When making any transaction, the question arises of how not to stumble upon a swindler and save your money. Nowadays it’s quite easy to buy or rent an apartment, but there are various types of fraud in the real estate market, which means you shouldn’t let your guard down. We will tell you about 7 current fraud schemes in housing transactions and share tips on how to avoid them.
Deposit scam
This plan is quite popular among scammers. You come across an offer where the price of the property is significantly lower than the market price. Of course, this option seems attractive, so you make a purchase decision and draw up an appropriate agreement. In order for the buyer to be confident in you, it is necessary to make a deposit (it is specified in the terms of the contract). After you have given the amount to the realtor or seller, reasons suddenly arise that push you away from the purchase. For example, noisy neighbors, legal problems with the apartment (it is under arrest or mortgage), etc. After refusing to continue the deal, which is what the scammers wanted, you are left without an apartment and lose the amount of your deposit. It is non-refundable if the client terminates the contract on his own initiative.
To avoid becoming a victim of this scheme, we advise you to independently check the property for legal purity in advance - all the necessary data will be shown by an extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate, which can be ordered on the Unified State Register of Real Estate website . In addition, it is better to contact trusted real estate companies and avoid housing that is greatly undervalued.
Someone else's passport
At the stage of concluding an agreement with the owner, you may notice that he does not look like himself in the passport. This is a serious reason to sound the alarm, although the owner will joke that the years or the kilograms gained are to blame for such changes. If the document is signed, a few days later the real owner of the apartment will come to you and say that he has lost his passport and has already written a statement to the police. Such an appeal voids the purchase and sale agreement.
If you suspect a double, be sure to ask for additional documents when drawing up the contract (for example, a driver’s license or international passport), and also compare the signatures on all documents.
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?
Underpricing in the contract
When signing the contract, the seller may ask you to write a lower price for the apartment in the document, as if to reduce the amount of taxes. You go to meet him halfway. A few days later, a lawyer appears on your doorstep and informs you that the former owner of your apartment has been declared bankrupt, which means the contract will be terminated. You can only demand back the amount specified in the contract. For example, if you purchased an apartment for 7 million rubles, but specified 3 million in the contract, you will only be able to receive 3 million. In addition, you will be left without an apartment.
Under no circumstances agree to underestimate the price of real estate in the contract. We also recommend checking the owner of the apartment for debts, bankruptcy or other encumbrances - this can be done on the website of the Federal Bailiff Service, in the Unified Register of Bankruptcy Information or using the file of arbitration cases.
The seller is a grandmother
If the owner of the apartment you have chosen turns out to be an elderly grandmother who willingly agrees to all the terms of the contract, this is a clear reason to think about it. Usually, after successfully completing the transaction, relatives of the pensioner appear and present you with a certificate of her incapacity (for example, she is registered at a psychoneurological dispensary (PND). By law, you must return the funds, but in reality this happens very rarely (fraudsters do not choose this for nothing diagram).The process can take a long time - you will be lucky if you get at least part of the amount back.
If you have doubts about the legal capacity of an elderly seller, we advise you to request a certificate from the IPA. A notary will help you prepare such an application.
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.
Apartment in a private house
Fraudsters often convert houses intended for individual use into townhouses and sell apartments in them. It doesn’t seem to be a big deal, but such housing will be considered an illegal building, since it was built on land for individual housing construction (individual housing construction). So, you will only buy a share in the house, and it cannot be sold without the consent of all residents. The structure will eventually be demolished.
Read the contract carefully so as not to accidentally acquire a share in the apartment. Also, do not execute a transaction under a gift agreement - under it, the transfer of funds is impossible, which means the transaction will be declared illegal.
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A young inexperienced student after the history department. Well, where to go? You had to go through some kind of casting for a cell phone store, you had to work for three months for a minimum wage in a household appliance store, and then they called and said, “Go to work tomorrow.”
“We have a real estate company, we specialize in renting out apartments, we work mainly in the office, the salary is piecework,” the head of the office, Maria, lured me in with a pleasant voice.
That's how I became a realtor. Over the course of a year, I managed to work in several companies and now I know all the ways to fool both the real estate seller and the buyer. I hope my notes will help someone save time, nerves and money.
Method 1. Information services instead of real estate services
An office in a multi-story building, a large room with a bunch of computers and phones. Work is in full swing. The company's head office is located in Novosibirsk, with a branch in Saratov for six months.
— Your task is to attract new clients to us and enter into contracts with them. On the computer you will find a database, there are those who rent and those who are looking for housing. For the first, our services are free, but for the second, you need to save some money,” Masha explains to me, she’s 30, blonde, wide-eyed, but the main thing is a melodic, kind of enveloping voice—you listen and believe right away.
It turned out that I ended up with “gray realtors”: they don’t show apartments here and don’t process transactions. The task is to lure the client and conclude an agreement with him for the provision of information services.
— To interest people, we need inexpensive apartments with a convenient location. Therefore, in the morning you throw 5-7 offers for housing on the Internet,” Masha gives me a master class.
“So there’s nothing suitable yet, in the center and with furniture,” I was surprised.
“They will,” the boss winked and went to a well-known site with advertisements. A couple of mouse clicks, a little imagination and the ad is ready: “Apartment for rent, city center, two rooms, European-quality renovation. There is a TV and a washing machine. Price - 9 thousand rubles. From the owner." And a photo for clarity.
And it doesn’t matter that in reality such an apartment costs about 15 thousand a month, and the picture was downloaded from the Internet, the main thing is to hook the client.
The calls did not take long to arrive, but it was not easy to lure the person who had fallen for the bait into the office. I had to use all my charm, lie that the owner had gone out for a minute and I was his companion, and talk him into exhaustion. And when he finally arrives, the most important thing begins.
— Sorry, but this apartment has literally just been rented. But don't worry, we have dozens of suitable options. Even better - naturally, no one was going to take the client to a non-existent apartment. For three thousand rubles, I offered to conclude an agreement for the provision of services, promised an individual approach, and, for greater persuasiveness, asked to fill out a questionnaire of the client’s wishes. The majority agreed, it was not in vain that they dragged themselves here.
Another thousand rubles for contract forms: it sounds nice, but in reality it’s just three sheets of paper printed on a color printer. Basically my job is done. Now the client’s phone will receive SMS messages with phone numbers from the “owner” database with a brief description of the proposed housing. Of course, no one can vouch for the authenticity of the data; all records are from the words of the lessors themselves. Clients will also have to arrange a meeting and travel around the city to look at housing themselves. Agree, finding a “dream apartment” is quite difficult, but there is essentially nothing to show the company. The contract states: “provision of information services.” Don't bother!
True, after a couple of months of working in this office, it was time for me to change my phone number. Furious customers called day and night, demanding their money back. I changed my number. And work too.
Lawyer's comment
- Alas, no matter how much you say, the majority of our citizens still sign documents without looking, and then clutch their heads. There is only one piece of advice - read the contract carefully, all 10, 15, 20 pages, even if the manager distracts you, they often do this deliberately.
Method 2. Access to closed databases for money
In the new office, next to my desk, there was a realtor’s memo: “Establish trusting contact with the client, understand his problem”, “clearly know the apartment’s parameters”, “do not hide or hush up shortcomings”... Funny instructions - in fact, everything is completely to another. Here, too, I first had to try to scam the client out of money - for 500 rubles we promised to give him access to a unique database that only we have. We have a database, but it is all made up of the same advertisements that are freely available on real estate websites, newspapers and magazines. But many fell for it.
By the way, there is some truth in the legend about the unique database. Why do you think it’s so difficult to find an apartment from the owner in a big city? Because all those advertisements that appear on the Internet from real apartment owners “sink.” This is especially abused by “gray realtors”. We constantly searched websites with advertisements for apartments for rent; if the owner rented it out, we entered his number into our database, and a link to the advertisements was immediately sent out via the company’s internal mail in all regions. The advertisements are filled with complaints and within half an hour the site administration deletes it. Cheap and cheerful, and the main thing is that the owner is already in our database. This is why it is so difficult to rent an apartment without intermediaries - no matter what number you call, a realtor will answer anyway!
Expert commentary
— Conscientious realtors don’t make up fairy tales about closed databases, because, as Roman already said, they simply don’t exist. In no case should you go along with it and enter into an agreement supposedly for access to these advertisements, but it is better to try to look for another real estate company that does not use such dubious methods.
Method 3. Push clients together
Once I got a hanging apartment; no one could sell it for several months. The owner did not want to give in - he asked for five million for three rubles in the center of Saratov. The location is good, 14th floor, so the view of the Volga from the window will make you rock. But the rooms are broken, the plumbing needs to be changed, and the windows too. Expensive. Lekha, a realtor with 7 years of experience, learned about my misfortunes and offered to help.
- When you find a client, call. The trick there is the view of the Volga from the nursery. I have a niece who is also an actress. You’ll show it to clients, and then I’ll show up with her, ready to buy an apartment even today, because Marusya will squeal with delight. Trust me, it will work.
In the evening I already took a married couple around the rooms. Both are over 30, live on the outskirts, and decided to move to the center to send their daughter to the gymnasium. The fake buyers came to the same apartment without delay. Lesha was on a roll: he liked everything: the high ceilings, the spacious bathroom, and linoleum was much better than laminate and tiles, because they were cold and the child would get sick. In five minutes, he named so many advantages of this expensive, ruined apartment that the real clients didn’t even pay attention to the old plumbing and windows. And when Marusya entered the battle and, calling her uncle dad, dreamed out loud how she would look at the Volga and the bridge glowing in the evening, the couple melted.
“We’ll take it, we were the first to come to look,” said the head of the family and was already counting out the advance payment to me.
“Twenty percent is mine,” Lekha whispered to me and hastened to retreat.
In our case, it’s 15 thousand, which it was a pity to part with, but Lech really helped me. To make it clear, let me explain. The realtor charges the buyer of the apartment from two to five percent of its cost. We agreed on three percent - from five million this is 150 thousand. I give half of this amount to the company, the rest is mine. It turns out 15 for Lekha and 50 for me. I didn’t tell him that I’d get another hundred on top of that. But this is already the fourth secret of my new profession.
Expert commentary
— In 90 percent of cases, the other buyers you encounter in an apartment for sale are fake. Therefore, do not rush to make a decision on the spot. Think it over and call back, despite the persuasion. If the person is a fake, the apartment will not go anywhere from you; if he is real, then he too may change his mind.
Method 4. The realtor is paid by both the buyer and the seller
Clients who sell an apartment are always sure that only the buyer pays the realtor. They say they have nothing to lose. No matter how it is. I finally persuaded the owner of that unsaleable three-ruble note to reduce the price by 100 thousand rubles. And thanks to Lekha, my clients didn’t even bother to bargain and agreed on the first amount. A hundred thousand in my pocket! All that remained was now to somehow explain everything to both. But everything is simple here. You make up a fairy tale about a second realtor who works for another company. Like, the apartment is problematic, we had to involve a second person, but he also needs to be paid. You agreed to 4.9, why are you indignant, be glad that you managed to sell the apartment at all.
There are almost no cases when a client refuses a deal. And it worked for me. So after two months of working in the office, I bought myself a car. Then, however, I spent a month and a half doing nothing. But this is already the cost of the real estate profession, nothing can be done.
Expert commentary
— Pure “wiring”. My advice to the seller is not to agree to the realtor's terms. In this case, it turns out that the person simply gave him 100 thousand rubles. Insist on your original price. The realtor will have nowhere to go - he is still interested in selling the apartment and receiving a percentage from the buyer. You can threaten that you will go to complain to Rospotrebnadzor or the prosecutor’s office about a violation of your rights - some are afraid.
Method 5. Create ambiance
I read somewhere that the smell of fresh coffee puts people at ease; the house immediately seems cozy and calm. Therefore, I ran to all the apartments where the owners did not live half an hour before the clients arrived and made coffee.
And for some retired buyers with money, not only the apartment itself was important, but also the condition of the entrance. And we have peeling walls and broken railings everywhere. To distract their attention, I brought a carpet from the house and laid it on the first floor and on the one where they were looking at the apartment. The trick worked.
In general, I try to show unpresentable housing to clients at night: you can’t really see the yard, nor the condition of the entrance, nor the view from the window of abandoned garages.
Another great way is to play with contrast. I once sold a two-room apartment on the outskirts of the city in very poor condition: the bathroom was not finished, the wallpaper was falling off, the glass on the balcony was broken - like after a bombing. Well, who will buy it for one and a half million. For a long time I took customers there, they kept spitting, until I remembered that my father’s acquaintance lived in the next entrance. The drunken uncle had long ago turned his apartment into a hangout: mountains of bottles, shabby walls, a corresponding smell. But what a contrast - compared to this shack, my corrupt one is sweet! For two bottles of vodka, Uncle Tolya agreed to show clients his mansions to show off their eyes. And then I took them to see the “second” version. Two weeks later I sold the apartment.
Expert commentary
- Be careful when inspecting the apartment. Choose a time that is convenient for you and not the realtor; of course, it’s better during the day. Don’t be shy, ask the neighbors next door who you meet about the house, about the work of the management company, etc., if this is really important to you. Walk along the entrance yourself from the first to the last floor. All this is in your interests.
P.S.
I'm finally done with selling real estate. Got married. He gave birth to a son. And, by the way, my education as a historian has been very useful to me - I organize historical reconstructions. I'm not deceiving anyone.
Secret master
A deception scheme can overtake you when you have already successfully completed the transaction and are even living in a new apartment. You will be contacted by a person who introduces himself as the owner of the property and will demand cancellation of the transaction. Do not rush to kick him out, because he may turn out to be a soldier or a former prisoner temporarily discharged from the apartment. He could also be deprived of his registration for a certain period due to being registered with the PND . Unfortunately, the court may be on his side and the contract will be declared invalid.
Before purchasing, be sure to check the history of the apartment for registered residents. Such data is contained in the Unified State Register extract from Rosreestr , you can also contact the MFC, but this will take more time.
Rental scam
Property fraud is also rampant at the rental level. When renting out an apartment, scammers use the following plan: you successfully rent an apartment and live in it under a contract. However, the owner abruptly decides to terminate it - and this desire is legal. The deposit will be returned to you, but the money for accommodation will remain with the owner, and the commission for services will remain with the realtor. Usually these individuals are in cahoots. So they can “rent out” housing at least every month.
To protect yourself from scammers, you need to carefully read the contract , and especially the clause on its termination. If the conditions do not suit you, be sure to tell the owner about it. As a rule, scammers will not make concessions to you.
Text: Alina Volkova
Methods of deceiving clients
Unscrupulous agents have many types of deception . It could be:
- A realtor can take an advance payment and at the same time include practically impossible points in the contract using a dummy buyer, for example, include a requirement that the entire family be discharged within 24 hours, including minor children.
- The agent can sell the apartment at a higher price and take the difference for himself, especially if the seller has written a general power of attorney in the name of the realtor. He will take the difference between the sales amount from the transaction and will not forget about his fee.
- Also, the agent himself can slip counterfeit money when paying in cash if the transfer of funds took place through him. Therefore, it is worthwhile to carry out all transactions with money in a bank and check funds using special equipment.
- If the realtor is in cahoots with the buyer, and the transfer of money is agreed through a safe deposit box, then deliberately delaying the transaction process can lead to the seller’s access to the safe deposit box expiring and he risks being left without an apartment and without money.
- If the seller underestimates the value of the property under the contract in order to evade taxes, then he risks receiving exactly the value under the contract and losing the difference between the contractual and actual cost of the apartment. Therefore, you should not resort to such tricks so as not to be left with nothing. Because it will be difficult to prove that they verbally agreed on a different amount.
Problems when selling an apartment can be avoided if you do everything correctly, do not refuse the services of specialists and choose and check the agency correctly. A professional realtor will not demand original documents from the seller and come up with tricks to lure out money. The agent's interest should be in selling the apartment, and not in extorting money from an uninformed seller.
