Agents are being warned of a new property scam in which their listings are scraped – but given far cheaper prices in order to lure inquirers, who innocently give up personal details in order to obtain information.
Nigerian scammers are said to have been responsible for placing these properties on website www.propertysell.co.uk (“the UK’s trusted online estate agent”) which in turn lists them on the home.co.uk portal.
The properties look to be scraped from a variety of sources including Rightmove, with the scammers adjusting the prices downwards – in some cases, substantially.
In all cases – other than apparently by accident – the agents selling the properties are not referred to, making it look as though the properties are private sales.
The scam appears to be a phishing expedition for IDs and personal data.
Agent-listed properties of all sizes and in all types of markets are being targeted both in the UK and beyond. For example, yesterday afternoon we found a two-bedroom flat in Ashford Road, London NW2 6TT on the Property Sell site at £280,000. It is actually on with Springbok Properties who list it on Rightmove at £380,000.
While agents should check whether any of their listings are on a site they may not have heard of, you are strongly advised NOT to try and make contact if you are directed to the alleged seller details. Agents could however ask the home website to remove the scam listings.
Similarly, agents should warn vendors whose properties appear on the site not to make contact. Vendors may be very upset to find that their property has apparently been massively reduced.
The warning clearly also extends to any property hunters.
The Property Sell site claims to be “the world’s biggest free property website”, although according to its metrics, it is ranked at 119,547 in the UK.
The scam alarm was raised by a member of the public looking to move to London.
She found two properties, both listed on the home website, that looked very cheap in Greenwich at £550,000 and £450,000.
Seeking further information about both properties, she was directed to www.propertysell.co.uk
Unknown to her the £550,000 property is actually with Winkworth at £1.4m and now under offer.
Last week she found many other properties in and around central London listed at what she called unbelievably low prices.
She then filled in the personal details asked for in the “contact seller” feature, and received an automated response from someone called “Gordon Brown” using an outlook email address.
Concerned that the property dealer handling the Greenwich properties appeared to be in the north of England, she contacted EYE for advice.
We in turn asked home.co.uk to investigate, which they did both speedily and helpfully.
They were told, in email correspondence passed to us, by Paul Webb of www.propertysell.co.uk that they are aware of “a few properties on our site that have been placed by scammers” and that “we are currently rebuilding our website to try and filter out these scammers”.
Webb added: “The scammers were based in Nigeria.”
On Wednesday last week EYE found a large number of properties in Hampshire on the site at extraordinarily low prices – including in Winchester, current holder of the Sunday Times’ best place to live in Britain, where it was apparently possible to pick up bargains in the city’s priciest roads.
But the following day, Thursday, after beginning our investigation and after we cited Hampshire as we asked questions, there were only three properties in Hampshire on the site.
However, in neighbouring Berkshire that same day we found a property in upmarket Caversham.
It was listed on Property Sell – unusually with the agents’ name at the top, suggesting an inept scraping – at £700,000.
Knight Frank’s Henley office has it on at £945,000.
We have alerted Knight Frank and invited Paul Webb to comment. However, he has so far not responded and so we are unable at the moment to give his side of the story.
There is no suggestion that he is implicated in the scam, only that as he has said in an email his platform has been used by fraudsters.
Doug Shepherd, of the home.co.uk website, said: “This kind of scam should be stopped. Private sales sites should be regulated.”
Here are links (given in full) to Knight Frank’s property, first on Rightmove and then, apparently scraped but with a reduced price on the Property Sell site.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-52351546.html
The home page of Property Sell makes a bold claim:
Although according to its metrics, it does not get that much traffic:
The Knight Frank property in Caversham, as listed on Rightmove:
And as it appears on Property Sell:
Below is a Winkworth property in Greenwich. Winkworth have it on for £1.4m; Propertysell has it on for £550,000. The screengrabs show how the property appears on the home.co.uk website, with and without its rather interesting price change history – which is of course completely phoney:
Comments (11)
I have just read this article and can add as the owner of Propertysell.co.uk we had no knowledge of our website being used as an international scam, it was bought to our attention by a couple of our customers and we acted immediately to their concerns.
We received hundreds of Spam emails a week and deal with them using filters etc and come to recognise it as a persistent and ongoing problem.
Our website was taken offline and all properties removed as soon as we had researched that it had been abused by scammers. We have since started our database from scratch with confirmation of accounts before use and all properties now are manually checked before being added to the website or edited.
We do not advertise any properties from portals or other websites although we do feed some of our properties to a select few portals.
Our website is basically a classifieds ad website and we highly advise anyone who decides to purchase or sell a property to seek the help of a professional agent or legal representative.
It would help if the likes of Knight Frank and Winkworth were concerned about what is happening to their stock and their clients
I am getting a bit fed up of my stock being taken to profit others, not just Nigerian conmen but people in general.
When did it become the norm that people can take data own by businesses and use it as they see fit without even asking?
Its my stock which i have spent thousands on getting. I do not give any company or individual right to use the data, images or details i have spent money preparing.
Portals and software providers are just as bad. I pay them to either advertise on their site or use their software, i do not want them selling my data to others and profiting from it.
Maybe it’s owned by the same wealthy business man who left all his money to his poor niece but she doesn’t have a bank account and wants me (YES ME SO BACK OFF !!) to put this $30m in to my bank account and all she wants is a small amount to live on for the rest of her life and I get to keep the rest.
So you guys know I would be really cheesed off if you have emailed your bank details to her too because she promised me this money and even though it’s been a few weeks I am sure the money will be in there really soon.
Sorry Mr Harvey didn’t mean to copy your joke.
These Nigerian scammers really do give other Nigerian investors a bad name.
For instance, I’m just about to receive £8m from a Nigerian man who sent me a lovely email, and all it cost me to guarantee this windfall was my current savings, which I can assure you were a lot less than the £8m I can now look forward to.
All I’m saying is, don’t tar them all with the same brush.
We’ve put a warning up on raterAgent for sellers and landlords trying to find out about this company’s reputation, linking through to the above article. http://www.rateragent.co.uk/branch/propertysell-online-agent/223090
That’s great, well done. Now it’s on rather agent we can all relax.
Hehe – not saying it’s a silver bullet but I guess you’d be surprised how many people do actually check this kind of stuff out these days …
How can ANYONE ‘Dislike’ this comment?
Mr Mal – you and I never agree of pretty much anything – but on this occasion ‘thank you and well done for taking the initiative’.
Hi PeeBee; we’ll get back to usual disagreements soon, no doubt, but in the meantime thanks – we want to provide a genuine service and this kind of thing really gets us angry.