A MAN’S dream flat vanished right before his very eyes in a sick rent scam.
Craig Barton, 29, handed over a £450 deposit to a fake landlord after believing he’d found the perfect room to rent in Belfast.
The chef, who had been looking for somewhere to live for two years, met the man at the home he believed was about to be exchanged into his hands.
“I met the person, they seemed really nice. He took me in, showed me about the house, showed me how to use all the heating and everything,” he said.
“There was someone in the room I was going to live in and he said he was throwing him out for being too loud.”
Craig handed over his deposit and even signed a contract.
He was given a key to the apartment, but not one to the building’s main door with the landlord telling him he’d get it when the other tenant moved out.
A few days later when he was ready to move in and “looking at his front door” Craig knew something was wrong.
The hopeful renter tried to get in touch with the man he’d been texting but was now being ignored.
He told the BBC: “There was no reply so I was getting the feeling that something was going wrong.
“I couldn’t get in the main door, so I rang the buzzer.
“It was someone else that answered, they said they didn’t know what I was talking about. The number [of the apartment] he gave me was wrong.
“I was gutted after, I felt like I lost all my money and everything.”
Amy Lyness of Housing Rights said fraudsters know how desperate people are to own their own home.
She said: “They would understand that people are desperate, that there’s a lack of available housing along with the increased prices that people are having to pay.
“They can produce an advertisement that says there’s available housing at a slightly reduced rent.
“They’re going on the basis that desperate people will want to jump on that good deal and that’s where they’re likely to get caught without being able to establish the legitimacy of the tenancy.”