: a person comes to the meeting who only calls himself a realtor. He does not have a contract for the provision of services, he cannot document his work in a certain real estate agency, and he cannot show his passport either.
What to do: don't get involved. If the "agent" does not have anything that would confirm his work in the company, he may well be a fraudster. Or maybe not. But why take the risk?
Forgery of documents of a deceased owner
Fraudsters are looking for a house where the owner recently died. Usually, heirs do not appear immediately, and dishonest realtors take advantage of this. At this time, they forge and draw up documents. Then a client is urgently found to whom this house is sold.
The buyer is at greatest risk in this situation, since by checking all the documents, he may miss the fact that the owner is no longer alive, and after the whole truth comes to light, at least get into a lot of problems with law enforcement agencies.
Should I buy a database of apartments with owner numbers from a real estate agency?
This method is used by scammers who are ready to quickly close their agency. As a rule, legally it does not exist at all. In such an agency you are offered access to a database of apartments for money, and they promise a huge selection (Ekaterinburg is especially famous for this scam - they have been profiting from students coming to study in this way for a long time) of rental apartment options. Rent on amazing terms and for various “tasty” rental prices. They will also promise, of course, many other delights. It’s only after you’ve transferred the money that the realtor disappears. It also turns out that there is no base at all.
And some fake agencies even use this method on an ongoing basis. They invite the client to the office, sign an information support agreement, and let you sit at the computer, where there is a database of apartments with the phone numbers of the owners. But you are unlikely to learn anything from it. The fact is that transactions in the real estate market are carried out on a regular basis. And if someone created a similar database for a thousand apartments. Which are being rented right now, in a week it will become obsolete.
Even if this is a really large base, this means. That it is made up of completely irrelevant options. Never pay for some apartment databases and other nonsense - this will not help you in any way.
They can also play a trick as old as this World, but still working - after all, the grown-up youth have never heard of it. The scheme is as follows: you find an advertisement for renting an apartment at a low price, call there - they invite you to the agency.
Then come to the agency and a friendly girl with a smile on her face invites you to drink coffee and make yourself at home. Thereby winning and winning your trust.
Then you start hearing that they again have a large base of owners who are ready to rent out an apartment cheaply. And they rent cheaply because this agency has been working with these owners for many years.
And you are invited to gain access to this database by paying a standard one-time fee of 7,000 -10,000 rubles. After which you will be given printed materials with the telephone numbers of the apartment owners. Your task is to call the numbers provided (pretending to be a client from this agency) and go to view apartments. And having chosen the option - move in.
Further, you will be given completely wrong non-existent addresses, and the same wrong phone numbers (in case the particularly meticulous ones who decide to go to the address do not bother normal people with calls and visits). And you will start calling the list. Then you may go to one of the nearest addresses, but you will soon realize that you have been deceived.
Returning to the agency, you will meet the same girl who only an hour ago took money from you and say that you could not get through to any of the numbers provided.
To which you will receive an answer: That this agency did not guarantee. They provided you with information support, but the fact that you couldn’t get through is already your problem. In general, the purest water is a scam for a sucker. And only 1-2% of all those who applied will be able to withdraw their money. That is, only their most arrogant clients will take them back, whom the management of such a false agency will be afraid to openly abandon like that.
Method six - two-room “one and a half”
A two-room apartment in most regions of Russia and a “kopeck piece” in Sochi may not be the same thing at all. Meanwhile, future residents of Sochi are looking for a two-room apartment, so it’s worth preparing for some nuances.
The nuance is usually hidden behind the wording “lorry” (in principle, familiar to many) or “euro-double” (more common in Sochi). In fact, this is not a “two-room apartment” at all, but something like a studio with an additional room.
The kitchen and living room in such an apartment are combined into one room, plus there is a bedroom. This is by no means a full-fledged two-room apartment with a separate kitchen. When going to Sochi to view an apartment, you should understand in advance what its layout is. Either check with your realtor for the actual number of separate bedrooms, or ask him to send you a floor plan.
conclusions
We talked only about some popular ways to deceive home buyers in Sochi and ways to identify bad realtors. If you encounter at least one of the listed points, you should at least check the realtor on other points, asking the necessary questions in between.
There are professionals in Sochi who are interested in solving the problem posed by the buyer and making him satisfied. But it’s not easy to find them among the mass of businessmen for whom it is important to “sell” the first option they come across. We hope our material will help you save money, time and effort when looking for real estate in Sochi.
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Method four - “the sea in 10 minutes”
Another method of deception for visitors who value the proximity of the sea coast. Advertisements for apartments in residential complexes located 10-15 minutes from the sea.
To understand what it is, let's start with the main thing - on the map of Sochi everything looks located near the sea. Formally, even the most remote areas from the coast are only a few kilometers from the beaches. The city is sandwiched between the sea and the mountains, into which it is impossible to go too deep.
However, many areas of Sochi are located on a hill in any case, and walking from the sea to the house will bring little joy. In addition, there is a railway line and a wide highway along the coast (Kurortny Prospekt, which turns into Batumi Highway and Lenin Street in Adler). How exactly the transition through these obstacles on the way to the sea from a particular residential complex is organized is a question that definitely needs to be studied.
Finally, an important question is what exactly you will see on the coast when you get to its nearest point. It is not a fact that there will be an accessible accessible beach there at all.
Ask the realtor which beach can be accessed from the residential complex with the apartment for sale. Ask them to tell you what the path to the sea will look like and how the transition through the railway and highway will be organized.
Check the information yourself - for example, plot a walking route from the residential complex to the sea in Yandex or Google maps, or the MAPS.ME application. At a minimum, you will see the actual distance you need to travel and the estimated travel time.
Method seven - “two are better, but cheaper”
But this will no longer be the realtor’s trick, but your own trick. It will help check the integrity of the agent with whom you are communicating.
When communicating with a realtor by phone or on the spot and exploring different options (no matter what budget we are talking about), you can unexpectedly throw him an idea that “suddenly dawned” on you. Ask, what if, instead of one apartment at a normal price, you buy two or several at 1.5 million rubles each (for renting out to tourists, it’s quite good to have several apartments instead of one). Ask your agent to send you offers in this price range.
What's the catch? For Sochi, 1.5 million rubles for an apartment is almost always unrealistic. And the option will always be very bad. Either this is a problematic new building, or these are objects that are directly prohibited for sale, or a very neglected, semi-dilapidated secondary building.
A normal realtor will immediately try to cool you down and dissuade you from such an idea. He will explain all existing risks. An unscrupulous agent will happily try to sell you a problematic property.
How realtors deceive
If you gave money to an agency, then be sure that no one will return it to you - finances in this matter simply do not move in the opposite direction. Some agencies make money on this rule.
For example, you are going to buy an apartment and sign an agreement. Which states that you pay the agent a certain amount for assistance in an upcoming transaction. The contract also stipulates this. That you can get your money back only if the contract was terminated by the agent himself. And then suddenly it turns out that you will not buy an apartment for some reason beyond your control.
For example, no one informed you in advance about the repairs that would urgently need to be done in the housing you are purchasing, and at a great cost. Since living in an apartment with existing renovations is simply impossible.
Some people draw up such contracts even before they have seen the apartment they are buying in person. Therefore, the first visit to the site causes them outright horror. They, of course, immediately refuse the deal. However, it is not so easy to return the money given to the realtor - after all, one of the clauses of the contract says just that.
To avoid getting into such a situation, you need to not only carefully study the signed contract. But also study the activities of the real estate agency and the realtor himself, whom you intend to contact. Similar situations happen with agencies that do not care about their reputation, and similar scams are common there.
So study reviews online in advance on a specialized website. Use the resource where all companies operating in Russia. Reviews are written by dissatisfied clients or their former employees. One of the most reliable sources on this topic is the portal of honest reviews: reviewsrf.rf
You must understand that such agents make money precisely from deception, although from a legal point of view everything will be clear. You will not only lose money, but also time. We have described a completely legal deception. Which, unfortunately, will be considered legal advice in court.
But there is another common method of deception, which is used not by realtors, but by simple scammers. They may demand money from you even before the meeting. For example, you saw a great ad and wanted to rent a house. They will explain to you over the phone that you first need to transfer money, and only then they will show you the apartment.
Of course, this is a lie. And you cannot transfer money in advance. After all, real real estate agencies will never work according to such a scheme.
Method eight - housing for rent
Not that we are talking here about some way of deceiving the buyer by the realtor. Rather, we will pay attention to how to identify non-professionals if you are buying real estate as an investment object. That is, for renting it out.
The first question a realtor should ask upon learning about your plans to invest in housing is whether you will rent out the apartment daily or for the long term. If he doesn’t ask such a question, but begins to offer you options, most likely he is deeply indifferent to what will happen to you and your investment next. The main thing is to sell you something, and quickly.
Apartments in Sochi for daily rent to vacationers and for long-term rent are two sets that overlap very little. Completely different categories of housing, often even located in different places.
In a conversation with a realtor, ask him a question about the payback period of an investment apartment, specify how many years later it will bring net profit. The normal period is about 10 years. Super liquid options will pay off in 7-9 years. Unsuccessful - for 12 years or longer. If a realtor assures you that you will recoup your investment in 3-5 years, he is not a professional.
What disadvantages should you pay attention to when renting an apartment?
If the buyer or tenant does not try to see the shortcomings of the apartment, then the agent, as a rule, will not help. For example, when the faucet in the kitchen is broken, the realtor will not touch it.
In this situation, the client must check everything himself. There are several tricks that agents use in problem apartments. If the neighbors yell in the evenings, then the apartment will be shown in the morning. If there is traffic jam near the house in the morning, the show will be moved to lunch.
If the view from the window is terrible (for example, a garbage dump), then they will show you housing closer to the dark (they simply love to use this option in winter while all the imperfections are covered with snow).
If the wallpaper is peeling in one of the rooms and it’s cold because of the old window, then they won’t take you there. They will probably show you everything else, and then quickly take you into this room for just a few seconds.
Experts recommend making either more than one viewing at different times of the day (especially important when buying a home), or a long inspection of the apartment (when renting). You need to take off your outerwear and walk around the apartment at least while signing the contract, in order to understand whether the owners are hiding from you any flaws.
It won’t be difficult for you to check all the switches, taps and sockets, but this way you will understand what exactly they are trying to offer you. Don’t even hope that a realtor will help you find out something bad.
Of course, you can’t predict all the troubles (but you need to find at least most of them). For example, thin walls can lead to a situation where you hear a neighbor coughing at night (or a small child crying behind the wall). However, if you come to view it during the daytime, you may not see this drawback.
Method one - fake owners and their relatives
Where do home buyers usually try to find sellers to purchase an apartment without intermediaries? That's right - on ad sites like Avito, CIAN or Yandex. Real estate.
That is why realtors have mastered all such sites perfectly. A huge percentage of housing advertisements there are fake. And one of the deception schemes is that realtors pretend to be relatives of the owner.
By calling the phone number provided, you will find out that the owner’s brother/brother-in-law/uncle/friend is communicating with you. In the vast majority of cases, this is, of course, not true. It’s just that the realtor doesn’t want to advertise himself.
It’s good if the apartment from the ad actually exists, is actually for sale and really costs exactly as much as indicated on the website. But the very attempt to deceive should alert you - having deceived you when you met, the realtor will definitely deceive you somewhere else; it is better not to have any business with such “relatives of the owner” from the very beginning.
Method three - “apartment with sea view”
The desire of those who move from the northern regions to see the Black Sea from the window of their Sochi apartment is more than understandable and even legal. The warm climate and the sea are what people come to Sochi for. From the point of view of an unscrupulous realtor, it would be a sin not to use this.
The view of the sea from an apartment window may in fact turn out to be a thin strip on top of the roofs of neighboring houses, or even a small piece that can be seen by leaning out waist-deep.
By calling something like this a full-fledged view, realtors achieve exactly the same thing - the buyer’s arrival in Sochi for its “processing” on the spot.
It’s very simple to check any advertisement, if there is no photo of the sea from the window - ask to take such a photo. If the realtor starts coming up with reasons why he can’t do this, or sends something unintelligible, you should think about whether it makes sense to continue working with him.
