Renting Property in Singapore: Avoiding a Fake Landlord Scheme
New expats should be cautious of becoming victim of dodgy landlords, bogus lease agreements, deposits that simply disappear and a host of other rental issues that leaves fresh arrivals to Singapore swindled even before they had a chance to settle down in their newly adopted home.
Expats swindled
In fact, Consumers Association of Singapore, CASE, a consumer advocate organisation there that keeps track of complaints lodged by people that have been duped, found that in the October 2008 - March 2009 period foreigners lodged 32 out of the total of 365 complaints against realty agents. This constitutes a 23 percent increase from the 26, out of 516 complaints, in the same period a year before. Meanwhile, the Institute of Estate Agents in Singapore received five complaints from foreigners since last October. Perhaps tellingly, none the agents involved was IEA registered. The most common complaints were overcharging and not honouring agreements made, especially when it came to returning deposits and advanced payments.
The fake landlord
Another quite common ruse is the fake landlord. Recently, the Singapore Straits Times reported on a suspected fake landlord who claimed to be the owner of an apartment on 14 Scotts Road and was looking to rent out his unit. However, this address is actually the location of a shopping centre called Far East Plaza. After pressing him for more details, he hung up and never replied to the paper's inquiries again.
As expat populations grow, conmen like this are seemingly becoming ever more numerous and ever more brazen, targeting foreigners in particular who are looking to rent a property. New arrivals are especially easy targets because obviously they're not as clued in to the property industry as the local population or long-term expats.
Posing as condo owners, these conmen send potential tenants fake addresses and pictures of well-furnished homes to entice unsuspecting foreigners into transferring security deposits to them. When these tenant hopefuls request for a meeting, the "landlord" simply claims to be overseas for business. Eventually, as in the case above, the tricksters are never heard from again.
Deal with a registered agent
The lesson to be learned here is to always make sure that the landlord you're dealing with is indeed the owner of the property you're interested in. Better yet, enlist a realty agent with plenty of local knowledge to filter out the bad apples for you so you have one less potential headache to worry about. And ensure they are IEA registered, with a membership number that you can verify against the database at www.iea.org.sg.
N.B. Recently, the Singapore authorities have started zeroing in on unscrupulous landlords. A sizable number of these con-men have in fact been found guilty of tricking tenants. In all cases, a jail term was meted out. As a result of this, it's safe to say that the incidence of rental fraud will most likely go down.
