Job Discussion Forums

[MoonMonkey]

Hi,

I have been researching a move to Spain for a while, and was looking at apartments on Loquo. I sent a blanket email out to a number of apartments listed, asking about deposit costs, monthly bills, location, etc.

I received almost the exact same reply from a large number of supposedly different apartment owners. It seems like a scam to me, so can anybody confirm or refute this?

They all look like this;

"Thanks for the email and it is my gladness hearing from you. I am the
owner of the apartment you are making inquiry of. Actually i resided
in the apartment with my family, such as my wife and my only daughter
before and presently we had packed due to my transfer from my working
place on a Christian missionary work and now situated in the
West Africa Nigeria and presently my apartment is still available for
rent.Including the utilities like hydro, washer and security, it is
furnished but if you which to move in with your furnishes no problem.
Pls i want you to note that i am a kind and honest man and also i
spent a lot on my property that i want to give you for rent, i will
want you to take absolute maintenance of my apartment and want you to
treat it as your own, money is not the most important thing but i want
you to keep it tidy all the time so that i will be glad to see it
neat when i come for a check up."

or

"The place is available , the rent includes all utilities. The property belongs to me and my Wonderful family. I own a transportation company here in West Africa. Two of the trailers got involved in an accident and I don't really have much money right now. That's why I decided to rent out the property due to our transfer to West Africa. I'm here with my wife and kids. I want you to fill the rent application form below, then we are going to proceed with the viewing and other arrangement"

In the emails I got back, they had simply changed the name of countries, but it seems like the trail leads back to Nigeria. Sounds dodgy to me.

These were the apartments on Loquo, specifically the ones worded in English.

I'm going to try and to get a decent translation to my questions and contact the Spanish advertisements instead.

What do you think guys?

[Isla Guapa]

Beware of any ads that mention the capital of all sorts of internet scams, Nigeria .

[SirKirby]

Just so obviously a scam, if I may say so. Accommodation sites - including Loquo - are just packed with scams, hoping to sting unwary foreigners.

If it looks too good to be true, it's a scam.

[spiral78]

Slightly off-topic, but is Moon Monkey an EU citizen? I'm only questioning this because of the use of the word 'apartment' rather than the more-common 'flat.'

The relevance is that I wonder whether the landlord scammers might be targeting non-EU citizens in the same way that some of the scam schools do.

[MoonMonkey]

I'm an EU citizen, I just say �apartment� because having lived in Asia for while, I got more accustomed to using that word instead of �flat.�

I contacted lots of the English listings on Loquo and they were all scams, then I got translations to my questions and contacted the Spanish listings.

I got the same thing again with the Spanish listings, they are all basically the same person, and they all have a similar story of sending money in advance.

I agree with the last posts, almost all the reasonably priced apartments on LOQUO are scams, whether you�re an EU citizen or not, they are simply fake advertisements.

I wonder where the teachers in Madrid found their apartments? There must be some genuine and trustworthy websites out there???

[mozzar]

Type In Madrid into google. It�s a magazine. Or www.lingobongo.com. I used easypiso for my first flat.

[robinargyle]

As others have said, it is obviously a scam, be careful as well when advertising on these sites. I rented out a room once and many of the replies were scams as well with similar too good to be true stories......

[MoonMonkey]

Thanks to Mozzar for putting up some good websites, I took a look and they seem much better and more genuine, but I haven't got round to contacting anyone on those sites yet tho.

On those websites they are almost all flat-sharing, I know that is common in Madrid, but are there websites for single person places, if so, how much would that usually cost?


I don't know why, but it seems like you really have to dig to find good info on Spain (i.e. good websites, finding good deals, good jobs etc). Has anyone else found that??

[mozzar]

Wait til you get started on Spanish beauracracy.

[spiral78]

beauracracy


mozzar, did you spell it correctly? I never do....and I think you might be plotting to undermine my attempt to remember the correct spelling......

omg, nightmares coming on of making obvious spelling errors on the board in class.



Sorry - I've had an extremely stressful week and am clearly freaking out Bear with me, please - I promise to try to be normal as soon as possible.

[strictly_nicky]

Just for the record, that's "bureaucracy"

Interesting, I've had to resort to loquo several times in my apartment searches, but I guess the Nigerians haven't invaded the Barcelona page yet...at least last summer they hadn't anyway.

If Madrid's anything like Barcelona, a single-person type flat is gonna be way expensive. You're looking at 600� a month easily(Correct me if I'm wrong, madrile�os). Of course it depends on the part of town you're in, etc. I know that in BCN they can easily charge 600� for a little one-bedroom in a skeezy neighborhood like the Raval or El Borne, because it's like you know, hip and stuff.

Have a look at idealista.com.

Also take into account that to get into a flat here you're generally gonna have to cough up a pretty penny in deposits, etc. Usually two months rent, maybe even three.