“Visits are coordinated, without exception, with prior reservation (signature) with the owner
,” is what a supposed real estate agent says to people interested in a rental published on Facebook.
Users report that after giving a preview the person disappears and deletes the publication.
Several users
have reported this scam
in recent weeks.
Although the Rental Law was repealed, the crisis to find an apartment in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires continues.
And now without regulation, the agreement on contract time and adjustments was left to the negotiation of owner and tenant, which is not always fair, according to the organization Inquilinos Agrupados.
In Marketplace and in Facebook groups, several tenants have reported that there are accounts that offer apartments in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and ask for an advance payment to be able to go see the place.
Their excuse, for the most part, is that the amount is requested to guarantee that the tenant attends the appointment.
Ximena Lanza was one of the victims.
She told
Clarín
that in her case they told her that she had to deposit
6,000 pesos to reserve the appointment
.
The person she contacted identified himself as a real estate agent and assured that the owners do not live in the city, so they will only be there for one day and
to ensure that they do not go in vain, they make this request
.
“The owner asks for a deposit to go and visit.
In case when she sees it she doesn't want to book, she will get the money back,” they told Lanza.
Faced with pressure that there were several interested parties and that they could win the possibility of renting it,
she accepted
.
Screenshots of two conversations with false owners who ask for a sign to see apartments.
"That moment you think it is a good option, when you enter groups you see that there are several who ask so you fear that they will beat you, with how difficult it is to get a good apartment at an acceptable price, with inflation on top of it," he highlights.
When he arrived on the agreed day, he went to the address, but found no one and they did not respond to him.
She later
reported the publication and learned that she was not the only one who fell for that deception.
With no possibilities of increasing your income and with the days numbered in the place where you live, "one
becomes desperate
to find a rental," Lanza remarks.
This anxiety is used by scammers to ask those interested in an apartment for a deposit before seeing it and thus steal money from them.
Scammers also create
several fake profiles to generate trust
in the person trying to rent and deceive them.
Verónica López commented that she posted her apartment search notice in a Facebook group and on the first day several people wrote to her, both in her publication and in her personal chat, recommending a place of hers.
“It's good, I rent there, recommended.”
She believed her recommendations and when she contacted him
she asked for a deposit of 15,000 pesos
to reserve the apartment for him until the day she went to see him.
She agreed, but when the date arrived when they agreed to meet, the supposed owner also did not show up and did not contact her further.
These scams occur frequently and not only in CABA, according to the administrator of a rental group on Facebook Sergio Balzano.
He narrates that he knows of
similar cases on the Coast
and that even now he saw that scammers use photographs or other people's ID to commit these crimes.
“A while ago I just read in other groups where a woman is receiving insults from a Facebook user who is accusing her of having stolen from him and of being a scammer;
and apparently this lady
has had her photos stolen from her rental property
, from her publications along with her data and profile photo,” says Balzano.
He notes that among the different cases he sees every day, he also noticed that there are
those who ask for 50% of the rent to “reserve” the property
without the tenant having seen it.
An event like this happened to Mariel Pacheco: she deposited 100,000 pesos to reserve the apartment without knowing it, given that she does not reside in CABA.
After paying, the alleged owner deleted the post and blocked it.
The president of the Real Estate Chamber of Argentina, Ivan Ginevra, stressed to
Clarín
that under no circumstances in the regular rental procedure is
a deposit or advance payment requested to show an apartment
.
Scams with uninhabited apartments
Another case reported by Internet users is of people who, in addition to posing as owners,
show empty apartments to scam
.
In these cases, after showing you the place, they ask you for an advance to close the deal and when they make an appointment with the notary, they disappear and in the building they claim not to know the person you contacted.
This happened to Karen Hernández.
According to what she told this newspaper, despite being aware of the deceptions,
she still fell for one
.
She reported that she was able to go see the apartment and they told her that if she wanted it she had to make a deposit to secure it and for them to delete the publication.
“They
give you a signed receipt that you paid
and they give you an appointment to sign the contract to make it official,” she says.
When he went to the notary, Hernández found that there was no appointment scheduled and when he tried to contact them again they did not answer him again.
When she returned to the department's management, they told her that the place had been vacant for a long time and
they did not know the person she contacted
.
Given the increase in these cases, Balzano always tries to recommend to the members of his Facebook rental group that they
do not hand over money
without first seeing the apartment and even
asking for proof
that the person showing them the place is the true owner or someone authorized. .
Like him, several Internet users ask to be wary of publications that advertise low prices in central areas and images of new places.
Clarín Master's Degree - University of San Andrés
ACE