Imagine you rent an apartment or room in Lisbon, and when you arrive there, the rented place turns out not to exist. This happens to Laura and Astrid, but not only: it’s experienced by many foreign people coming to Lisbon. We call it rental scam. And the scarcity in the housing market and the extreme rent increase are making it easier for scammers to succeed.
Laura, 23, came from Italy to Lisbon for a masters’ degree, she rented her room far in advance, and figured out that something was wrong when the landlord disappeared from the radar from one day to the next. Her money was lost and she had to arrange a new place in only a few days.
Sometimes it takes even longer to find out: Astrid, a student who came from France to Lisbon for her studies describes that she only found out that she got scammed when her taxi arrived in the street where her apartment was supposed to be: the address on her contract did not exist and the “landlady” blocked her contact everywhere.
There she was, standing on the street in a new city in a foreign country, without a place to stay.
According to a report by the platform HousingAnywhere based on the 3rd quarter of 2023, with apartment rents Lisbon is the 2nd most expensive city in Europe but with rooms way lower (13th). But its is also the city where the rent of rooms has increased most rapidly in the past year.
Portugal is growing in popularity as a destination for foreign students and ex-pats. And they become easy targets since they often don’t have the chance to visit their apartment or room before signing the contract.
How scammers work
Most scammers are working on a structural basis. It turned out that Astrid had dealt with an experienced scammer: she came across cases of many people scammed by the same perpetrator, in different cities around Europe, using different phone numbers from different nationalities.
They usually work as follows: they pretend to be landlords and advertise an apartment on a platform in another name than their own. When people are interested in the apartment, they provide information and act like any landlord would do: once the contract is signed, the renter pays an amount before arrival, the deposit, and sometimes the first month of rent. The money is received and their mission is succeeded.
Not quite.
In most extreme cases, the apartment or room that is rented out does not exist at all, and pictures of different apartments are used in their advertisement. The renter finds out after paying an amount, for example, because the assumed landlord stops answering.
In more subtle scams, the apartment or room is not a complete lie and there is a real room, but not corresponding to the image of the place that was created. For example, the conditions are worse than shown beforehand, the rent is unreasonably high for how the place is in real life or it is a completely different room than the one that was advertised.
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“Portal de Queixa“, a platform where customers can report claims, receives many complaints from renters who have been scammed in this way. The head of the platform, Pedro Lourenço, declares that the amount of complaints about rental scams in the housing market in Portugal has increased dramatically in the past few years.
Pedro Lourenço says “they know how to do it, they have done this a lot of times before” and “they create a role and they know what the human behaviour is going to be”.
People who are scammed when renting a room or apartment sometimes feel ashamed or blame themselves for falling for this trap. But it can happen to anyone. Scammers work more and more sophisticated; they have tricks to gain the trust of the renter.
How to spot a rental scam
Kasia Manolas, an expert and writer for “Avail“, a platform for landlords and renters, wrote the book “The Tenants Guide to Finding an Apartment” including a chapter about rental scams. She gives seven concrete signs that indicate you possibly deal with the advertisement of a scanner:
1. They Don’t Want to Meet You in Person – they don’t want to get reported, so they don’t want to show themselves
2. They Want You to Move in Immediately, without Seeing the Property
3. They Ask for Rent or a Security Deposit Before Signing a Lease
4. The Price Is Too Good
5. The Listing Has Typos, Poor Grammar, or Excessive Punctuation
6. There Is No Tenant Screening Process
7. They Want You to Sign an Incomplete Lease
The takeaways of the different experts on this matter and first-hand experience are: be alert, look for housing on legitimate official platforms and ask for an appointment with the landlord and house tour before signing the contract, either offline or online.
Astrid and Laura both managed to eventually find a room in Lisbon. Laura looked for another room in Lisbon last minute. She ended up finding something, not according to her wishes, but started looking for a place from Lison itself and moved soon after she arrived.
Astrid managed to stay temporarily at a friend’s house and eventually found a new place to live in Lisbon. Both of them reported the scams, but the scammers were never found.
Pedro Lourenço acknowledges this difficulty. This form of scamming doesn’t bring a high risk for the scammers. It is hard to detect scammers and even if authorities can track them down, they know exactly how to push the boundaries of the law, which makes it hard combat the problem.
However, reporting scams is useful in creating awareness to prevent other renters from experiencing the same. Kasia Manolas emphasises the importance of taking action when you are a victim of rental scams. She writes: ‘Do not only contact the local authorities but also the listing website so that they can take down the fraudulent listing and report the perpetrator.’
When you are scammed in Portugal, report your complaint on the platform ‘Portal de Queixa’ to contribute to the awareness of your fellow Portuguese and foreign renters. Spread the experience and don’t give scammers a chance.
Nele van den Broek was born in Breda, the Netherlands in 1997. She graduated in sociology but always wanted to follow her passion for writing. In September 2022, she moved to Lisbon and started a master’s degree in journalism. She enjoys the experience in a new country, a new city and getting in contact with people from different cultures. Nele is an intern at Mensagem de Lisboa.
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