We’re grateful to The Property Group, an agency in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, for alerting us to an incident involving its Mayfair Town & Country agency in the town.
This regards fraudsters targetting tenants via popular Buy and Sell groups in Facebook.
“These fraudsters are posing as private landlords of properties that aren’t legally theirs – properties currently for let with us” explains Ellie Reed, marketing and advertising officer at The Property Group.
“They’re asking for higher rent on these properties and demanding a deposit upfront” she says.
“We are keen to raise awareness of this and protect tenants, as we have had confirmation from another agent in Weston who has a property targeted so it seems this could be an increasing type of crime.”
If your agency has had any experience of this problem, obviously inform the authorities and those closely involved - and please feel free to let us know, so we can alert others in the industry. Just email us on press@lettingagenttoday.co.uk.
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We had this a month ago sort of, ie someone skimmed a rental property of ours from one of our internet sites and posted it on Gumtree. Potential tenant paid a hefty up front deposit having not even viewed the property, the scammer told them it was theirs & they could collect the key from us. They were vulnerable and would not have secured an open market rental such as that one. Sad.
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