The contract of renting an apartment to secure yourself. How to proceed in order to safely rent an apartment? What to consider when doing your own research

Since I already lived in a rented apartment and just wanted to find a better option, I had a lot of time to understand the common tricks and tricks of apartment letting agents. And there were not so few of them. Fake photos, non-existent apartments and more serious divorces with extortion of money.

In some of them I was convinced myself, I know about others from the words of people who were less fortunate and who gave their money to scammers.

Fake photos

This is the first divorce I've ever experienced. Not believing the overly cool pictures of cheap apartments, I decided to check them out in a Google image search. And I wasn't wrong.

Excellent apartment in the center of Kharkov

Most often, such apartments do not even require verification with Google. The ratio of price and quality in them initially looks implausible.

The meaning of divorce. You call this ad, and either the apartment is already rented and you are offered another option, or they ask for a small amount of money to view the apartment in advance. Needless to say, you must immediately send these people to Barcelona, ​​to their own apartment?

Defunct apartments

This is the trick that I've had the most trouble with. Bulletin boards are full of fairly high-quality apartments, but after calling the specified number, it turns out that the apartment has already been rented out. For a long time I could not understand what the essence of such a deception was, until I accidentally went into the profile of one of the "owners" of the apartment.

The meaning of divorce. After you are told that the apartment has already been rented out, two outcomes can follow: you are immediately offered another apartment, or your number is included in the database, and you are called the next day from another number to offer agency services.

Prepayment for viewing apartments

Never, remember, never give money for viewing apartments or for services before you have met with the owner of the apartment and made a deal.

On the appointed day, you can for free come and see the apartment. The same applies to agency services. What is the point of paying an agent for his services if you have not yet signed a contract with the owner of the apartment?

The meaning of divorce. Divorces work on the principle of "little, but often." They ask for a small amount of money up front and then disappear with it.

Releasing an apartment

My friend, who rents an apartment for rent, faced this problem. Having rented the apartment to a young guy for one day and having come for the key the next day, she found an elderly couple in the apartment who had moved from another city.

From the words of the elderly, it turned out that they had found an apartment for long-term residence on the site a few days before and contacted the indicated number. They were offered to see the apartment in one day and immediately move in. When they arrived, the young man showed them the apartment, took the money for the first and last month, handed over the keys and disappeared. Probably the worst divorce ever.

The meaning of divorce obvious.

Agency contract

The last mistake that can be made when renting an apartment is to conclude a contract not with the owners of the apartment. The agency you go to may not be real, which is what a lot of people have experienced. Having signed a contract with the agency and having received (or not received) the key, you get an amount of money that is equal to two months of rent, and the office where the agency was located is no longer working the next day.

The meaning of divorce. Rent an office for a couple of days, get money from a few people and disappear.

Conclusion

Here are some tips to help you avoid getting into trouble:

1. Check the apartment thoroughly before calling the owner or agent. Don't forget Google Images and your intuition. If you see that the apartment is too good for the money, most likely it is a scam. But you can call and see for yourself.
2. Do not give any money before you meet with the owners of the apartment. Pay-per-view, agent advance and prepayment are all just banal ways to cheat you out of money.
3. Sign a contract only with the owner of the apartment. He must have a residence permit in his passport and documents of ownership.
4. Type in Google the query "black list of landlords". You will be shown a whole selection of sites with a list of unscrupulous landlords.

That's all. I hope you don't fall into the clutches of scammers. And if you have, please tell us about your experience.

In the Moscow rental market, cases of deceit and misunderstanding between tenants and owners are not uncommon. The only way to avoid problems is to be armed with knowledge of the difficulties that can be expected in finding and living in a rented apartment.

Rent scams

Providing false or outdated information about rented apartments is one of the tricks. There are a huge number of housing agencies on the market, and some of them are actually swindling. Most often they work according to the following scheme: for a "moderate" fee, the agency provides a list with phone numbers and addresses of apartments. In fact, it turns out that most of them either have long been surrendered, or do not surrender at all. It is pointless to make a claim to the agency: the information (service) has been provided, no one will return the money. It is very easy to distinguish such an organization from a real estate agency: in the second case, the price of the service is 100% of the monthly rent and is paid only after the necessary option is found. News agencies charge less for their "services".

Transfer of short-term rented housing for the purpose of deception is the most popular rental scam. On lampposts, bus stops and information boards, you can often see advertisements for renting apartments, and the prices of such offers are an order of magnitude lower than market prices. In this case, the fraud scheme is as follows: the scammer rents an apartment for a short time, after which he advertises. Trusting citizens come to see housing. Under various pretexts, they ask for rent for a month in advance and a deposit, keys are given. When the victims arrive at the apartment with their belongings the next day, they may well run into other "tenants" at the entrance. Another option is also possible: some time after moving into the apartment, the “real” owner of the apartment, who has just “leaned out of the zone”, or a certain “relative” of the tenant, declares his rights to the living space and demands that it be immediately vacated.

After the conclusion of the contract

When the apartment is the subject of a property dispute , employers can not dream of a quiet life. There are times when the real brother of the owner returns from the "zone" or his ex-wife appears on the threshold. In this case, the tenants are involved in material disputes, and they themselves are to blame for this: when renting, it is imperative to check whether the apartment has been privatized and whether its owner is the sole owner. If the apartment is the property of the municipality, it is necessary to obtain written permission to rent it out. Without such a document, any person registered in it has the right to prohibit it from being taken. If the privatized housing has several owners, it is necessary to obtain from each of them a written consent to rent it out.

Sudden rent increase - a common way to "earn" on the tenants. It happens that after two or three months the owner, without any reason, suddenly declares that the rent is increasing. In this case, he is counting on the fact that the tenants would rather pay an extra few thousand than to again suffer with the search for housing and moving.

Disputes about the timeliness of payment of rent often lead to termination of the employment contract. There are times when, having received a month's rent, the owner of the apartment "suddenly" forgot about it. "Problems with memory" can be caused by a desire to get rid of the tenants (after all, according to the contract, they can be evicted if they are late in the monthly payment) or simply by the inadequacy of the apartment owner.

Claims of the owner to the condition of the apartment most often occur when the tenant is about to move out. According to the terms of the contract, he must do this in a month, and during this time the owner often begins to make claims about the condition of the housing. He can suddenly forget that the parquet was scratched, the sofa fell apart, and the upholstery on the door was tattered long before the contract was signed. Most often, the purpose of such claims is not to return the deposit to the tenant.

Safe rental rules

1. Search for housing only through acquaintances or with the help of professional agents.

2. Be sure to carefully check the owner's passport and documents for the apartment, give money only against receipt.

3. Draw up a rental agreement and an act of acceptance and transfer of an apartment, in which the following must be indicated:

• passport details of the tenant and the landlord;
• characteristics of the rented apartment (address, area, state of deterioration, pieces of furniture, etc.),
• the cost of the monthly rent and the time during which the landlord does not have the right to increase it;
• the rights of the tenant (the ability to carry out repairs);
• the rights of the landlord (the number of visits by the owner of the apartment, the time and days on which they will take place), the time frame in which he can announce the eviction of tenants.

4. Discuss all the important points in advance: who will repair the plumbing in the event of a breakdown, how utility bills and long-distance negotiations will be paid, etc. This should be done even if the owner is your good friend.

Today we'll talk about how to rent an apartment and not become a victim of scammers, not to run into some kind of divorce or deceit, which are currently plentiful in this area. In this article, I will look at some of the most common types of scams and scams associated with renting out a property. Finding out about them is not so difficult: they write a lot about this on various forums, in other blogs, information about scammers spreads quite quickly.

However, new tenants also continue to fall for their tricks, because they do not know or do not want to know how to rent an apartment correctly. I recommend that you carefully read the fraud options below so as not to become a victim of scammers when renting an apartment.

Ways of fraud and deceit when renting apartments.

Method 1. Other photos of the apartment. You are looking for a place to rent an apartment on the Internet, and you find an ad with very impressive photos of the interior of the rental property, combined with a very affordable and interesting price. You happily contact the owner or realtor, but they tell you that this apartment is allegedly already rented out, but there are others similar, and they offer you to see them, often asking you to pay some kind of advance.

What to do? If the price / interior combination seems somewhat suspicious to you, and in other cases too, check the photos of the apartment for uniqueness. It is quite easy to do this - there are special services on the Internet for this. For example, one of these is Google Images. Just paste the link to the photo into the search box or save the photo to your computer, and then upload it to the service, and it will show you all the available analogues of this picture on the Internet. And when you notice that the “same” apartment is rented out in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev and other cities, I think it should be clear to you that they want to at least attract you by fraudulent means, and most likely - to breed you for some any "prepayment". Therefore, I strongly do not recommend contacting such ads.

Method 2. Non-existent apartments. In fact, the same way, only there may not be a photo at all, while the apartment itself, too. Fraudsters advertise housing for rent, as a rule, attracting a good price, and then, when you contact them, two scenarios are possible.

In the first case (this is the best option), you just light up your number / e-mail and realtors will start calling / writing to you, offering other options for renting apartments, respectively, already more expensive and less interesting. Well, for this non-existent apartment they will simply say that it has already been rented out.

In the second case (this is the worst option), they will try to fraudulently receive any advance payment from you, after which they will disappear.

Perhaps this is the most common variant of divorce, deceit and fraud when renting apartments.

What to do? As soon as you are told that the apartment you are interested in has already been rented out, but at the same time they may offer other options, you should immediately be wary. And never, never, never do not make any prepayments either for the services of realtors or for renting an apartment, until you have really agreed with the owner and signed a lease agreement with him.

Method 3. Multiple rentals of the same apartment.

When thinking about how to rent an apartment, you should not forget about this very unpleasant method of fraud, which, unfortunately, also takes place, albeit not as often as the previous one. What is its essence? The fact that the owner of the apartment in various cunning ways rents the same housing to different people, receiving an advance payment from them. And they have to somehow divide it among themselves, and find out who will live, and who will just have to say goodbye to the money.

How does this happen? Well, for example, you rented an apartment: the owner personally showed you around, showed you everything, gave the keys and took an advance payment for 2-3 months. You check in in the morning, and in the evening another person who moved here with things opens the door with the same key - he looked at this apartment and made an advance payment yesterday. And the next day - another family .. (if the owner is so lucky that he managed to turn his business around with three tenants).

In this case, if you do not have a lease agreement in your hands, and the fact of making an advance payment is not fixed in any way, you will not prove anything to anyone. After all, even if you go to the police and they find the owner, he will say that you made it all up. Or maybe the “owner” is another tenant who himself rented an apartment for a week and rented it out to several other people for a year. And this happens, and often ...

What to do? Make payment / advance payment only after signing the lease agreement with the real owner of the apartment. When signing, be sure to check the documents for ownership, all the passport data of the owner, compare them with those specified in the contract. The fact of the transfer of money should be recorded, at least, with a receipt, and better - with bank documents on the non-cash transfer of funds using the details specified in the contract.

Method 4. Agreement with a fake agency. And the last way to divorce when renting apartments, which I want to consider is the signing of an agreement with non-existent realtors.

The scheme works like this: scammers rent some small office, advertise a profitable rental of apartments, people who want to rent an apartment come to them, they conclude contracts with everyone on their own behalf and take an advance payment for 1-2-3 months. At the same time, they show you a photo of the apartment, but they warn you that you can move in, say, in a week, when the previous tenants vacate the housing. Perhaps, for fidelity, they even give you the keys to the apartment. But when you arrive at the specified address at the appointed time, it turns out that no one is renting anything there. And when you return to the agency to arrange a showdown, it turns out that he is no longer there.

What to do? Conclude a lease agreement only directly with the owner of the apartment, who will provide you with his passport and all documents confirming the ownership of the property. No intermediaries, especially those who suddenly appeared out of nowhere. They just as suddenly can disappear into nowhere ...

Now I want to list some common signs of a rental ad that can determine that you are dealing with scammers (not 100%, of course, but with a high degree of probability):

• The contact phone contains letters that look like numbers (for example, the letter З instead of the number 3, the letter O instead of the number 0, etc. - look carefully), or the phone number, or even the entire ad is indicated as a picture, not text. Almost 100% a sign of fraud. This is done so that the number / data cannot be copied and “punched” through blacklists;
• The ad says that the owner is abroad / in another city and will receive payment / prepayment;
• They are looking for “good people who will look after the apartment” for a nominal fee;
• One room for rent in the apartment, and the second / third are “closed with things”;
• Offer “help with registration”;
• Perfectly made and edited as for a glossy magazine professional photos of rented housing;
• Other “very friendly” tenants already live in the apartment;
• It is emphasized that they are looking for a “decent family”, a “strict non-drinker” or something similar (think for yourself, what kind of owner would rent out his apartment to dishonorable people or alcoholics?);
• It is proposed to make a certain deposit / prepayment before the conclusion of the lease agreement;
• It is indicated that the housing is rented “urgently”.

And in conclusion, one more useful tip that will be needed by all those who do not know how to rent an apartment without deceit and divorce: be sure to fill in the search engine with the address of the apartment, the name of the owner or realtor, their contact numbers / e-mails, and check if “ lit up” whether they are in some blacklists. There are already a lot of all kinds of black lists of landlords on the Internet, and it is much better if you find your landlord there in advance than later to enter it yourself, losing money and time.

Now you have some idea of ​​how to rent an apartment and not run into scammers. Be careful and vigilant: some risks will always remain, but it is in your power to reduce them significantly! Remember this...

is a site where you will find a lot of interesting and useful information from a variety of areas related to the effective use of personal finances, and where you can improve your financial literacy. Stay with us!

The experts of the Miel-Arenda company have compiled a rating of rental frauds and rules for combating them.

The rental market is the most dynamic segment in the real estate sector, transactions are made in just a couple of hours, so in pursuit of "easy" money, this business attracts many dishonest businessmen, whose victims annually become hundreds of tenants.

Don't chase cheap...

"Still, the most common type of fraud in the rental market is the distribution of advertisements containing false information. This method of fraud has always existed and, as a rule, tenants who want to save on commissions to a real estate agency fall for this trick, despite the constant warnings of experts that cheese can be free only in a mousetrap,” explains the first deputy director of the Miel-Arenda company, Maria Zhukova.

Trick ads are often found even in well-known newspapers and on popular Internet sites. A vivid example of such an announcement: "A room for rent at Chistye Prudy for 5 thousand rubles a month. One of the premises in the apartment is non-residential, the owners ask the tenant to water the flowers." The most interesting thing is that the advertisement indicating the same apartment, but with a higher rental rate of 20 thousand rubles. per month is on the same site literally on the next search page. As a rule, such messages are distributed by news agencies that, for a small amount, promise to provide the tenant with the contacts of owners who rent housing at surprisingly low prices. Most often it turns out that the apartment indicated in the list simply does not exist. At best, this message hides an object with a significant catch, for example, an apartment is put up for sale and is rented out temporarily, or it needs repairs. It happens that housing is actually rented at the market price, and the ad was released by a news agency in order to attract tenants.

Rule: in order not to be a victim of the news agency, you need to have an idea about the current rental rates. If the ad shows a price significantly below market rates, you should be more wary than happy. It is also important to remember that real estate agencies charge a commission only upon completion of the transaction.

Watch out, sublease!

The scheme of actions of fraudsters with housing that is in sublease is as follows: an attacker rents an apartment, most often an economy class, offers it for rent at a reduced price to several tenants at once, posing as the owner using fake documents. The client pays a fee for a month of living or a deposit, and the "fake" owner, in turn, asks for a few days of delay under various pretexts: to take out personal belongings, clean the apartment, etc. The result is obvious: several deceived families at the closed doors of the apartment and the perplexed true owner of the apartment.

Rule: "We constantly warn tenants that it is necessary to carefully and calmly check all documents when concluding a contract, especially focusing on papers certifying ownership rights. The owner must present the original passport and documents for the apartment, there should not be any copies or laminated papers, - Maria Zhukova warns. Also, we usually advise tenants, if the owner asks for a delay in moving in, not to pay the entire amount of the monthly payment and the security deposit at once, but to pay, for example, only a third of the rent per month, and give the rest of the funds already when handing over the keys ".

Will you share?

There are cases when one of the owners of an apartment that is in shared ownership rents it out without the consent of the other homeowners. As a result, the owner, who did not give consent to renting out the apartment, simply kicks the tenant out on the basis of the invalidity of the concluded lease agreement. It happens that this type of fraud turns into a kind of "family" business, when unscrupulous landlords are in cahoots.
Rule: if the apartment is in shared ownership, then when concluding a lease agreement, it is necessary to require written consent from all owners to rent the apartment.

Municipal do not offer!

The scam with a municipally owned apartment, by and large, repeats the scheme of actions of malefactors in a situation with illegal sublease. The scammer re-leases the living space without the consent of the citizens who are registered in it. As a result, the transaction is invalidated, since only a person who is registered in it and has concluded a social contract with the municipality has the right to rent a municipal apartment.

Rule: if the apartment is in municipal ownership, then it is necessary to conclude a sublease agreement and require the landlord to present the original social tenancy agreement, which indicates all tenants registered in this apartment, as well as a written consent to rent out the apartment from all tenants older than 14 registered in the apartment years. You may be asked to see paid utility bills that also verify the identity of the responsible tenant.

"At the command of the pike, at my will..."

A more "exotic" method of rental fraud is the early eviction of the tenant from the apartment for failure to comply with the most bizarre wishes of the owner. An unscrupulous landlord can make the wildest claims and come up with the wildest excuses to kick a tenant out without a refund of the security deposit and sometimes even a month's rent. "In my practice, there was a case when the owner of an apartment was an avid card player who all the time needed funds for his addiction. He earned money in the following way: he rented an apartment, took a security deposit and after a short period of time kicked his tenant out of the apartment under various pretexts, without returning the deposit. Immediately after that, he was looking for a new tenant to repeat his trick, "says Maria Zhukova.

Rule: carefully and in detail prescribe in the lease agreement all the conditions of residence, as well as the procedure for early termination of the lease relationship and penalties imposed on the initiator of termination of the agreement. The main thing is not to succumb to the provocations of the owner, if you have not violated any rules set forth in the contract.

The easiest and most proven way to avoid rental scams is to contact a real estate agency, where qualified specialists will quickly select suitable housing for you, check all documents for legal purity, help you correctly draw up a lease agreement, and, most importantly, will assist you in resolving relations with the owner.