Although today there are many opportunities to find an apartment suitable for purchase on your own, many prefer to turn to realtors in the hope that professionals will find the most profitable and reliable options. But the realtor on whom such hopes are pinned may himself be the source of problems. How do realtors deceive and how to avoid fraud, deception and deceit when buying an apartment? We tell you in this article.
Deceiving realtors when selling an apartment (that is, buying for you as a client) is possible in many ways. Let's list the main ones.
"Assigning" an ad
Many apartment sellers prefer to act independently and do not turn to intermediaries, but place advertisements themselves on one of the Internet sites. Access to this kind of information is, of course, open to everyone. Unscrupulous realtors copy all the data and place a duplicate ad, which they try to actively promote. As a result, a potential buyer may stumble upon it. Thinking that he will communicate with the owner, the buyer finds himself in the turn of the intermediary, and the latter will try his best not to lose the client in the hope that after the sale he will still receive his commission. If you present the situation in such a way that the owner of the apartment himself gave the realtor the authority to find a client, it does not work; the realtor will try to impose other offers, citing the fact that the original apartment in the ad has already been sold. This not only deprives the buyer of the opportunity to see the housing that suits him, but also entails additional expenses. It goes without saying that such behavior is an outright deception.
Another deception from the same category is stories that the realtor is supposedly a relative or acquaintance of the owner who was asked to help with the sale. And although initially they will promise that they will not take any commission, in the end the buyer (if he is satisfied with the apartment) will be in for a very unpleasant surprise. Many will be embarrassed to decisively refuse an arrogant realtor, because a certain amount of “work” has been done, time has been spent, and the intermediary has invested some effort into this transaction.
How to deal with such deception?
It is quite difficult to immediately find out that the advertisement is from the owner, and not from someone pretending to be him. How to understand that a realtor is a scammer? If he immediately introduces himself as a relative, friend or neighbor, ask for the owner’s phone number and conduct all negotiations with him personally. If you resolutely refuse to provide contact information, also refuse the deal: it is likely that they want to deceive you.
If your communication reaches the point of viewing the apartment, set a condition: the owner must be present. You can check whether this is a dummy person using documents confirming ownership of the apartment. All agreements must be made only with the owner, so that later “unexpected” commissions from “relatives”, intermediaries, “neighbors” do not arise. The owner, for his part, is interested in communicating directly with the buyer, so your main task is to contact him and make sure that this is really the person who makes the final decision and has the right to sell the apartment you like.
Establishing a ban on electronic registration of transactions
There is also a reverse procedure - permission to conduct transactions online using an electronic digital signature. In this case, the owner will not have to do anything at all if he wants to limit online transactions with his property.
According to the provisions of the law dated July 13, 2015 No. 218-FZ, as amended in 2021, registration of real estate transactions using an enhanced qualified electronic signature (ECES) is possible only with the written consent of the property owner. The owner must send such consent to Rosreestr in advance. Only after this will a transaction be possible on the basis of an electronic purchase and sale agreement. Without such consent, electronic documents regarding the transaction will not be considered.
If, however, you subsequently need to open the opportunity to carry out online transactions, then an application for the possibility of conducting transactions using UKEP can be submitted:
- for all objects owned by the owner;
- for a specific object.
A record of the authorization of electronic transactions will be made in the Unified State Register of Real Estate. Otherwise, transactions will continue to be possible only in person.
NOTE! Rosreestr always notifies owners when electronic documents on real estate transactions are received for registration. Upon receipt of such a notification, the owner must promptly notify Rosreestr that he is not the initiator of the transaction. In this case, the transaction will not be registered. In this case, it is important to send an application through the MFC indicating your current email address so that Rosreestr can promptly send a notification.
Sale of non-existent apartments
Realtors can use this trick: place an advertisement for the sale of an apartment that no one is going to sell. The price is set below the market price. Buyers see such an offer, call the specified number (thinking that they are contacting the owner), and then they are bombarded with a stream of offers for completely different properties, because “this apartment has already been sold, but there are still attractive options.” As a result, the realtor sells what he needs to sell, having caught the buyer, often so cunningly that he does not even understand where he was deceived.
How to deal with such deception?
If you call the “owner” from an ad and they start telling you that this apartment has already been sold, but there are others, do not enter into further conversations and hang up. It is better to make such calls not from your personal number and certainly not from a landline phone. Get a separate SIM card, which you won’t mind blocking if they start attacking you with “lucrative offers”.
Results
To avoid becoming victims of scammers, property owners and buyers should more actively use the capabilities of electronic services. With their help, you can establish a ban on electronic transactions, verify the authenticity of the power of attorney on the basis of which the seller’s representative acts, etc.
We promptly talk about the specifics of calculating property tax in our “Property Tax” section.
You can find more complete information on the topic in ConsultantPlus. Free trial access to the system for 2 days.
They ask for an advance and then don’t give it back
Sometimes before the transaction the buyer is asked to pay part of the amount. And if the deal falls through, they don’t give it back. In fact, if you refuse to purchase, you cannot be charged other than the intermediary's work, if such conditions were agreed upon separately.
How to deal with such deception?
Write down all amounts to be paid in the contract. Do not give any money if you are not sure that you will buy an apartment, and do not promise the realtor a fee for work that in reality will not bring you any benefit.
Injustice of the law
Changes to the law that were supposed to follow the 2021 Constitutional Court ruling did not come into force until 2021. But lawyers believe these amendments could make the situation worse. “Now the law says that the state can take away an apartment from a bona fide purchaser within the first three years. This contradicts what the Constitutional Court said in 2021 and what the ECHR has been saying since 2011,” comments Vaypan.
The provided compensation mechanism, Vaipan says, is quite cynical. After a person’s apartment has been taken away, he must file a claim against the seller and obtain a court decision to recover money from him. Then you need to initiate enforcement proceedings in order to receive these funds. If it is not possible to recover money from the seller within six months, a bona fide purchaser can file a lawsuit against the Russian treasury to receive compensation in the amount of the cost of the lost apartment, and wait for the decision to come into force. Thus, several years may pass from the moment a person is evicted until he receives money for the lost apartment. “It’s not clear what a person should do all this time? His apartment was reclaimed, he was evicted, he has not yet received the money, his child was taken away because he is homeless, his registration was also removed, and without registration he cannot even receive court notices,” says Gladysheva.
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Why do judges rubber stamp other people's decisions?
Another question that lawyers ask is why the burden of many years of judicial red tape falls on the shoulders of a person who is not guilty of anything? “It turns out that the state first takes away an apartment from a bona fide purchaser, and in another court process pays him money in the amount of the cost of this apartment. What is the point of this acrobatic trick? Three lawsuits arise out of nowhere. First, the state spends its own resources to sue the bona fide purchaser. Then the bona fide purchaser must sue his seller. And, having achieved nothing, he must file a lawsuit against the state to receive money from the lost apartment. This is the multiplication of entities unnecessarily,” says Vaypan.
According to lawyers, the problem with the eviction of bona fide purchasers is the inaction of the officials themselves. In Moscow, there is a government decree that instructs local authorities to monitor escheatable property, but often such apartments sit empty for years or are fraudulently placed on the real estate market. “It is impossible to completely exclude the occurrence of such situations, but the main question is not this, but who should bear responsibility for this and how the risks are distributed,” says Vaypan. — The state must bring a monetary claim against the person who illegally took possession of this apartment. There are even cases when these scammers go to jail, but no lawsuits are brought against them. A paradoxical situation arises when the financial burden is borne not by the guilty person, but by a bona fide buyer who purchased this apartment with his own money. This is the root of injustice."
Straw buyers
We are all designed in such a way that an object becomes more desirable to us if we see that there are other contenders for it. Unscrupulous realtors sometimes bring in “straw buyers” - people who play the role of those who want to buy the apartment you like. Using this as an argument (“The property is in demand, and they are willing to pay even more!”), the realtor will not only persuade you to buy, but also try to increase the transaction price or his commission.
How to deal with such deception?
Even if you see that someone else wants to buy an apartment, do not give in to emotions and do not let this fact influence your decision. Weigh the pros and cons, without taking into account real or perceived demand. If you see that your “competitors” are ready to engage in dialogue, it makes sense to talk to them carefully and try to find out how serious their intentions are. At the same time, evaluate whether these buyers are real.
The Odnodvortsevs' case
In 2005, the Odnodvortsev family bought a two-room apartment in Moscow. Three years later, they received a lawsuit from the interdistrict prosecutor, who acted in the interests of the Department of Housing Policy and Housing Fund of Moscow (now the Department of City Property) and demanded that the apartment be seized from the Odnodvortsevs, deregistered and evicted.
Before moving to Moscow, Tatyana and Valery Odnodvortsev lived in Belgorod. “There wasn’t much work, and our friends once asked us why we didn’t go to Moscow. That’s what we decided,” says Tatyana. At first they rented housing, then sold apartments in Belgorod and bought an apartment in Moscow. Six people lived in it: Tatiana and Valery, their son with his wife and child, and Valery’s father. In 2008, they received a lawsuit. “We open the mailbox, and there is a thick letter. We read it and didn’t understand anything, we thought there was some kind of mistake. It turned out that it was not a mistake and that this apartment was once privatized to a fraudster,” recalls Tatyana.
Until 2000, a man lived in this apartment and was its legal owner. Then he died, and the apartment remained empty; for three years no one laid claim to it. In July 2003, Olga Maltseva registered there on the basis of a marriage certificate with a deceased man. In 2004, the Housing Policy Department concluded a social rental agreement with her and an agreement for the transfer of ownership of the apartment. A few years later, the department found out that the marriage certificate was fake, which means the contract for transferring ownership of the apartment was invalid. And although Maltseva’s actions were illegal, and the department itself was a party to the transaction to privatize the apartment to the fraudster, it was not Maltseva who received the claim, but the Odnodvortsevs.
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Evictors
“When we received the letter, the first thing we did was go to court. And we won the first trial, but the Moscow City Court overturned this decision and sent it back to the district court for consideration by another judge. This judge listened to us and said that the apartment should be returned to the department, but we should be allowed to live in it. And the Moscow City Court canceled it again,” explains Tatyana. “We’ve been suing for the 12th year now.”
Officials promised the Odnodvortsevs to enter into a social rental agreement, but at first this was prevented by the reorganization of the housing policy department into the city property department, and in 2021 the family received a refusal. They were evicted from the apartment, and for several years now they have been living in fear that they will be evicted. “We are pensioners; we worked in the north for many years. I have more than 30 years of experience, my husband has about the same. My husband's father is a war veteran, disabled, and 95 years old. This year they congratulated him on his birthday: they gave him a card signed by Putin and a watch. But it would be better if they just left us alone,” says Tatyana.
Working in contrast
In order to sell not the most profitable option, unscrupulous realtors may first offer several absolutely terrible ones. After run-down apartments in bad areas, even very average housing will seem very attractive to you. And since the realtor will not offer anything better (after all, his goal is to sell exactly this “average” option), the option will seem especially attractive.
How to deal with such deception?
Evaluate each apartment independently, without regard to those that were shown to you before. If the intermediary promises to find an attractive option, but over and over again leads you to "bedbug infestations", this is a reason to think about whether they are trying to deceive you.
How is the value of real estate assessed with a mortgage?
You have carefully studied the market and chosen a suitable apartment to purchase with a mortgage. Please note that the bank will not limit itself to verbal information about the cost of the selected home. In addition to other documents, the lender will require an apartment appraisal report.
The report looks like a bound A4 album. The document is prepared by a specialist from the appraisal company. Please note, the company or licensed appraiser must be accredited by your bank.
Main points of the assessment report:
- infrastructure of the area in which housing is purchased;
- condition of the house and apartment (color photographs are attached);
- comparative analysis of similar offers on the market;
- the cost of the property;
- other.
This and other information contained in the assessment report is necessary for specialists to draw an objective conclusion about whether it is profitable for the bank to lend to you.
The costs of the appraiser's services and the preparation of the report are paid by agreement of the parties. It happens that the seller is involved in the assessment, for example, if an apartment is purchased with an unapproved redevelopment.
The report specifies all data sources used for the procedure.
“Tricky” viewing at a time favorable for the realtor
You can try to hide some of the accompanying shortcomings of the apartment. For example, noisy neighbors, unpleasant surroundings, unattractive infrastructure, and so on. Realtors do this by choosing the most favorable time to show an apartment. For example, if the neighbors are rowdy, they will show it during the day; if they have a small child who constantly screams, they will invite you to watch while the family is on a walk; If someone from the nearest apartment is learning to play a musical instrument, they will choose a time when he is not learning scales.
It’s more difficult with unpleasant objects nearby. It is difficult to hide a plant that constantly smokes and spoils the air of the entire area. But if there is at least a minimal opportunity to hide a flaw, they will definitely take advantage of it. For example, a kindergarten in the courtyard can become a test for residents of the lower floors when children go for a walk. Naturally, all apartment showings will be held during children's quiet time.
How to deal with such deception?
Try to agree on several viewings at different times (if necessary, under plausible pretexts, citing the desire to look at the finishing again or measure the kitchen). If you have the slightest doubt, it makes sense to come to the house at an “inopportune” time and look at the situation. Perhaps communicate with those who will be in the yard at this time. Nearby neighbors can be a valuable source of information. They will inform you about the unpleasant “surprise” in advance, and you won’t have to deal with problematic “additions” to the apartment later.
