# Property-ideal.com is it a scam?



## Sima0502 (Feb 5, 2015)

Hi everyone!
I am looking for an apartment in Dubai and I actually found a very attractive one. The landlord, who is apparently living abroad, told me that the whole process will be handled on his behalf by property-ideal.com
It works as follows: I give him an address, where I can be reached. Property-ideal contacts me, I pay the first month of rent and after that property-ideal sends a courier with the keys to the apartment. I have the keys for 7 days, during which I can inspect and stay in the apartment and at the end of these 7 days I have to either confirm or refuse to proceed with the agreement. If I decide not to stay, I give back the keys and apparently get all my money back.
Now the apartment looks very nice and the price is reasonable, but it does sound too good to be true...
Has any of you heard of property-ideal.com or did you deal with them? Have you heard of such a scheme being used by other agencies?
Thanks!!!!
Simona


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## Froglet (May 7, 2014)

Hi Simona, just copy/paste one sentence in quotation marks ("") from the communication you have with property-ideal/landlord in Google and you'll find out...


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## The Rascal (Aug 6, 2014)

You've physically been in the apartment? If not (and the fact they're only wanting one month, no deposit, commission payments etc.) then I'd walk away, it has scam written all over it.


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## Froglet (May 7, 2014)

Does the email go something like this? This is from a company called "property-first.com".. Yours is property-ideal.com...






Dear xxxxxx,

Thank you for the interest showed for my apartment. For better knowledge of my property, along with the pictures, please note that the apartment resides in Armada Tower P3 Tower - Jumeirah Lake Towers, its approximate surface is of square feet 1280 and has 1 living room, 1+1 bathrooms, 1 bedroom and 1 kitchen. Both of us will establish from the beginning the rental period, which can be anywhere between 3 and 36 months.

The kind of tenant I am looking for must be above all very responsible and preferably dynamic and communicative. The monthly rent is AED5400 which does not include utilities. You also have one parking space reserved for your use. You can rent my apartment for you alone or for you and your family or friend.

The reason for which I am renting my apartment is that I had to work in another country, which is Wales, for 6 months initially (I'm working in the renewable energy field), but now I learned that my job will continue for at least 36 more months in the current location. I have already made permanent living arrangements here for me and my family, therefore we decided to put our apartment in Dubai up for rent. To this purpose, I entrusted property-next.com, which is a well known portal for rentals in Wales and also manages overseas transactions, with the ownership contract, the access keys into my apartment, the tenancy contract and the insurance deposit. I have already paid all fees, so you won't have to pay anything extra.

If this is of interest to you, please contact me as soon as possible to manage all the rest of the details.


Anwar Mohammed Abdullah Elsayed
Vattenfall Wind Farm Offshore
Drilling Engineer


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## Sima0502 (Feb 5, 2015)

Yes, it's 99% what I got.
Ok, scam it is, then...


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## The Rascal (Aug 6, 2014)

They could choose the pictures better, this is one Emily Harding, their Customer Service Manager, except it's not, it's a pic taken from the web.

And it's been mentioned on here before... Here


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## kmdxb (Jan 19, 2014)

Never heard of them. Domain records seem to indicate the site was only registered on the 25th of November 2014, and it's been registered using one of these 'domain privacy' services that hide the real owners contact details etc. The server for it is apparently running from the UK.

Unless it's a serviced apartment, you would not be able to 'move in for 7 days' - it would probably not have any electric/water services connected or any furniture. You couldn't get the services connected without having the tenancy contract registered (Ejari)

Don't get a good feeling from looking round that website, would not want to send money up-front to them. The whole landlord living abroad, whilst potentially genuine, also sounds similar to a lot of other property scams.


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## Froglet (May 7, 2014)

When something seems too good to be true it often is...



Sima0502 said:


> Yes, it's 99% what I got.
> Ok, scam it is, then...


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## Sima0502 (Feb 5, 2015)

For the record, Ms. Emily has not even bothered answering my e mail...
Thanks everyone for your help, I'll keep looking!!!


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