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When the apartment listing is too good to be true

blog.denv.it

11–18 of 18 posts

Re: When the apartment listing is too good to be true

#11
Zürich has such a big problem with apartment fraud that the police has a specific department working on just this.

I have first hand experience with a similar fraud in Zürich. I had an apartment which I looked for a new tenant to. During my search there was a ”woman” that contacted me and said that she was interested. She behaved really weirdly and couldn’t come on the showing, but requested some videos. I didn’t think more about it and send over a ”digital showing” where I showed certain parts of the apartment. We later found a new tenant and she moved in. I didn’t think more about it.

Fast forward 3 months and a random man knocks on my door during the morning. He asked if I was , and I said yes. He then asked if I rented out the apartment above (which was my old apartment). After explaining that we’d already found a tenant for it, he just said: ”F*ck, then I‘ve been scammed“.

It turned out that this strange ”woman” actually just used me as one side of their scam, getting credible videos where I talked and showed the apartment. The scammers then used all my ad pictures, my name and address to put up a fake ad.

He moved from Austria and paid ~2000 euro in deposit, then arrived to an apartment that was already rented out. He showed me a fradulent contract and my videos I previously sent.

After all of this, I did an image search using my apartment pictures, and found and took down 3 fake listings on different websites.

Re: When the apartment listing is too good to be true

#12
post #4

Could have stopped at: > Rent noticeably below market, with every utility included.

It seems the number one way to detect a scam is "if it's too good to be true, it probably is." I wonder when scammers will just pick a reasonable market price. Lots of people are renting market price apartments, after all.

I'm sure there are scams that are more subtle, but it's a numbers game and "too good to be true" offers select for the people who are desperate and/or not too sharp.

Re: When the apartment listing is too good to be true

#15
post #11

Zürich has such a big problem with apartment fraud that the police has a specific department working on just this. I have first hand experience with a similar fraud in Zürich. I had an apartment which I looked for a new tenant to. During my search there was a ”woman” that contacted me and said that she was interested. She behaved really weirdly and couldn’t come on the showing, but requested some videos. I didn’t thi…

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