Fraud Protection: How to avoid falling into real estate fraud?

Fraud Protection: How to avoid falling into real estate fraud?

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It is not common to find deals in high-demand areas and it is easy to identify scams in them by price.

Finding a house or apartment to rent in high-demand areas is a complicated process. However, seeing flashy offers can cause you to fall victim to unprofessional practices.

Experts interviewed by the real estate site Propiedades, share some tips to avoid real estate fraud & get fraud protection.

Beware of offers that seem too good

Mónica Aranda, Customer Service Manager for the real estate portal, points out that in CDMX it is not common to find offers in areas of high demand. Therefore, the price in these colonies cannot be that low compared to other similar properties. This is one of the main factors to take into account to avoid real estate fraud.

 

Fraud Protection - The areas where the most fraud is detected are Rome, Condesa, Polanco, or Naples. It is easy to identify scams in them due to the price, characteristics of the property, larger footage for the amenities that are listed, and the payment conditions requested by the alleged owner ”, he adds.

 

Pay attention to the payment terms

Another point that will help you avoid real estate fraud is to review the payment conditions requested by the owners. It is important to know that no person, whether private or consultant, should request an advance to view or set aside a home, so be aware, and keep your fraud protection.

 

Aranda indicates that normally with properties that are a fraud, the alleged owners will do the following:

 

They will avoid contact by phone

The first approach will be by email

They will say that they are foreigners living outside the country

They will request a deposit to send you the keys so that you can see the property

 

The most recommended, according to the expert, is that you see the owner in person to verify their data. In the case of real estate companies, it confirms their registration with associations, such as AMPI (Mexican Association of Real Estate Professionals) or APCI (Association of Real Estate Marketing Professionals).

 

Measures to avoid real estate fraud

The manager in Customer Service explains that Properties are reviewed and eliminated daily this type of advertisements and improper practices. However, it is a constant struggle for the massive amount of ads that are published on the portal.

 

There are many hackers and people who are dedicated to real estate fraud and even automate the process. One of the most common practices is to create profiles correctly and then edit them to use them to your advantage. Fraud Protection - However, we have some measures that help us to stop them”, he clarifies.

 

To avoid real estate fraud, Aranda informs that Properties has a false email validation system. In addition, manually review the ads published daily considering the following criteria:

 

Price: it is checked that it is in the margin of the average by area and type of property

Type of property: it is verified that the property has the characteristics corresponding to the type of housing published

 

Photographs: it is analyzed that they are following the reported characteristics and ads that only have Google Maps images or that do not correspond with what has been published are eliminated

Mail and telephone numbers: it is validated that they are not incomplete or that they are a series of accounts previously registered as frauds

 

How to do account validation

Once the ads have been reviewed, it is considered whether they have met the aforementioned parameters. Otherwise, the post is deleted and the account is locked. Fraud Protection - In turn, Aranda states that as it is a titanic task, a sample of 400 properties is manually verified weekly. These are selected according to these criteria:

 

Most contacted nationwide

More contacted between 5 thousand and 10 thousand pesos

Most contacted in Nuevo León, State of Mexico, Jalisco, Querétaro and Yucatán

More contacted in those same states, but with values ​​between 5,000 and 10,000 pesos

Likewise, user reports are monitored and a direct verification is carried out on the portal. With these measures, it is ensured that there is a constant improvement in the advertisements published in Properties providing fraud protection.

 

To avoid real estate fraud, we recommend you verify the information of the properties through the Values ​​section. Here you will know the average price of the areas where you are interested in renting or purchasing a home. In this way, you will know that those houses or apartments with a too good price could be a scam.

Also, contact a real estate advisor so they can guide you through the selection process. With his experience and professionalism, he will know how to recommend the best options according to your budget, providing fraud protection.