9 common real estate scams that people are most likely to fall into

2022 is a year of many unusual fluctuations in the real estate market. However, the attraction of real estate investment has never ceased to be attractive and many scams still occur frequently.

From the practical experience of a legal consultant, lawyer Doan Trung Hieu (Hanoi Bar Association), shared with Dan Tri the common forms of fraud that will take place in 2022.

Fraudulent real estate transactions through private documents

This form of real estate trading has appeared a lot recently. By taking advantage of people's lack of knowledge about the form of notarization, scammers sell them bad, illegal, illegally divided plots of land when making handwritten sales contracts with commitments that this land has notarization issued by the notary office. This has brought great risks to people and they may be cheated out of everything.

In essence, a notary is not a type of contract or transaction but a document created by a bailiff agency, recording actions and events used as evidence during trials and in other legal relationships, not a legal representative with authority in real estate transactions.

Deposit misappropriation

The market has recently seen many cases of drawing up "ghost" projects on paper to lure hundreds, even thousands of people to invest money in unreal projects. Typical cases include Alibaba Real Estate and Hoang Kim Land Company to appropriate customers' deposits.

They often have brokers call customers to come to the location to see the land, but in reality, the land is planned for public works and has not been approved for any project. The projects are drawn with eye-catching plots and landscapes on paper, have prime locations, but are introduced at prices much lower than market value, causing many people to fall into the trap.

These subjects often let land brokers organize on-site land viewing events, then "set up a battle formation" where people jostle to buy and sell, sign contracts and pay money right in front of people viewing the land to create "hotness" for the project.

One real estate property but sold to many people

A house sold to many people is probably a common form of fraud. The above method is quite simple, but if people are not careful, they will easily fall into this scam trap. First, in order to attract and gain your trust, these subjects will post real estate for sale at a price much lower than the market price, with full authentication documents, pictures, books, ... along with attractive invitations.

After approaching the customer, the scammer will give many specific reasons to entice you to deposit money or pay a part of the money while only writing a handwritten commitment. With the same form, the scammers continue to take a large amount of money from many other people and run away.

Many people were tricked into buying and selling real estate using fake documents (Photo: IT).

Buying and selling real estate with fake books and documents

Normally, buying and selling with fake books or fake documents will target both buyers and sellers. For sellers, scammers will act as a home buyer and need to see the book, get more information about the book for authentication. At this time, the scammer will take advantage of that information to create a fake book and documents. In the next meetings, this subject will not pay attention and swap between the fake book and the real book.

For buyers, the scammer can be the landowner or just an authorized person. They will create many fake documents and papers to sell this property to many different people at the same time.

Pretending to be a real estate seller to push up prices

When people are planning to buy a piece of land or a house but hesitate because the price is too high, suddenly a person claiming to be a tycoon comes and asks to buy that very piece of land at a much higher price. And to create trust, this person also deposits a large sum of money for this person.

So they eagerly piled up money to buy that land and house without thinking much, hoping to sell it back to that tycoon for profit. And in the end, the people fell into the trap created by the tycoon and the seller. They had to buy a piece of land at a much higher price than the market price and even got into legal trouble.

Fraud in buying real estate that is being seized

This is an ironic case where people buy a house from a person who is serving a sentence. Between the time the court pronounces the sentence and the time the sentence is served, these people will try to quickly sell the house at an attractive price to quickly get cash. Then, they will disperse this money instead of using it to serve the sentence as required by the court.

Many people were scammed into buying land for growing crops and rice fields in the hope of getting residential land (Photo: Ha Phong).

Fraudulent purchase of land for planting trees and rice fields will be converted to residential land

There are many cases where people are looking for land to build a house but are guided by the seller to buy land for growing crops or rice fields at high prices, with the commitment that the name change will be notarized and converted to residential land within 3 months from the date of signing the sales contract.

However, after more than half a year of paying 98% of the land value, there is still no sign of the residential land title, the land has not been granted a construction permit, the investor has disappeared, causing the buyer to hold onto the land while having to rent a room every month.

Fraudulent sale of housing in projects without bank guarantee certificate

According to the provisions of Clause 1, Article 56 of the Law on Real Estate Business: Before selling or leasing future housing, real estate project investors must have a commercial bank with sufficient capacity to guarantee the investor's financial obligations to customers when the investor fails to hand over the housing according to the schedule committed to customers.

Clause 2, Article 56 of this Law further stipulates: "The investor is responsible for sending a copy of the guarantee contract to the buyer or hire-purchaser when signing the purchase or hire-purchase contract."

However, many customers who buy apartments or future assets ignore this document, not knowing the benefits it brings.

According to Clause 4, Article 56 of the Law on Real Estate Business: Customers who purchase a project are guaranteed by a qualified commercial bank. When the investor loses financial capacity or is late in handing over the house compared to the contract, the guarantor bank will refund the amount the customer (if required) has paid and other amounts according to the contract.

Impersonating a reputable investor to fraudulently sell land

This is not a rare trick in the market. Many large and reputable investors have had to speak up about the situation of brand impersonation, denouncing many individuals and organizations that set up websites impersonating the company to commit fraud against customers.

They illegally used false images and documents about the project and posted fake phone numbers. They even posted information on behalf of the project owner to receive deposits and reservations and offered a much lower price than the investor expected to sell it to trap gullible people.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/bat-dong-san/9-chieu-thuc-lua-dao-nha-dat-pho-bien-nguoi-dan-de-sap-bay-nhat-20230427074813819.htm