What is news, however, is the number of people who are being scammed while searching for a home.
It’s then out of sheer desperation that you might consider ads you wouldn’t otherwise, ads that turn out be ... a little far from the truth.
These “fake” ads use false photos to try and lure people into putting down money on apartments - in the form of a deposit, for example - that don’t even exist.
More often than not, if a notice seems too good to be true, it’s probably because it is. A furnished two-bedroom apartment in Belair for €1.350? Not a chance. A little bit of research reveals the photos used are littered across the internet: what promises to be a perfect abode in the Luxembourgish capital suddenly pops up in Barcelona. And in various other places across the globe (truly a feat of modern architecture)!
Requests to view the flat are met with a response from the flat’s supposed owner, who claims to live abroad, who promises to send over some keys for a fee. There is little doubt that, in the current housing climate, people are more likely to fall for these kind of tricks out of hopelessness or frustration.
Pascal Koehnen, legal advisor, ULC (Luxembourg Consumer Protection Association): “It is a fact the supply is tiny while demand is huge. This results in pressure, and there are people who jump at something, which they then regret. So people who are already struggling are then dealt another blow with these kind of scams.”
And this kind of fraud can be found anywhere, no matter what website:
Pascal Koehnen:
“The use of a domaine, that is, having a site that ends with .lu, inspires confidence. Especially in Luxembourgers, because we don’t expect anything bad to happen on a Luxembourgish site. We expect it to be more obvious, and this is taken advantage of.”
If anyone has been victim of one of these scams, they definitely should report it to police. Roughly 25 complaints are made in a year.
Frank Stoltz, Police Grand-Ducale:
“It’s important that people contact their bank as soon as they think there might be something a bit off, to see if it’s possible to reverse the payment, or block it at the very least. It’s also very important to make formal complaints so that we can investigate further.”
The different real estate websites are working on identifying and deleting these fake ads.
The website that displayed the original scam has also asked people inform them of any other fakes.
(Report in Luxembourgish)
