Is this flat or holiday let listing a scam?

Rental fraud follows housing pressure. It peaks in student cities in August and September and in any city where flats let within hours, because that is where a request to "secure it now" sounds normal rather than strange. The listing is usually a real property, photographed by whoever genuinely advertised it, at a price a little below the market.

Safety

Step by step

1. View the inside before any money moves.This is the single rule. A landlord or agent who cannot arrange a viewing, or who wants a deposit to arrange one, is not letting you a flat. If you are moving from a distance, pay someone to view it, or ask a letting agent registered in that town.
2. Reverse image search the photographs.Stolen listings show up quickly. So does the same flat listed at a different price, in a different town, or for sale rather than to let.
3. Check who owns the property.The Land Registry will sell you the title register for a small fee, showing the registered owner. If the name does not match the person taking your money, stop.
4. Check the agent is real and accountable.In England, letting agents must belong to a government-approved redress scheme and display membership. Check the scheme's own register rather than a logo on a website. Ask for the company registration and look it up on Companies House.
5. Check the deposit rules apply.For an assured shorthold tenancy in England and Wales, a deposit must be protected in a government-approved scheme within a set period, and you must be given the prescribed information. In Scotland there are approved schemes too. A landlord who has never heard of this is not a landlord.
6. Refuse bank transfer to an individual.Pay through the platform or by card where you can. A transfer to a personal account, particularly one in a different name, is both the commonest instruction and the hardest to recover.
7. Apply the same rules to holiday lets.Book through the platform and pay through it. Any host asking you to move to email, WhatsApp or a direct bank transfer to save the fee is taking away the only protection the booking had, which is why they are asking.
8. Report it.Action Fraud, or Police Scotland on 101 in Scotland, plus the listing site, which will take a fake listing down quickly. If a real property is being used, tell the genuine owner or agent.

Tips

• "I am working abroad, my agent will post the keys once the deposit clears" is the oldest script in this category and it is still running.
• A rent well below the market in a competitive city is bait, not luck. The gap is what buys the urgency.
• For student lets, university accommodation offices keep lists of landlords and often warn about current scams in that city. Ask them before paying anything.

Common mistakes

• Paying a holding deposit to "take it off the market" — Holding deposits exist genuinely and are regulated, but they are paid to an identified agent or landlord after a viewing, not to secure a property sight unseen.
• Accepting a scanned passport or tenancy agreement as proof of identity — Documents are copied and edited routinely. Ownership records and redress scheme registers are checkable; a PDF is not.

Questions people ask