Real Estate Matters | Real Estate Scams & How To Avoid Them – Part 3

Juliet Risdon

We are looking at Real Estate scams and how to avoid them. Although such scams are rare in Macau, they do happen and the money involved can be significant.

Scam: Money for nothing

Are you being asked to send money for an apartment before you’ve even see it or met the agent? Increasingly business is taking place online, which does of course have its benefits, but it also has its drawbacks.

The scam is a simple one. The person places a property ad online, then tells everyone that responds that a deposit is required in order to view the apartment. Once the deposit is paid, they are gone.

Another ‘Money For Nothing’ scam involves fake e-mail addresses. A tenant may be asked by the ‘owner’ via e-mail to change the payment details and pay rent into a different bank account.

Once again, the ‘owner’ turns out to be an imposter, and the overseas bank account has already been drained of any cash by the time the fraud is discovered.

How to avoid the money for nothing scam:

Never send money for an apartment that you haven’t seen, or pass money to an agent unless they work for a legitimate and credible real estate agency.

The same applies to personal information. Giving out the personal information such as your ID number or bank account information to a third party is potentially dangerous and can lead to some potentially disastrous consequences.

The scammers tend to prey on people from outside Macau who have not yet moved here, so if you are asked to send money from overseas without seeing an apartment, be extremely cautious.

Final thought: “It could never happen to me”

Perhaps the biggest mistake people make when it comes to scams is to think “it could never happen to me.”

It’s not uncommon to think that investment scams are shady operations preying on gullible people.

Whilst this might sometimes be true, consider some of the higher level scams that have taken place in recent years. Amongst them we will find Bernard Madoff Investment Securities.

Madoff ran what was effectively a Ponzi scheme, and ran it very well. He managed to dupe some of the world’s smartest people, and embezzled billions of dollars from private investors who included private bankers, movie moguls and stockbrokers, a very bright bunch indeed.

This was not enough to stop them losing all of their investment money to Madoff though, and if it can happen to them, well… its enough to make you stop and think.

What you can do if you are scammed

It is important to report the scam to the police as soon as possible. This not only increases the chances of the scammer being caught, it also ensures that any insurance payments that are due can be claimed and of course decreases the chances of the same scam happening to another person.

As far as possible, write down the dates of transactions and provide bank statements and other similar materials to back up the story. Reporting money has been stolen without the sufficient back up documents may end with you being mistaken for a scammer yourself!

Juliet Risdon is a Director of JML Property and a property investor.

Having been established in 1994, JML Property offers investment property & homes. It specializes in managing properties for owners and investors, and providing attractive and comfortable homes for tenants.

www.JMLProperty.com

[email protected]