Rental scams

The shape of it

The PNP Anti-Cybercrime Group warns about this pattern on Facebook Marketplace, Facebook groups, Messenger, TikTok, Instagram, listing sites and plain text messages. The unit is posted with good photos at a price below what the area normally goes for, and you are pushed to send a reservation fee quickly, before someone else takes it. After the transfer the account goes quiet, blocks you, or asks for one more payment.

The pressure is the product. A real landlord with a real empty unit is not in a hurry measured in minutes.

What tends to be true of the fake ones

• The price is clearly under what everything else nearby asks, and there is no explanation for it
• Money is requested before any viewing — a "reservation fee" to hold the unit
• You are told to hurry, and the reason changes each time you ask
• The page is old and has many followers, but its earlier posts are about something else entirely
• The photos appear elsewhere online, on a different unit or a different city
• Payment goes to a personal e-wallet or bank account whose name does not match the person you are talking to
• After you pay, a second amount appears that was never mentioned

None of these alone proves anything. Two or three together is a different matter.

What you can check yourself

• Reverse-search the photos. Scammers reuse images, and the same room turning up under another listing is the fastest tell there is
• Ask for a live video call from inside the unit, and ask them to walk to the window and show the street
• Ask for the building name and unit number, then call the building administration and ask whether that unit is for rent and who holds it
• Ask who you are speaking to — the owner, a caretaker, or a broker — and ask for their name in full
• Search the name and the phone number on their own. Both get reused across posts
• Do not send anything before you have been inside, or before a person you can name has been inside

A reservation fee is not illegal in itself. Sending one to someone you cannot identify, for a unit nobody has seen, is where it goes wrong.

If you already paid

Keep everything before you confront anyone: links to the profile and the post, the full conversation, the account details you were given, and your proof of payment. People delete their posts the moment they are accused.

Estafa committed online is not treated as a lesser version of estafa. The Cybercrime Prevention Act raises the penalty by one degree when the crime is committed through information and communications technologies.

A complaint for cyber-estafa can be filed with the PNP Anti-Cybercrime Group without paying a fee. Where else to go, and in what order, is in “Where to go”.

What we do about it

Before a unit goes up here, someone from us calls the owner and the date of that call is shown on the listing. If you found a unit somewhere else and want the same check run on it, that is what the verify page is for — it costs you nothing and the unit does not have to be ours.

If the person who showed you the unit was one of ours, tell us directly. We would rather hear it from you than not hear it at all.