Rental and Real Estate Fraud

For many people, there is only one truly important place in life: home, a place where one can feel comfortable and recover from the stresses of the working week. Finding such a home is often made difficult not only by housing shortages or steadily rising rental and purchase prices but also by fraudulent, seemingly competent real estate agents or landlords who often sour the experience for prospective tenants. The detectives of the Kurtz Detective Agency Bremen are frequently commissioned to investigate both small- and large-scale real estate fraud and face an almost limitless willingness to commit criminal acts within the property sector.

Often, new tenants moving into their dream apartment in the centre of Bremen or other major cities encounter significant problems upon moving in, suddenly faced with major rental defects that were deliberately concealed or even covered up by the agent or property owner – ranging from mould on walls to rotting ceilings or floors, or well-disguised structural defects. Bremen private detectives are deployed in such cases to support disadvantaged tenants by documenting the defects and the deliberate concealment, observing the perpetrators if necessary, researching further similar offences, and establishing professional cover stories to obtain court-admissible evidence, with the combined aim of exposing the fraudsters: +49 421 3679 9066.

Extreme Case: Double Rental by an Unauthorized Party

A particularly serious case confronted the detectives of the Kurtz Corporate Detective Agency Bremen when our clients had seemingly legally rented an apartment, only to discover shortly after moving in that they were not the sole tenants. They had paid rent and a deposit to a fraudster who had no authority to offer the apartment at all. Fraudulent (pseudo-)landlords and supposed agents present properties as their own, provide prospective tenants with the necessary documents, and claim to be the legitimate owners or authorised representatives, while the property in fact belongs to someone else and is not on the market. For tenants, this is naturally both a financial and logistical disaster, which is why some resourceful victims engage a detective agency like Kurtz Detective Agency Bremen to pursue the perpetrators, secure compensation, and protect future tenants from similar issues.

Thanks to their wide range of investigative methods and extensive experience, our private and corporate detectives from Bremen are usually able to uncover these criminal agents or landlords and bring them to justice.

Tenants Become Fraudsters – Defrauding Other Tenants

According to the property portal "immowelt.de," there are various adaptations of the landlord fraud described above, in which our Bremen private detectives have been involved. Holiday rental platforms such as AirBnB, which offer apartments for short periods, often just for the duration of a holiday, are particularly exploited for this scam: private individuals rent out their own apartment to supposed holidaymakers, who then advertise the seemingly vacant, furnished property as available for long-term rental, conducting viewings for prospective tenants – well-dressed and well-prepared. The interested parties sign a lease, pay a deposit, a commission, and the first month’s rent. By the time the actual residents realise what has happened, the fraudulent "holidaymaker"/"agent" has long disappeared with the payments.

Depositing Deposits in Cash Before Signing the Contract?

It is almost routine in German, and especially in foreign, major cities to demand significantly more than two months’ rent as a deposit and even insist on cash payment. Prospective tenants without citizenship in the relevant country are often duped in this way. Therefore, the more a broker, landlord, or property owner insists on cash payment instead of a transfer without good reason, the more unprofessional and questionable their methods appear. In Bremen, our detectives recently uncovered the activities of a property manager who legally rented out apartments of others but significantly increased the deposits demanded by the owners, kept the excess cash for themselves, and even withheld the deposit after tenants moved out under dubious pretences. By using Bremen detectives as decoys, the manager was finally confronted with their wrongdoing, leading the property owners to become aware of the fraud and take legal action.

Such a positive outcome is not always guaranteed; for instance, if the perpetrator is no longer traceable in Germany (debtor flight) and their attachable accounts are abroad. If the police cannot pursue the usually existing traces further, affected tenants have little option but to obtain evidence themselves, often by commissioning the Kurtz Private Detective Agency Bremen to produce court-admissible documentation of the fraud. To avoid such cases from the outset, tenants should always pay deposits only after signing a rental contract – although this does not guarantee an honest arrangement.

I Have Fallen Victim to a Fraudster – What Now?

Regardless of the type of fraud you have experienced, our private detectives in Bremen are always available and capable of advising victims of such property fraud on their options. Depending on the situation, we can initiate surveillance in consultation with you, conduct research and undercover interviews, set traps for the perpetrators, and much more.

Of course, our investigators are happy to present the evidence obtained in any court proceedings and will remain at your side even after the case concludes. You can also help reduce detective costs by organising and providing all documents, files, emails, and other materials related to the fraud. Even seemingly insignificant documents can be useful for the Kurtz Detective Agency Bremen in later investigations and contribute to exposing the perpetrator. For instance, if it concerns the concealment of rental defects, you should photograph all defects immediately with a date stamp (modern smartphones make this easy). Our IHK-certified detectives in Bremen will then take care of the rest: kontakt@kurtz-detektei-bremen.de.