Rental fraud takes around £9 million a year from about five thousand reported victims, and 48% of them are aged 18 to 29. It concentrates on the people who cannot easily view first — students, international renters, anyone relocating to London from somewhere else. The tool below screens a listing for free against the things that actually predict fraud, including two that became unlawful on 1 May 2026 and that most renters have never heard of.
Almost every guide tells you to report to Action Fraud. Do that — but understand that Action Fraud is an intelligence service, not a route to your money back. The route that actually pays is your bank.
Since 7 October 2024 UK banks have been under a mandatory reimbursement rule for authorised push payment fraud, covering up to £85,000 per claim with a decision normally inside five business days. In the first year, roughly 88% of the money lost in scope was reimbursed. Rental fraud losses average under £2,000, so they sit comfortably inside the cap. You have 13 months from the payment to claim. Ring your bank’s fraud line today, not next week. If you paid by international transfer, money transfer service, crypto or gift card, you are outside the scheme — which is precisely why you were asked to pay that way.
Tick anything that is true of the property, the agent or the person you are dealing with. The first group are legal bright lines — things a legitimate agent cannot lawfully do — and any one of them should stop you. The second group are behavioural signals, individually weak and meaningful in combination. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no form in front of it.
A compliant agent or landlord cannot do any of these. One tick here matters more than everything below it.
Each of these has an innocent explanation. Three or more together does not.
There is no magic database. What there is, is a set of public registers that between them make a fabricated listing very hard to sustain — and a clear understanding of what each one does and does not tell you. We report what a named source said on a stated date. We do not issue verdicts about whether a person is honest.
The register gives the registered proprietor, their address for service, the charges and any restrictions. It is the strongest single check. What it does not prove is who may lawfully let the property — a genuine landlord may hold through a company, a trust or a head lease, and a rent-to-rent operator may be perfectly legitimate.
National Trading Standards runs a free public checker covering redress scheme and client money protection membership. Both are mandatory for letting agents. The catch: it searches by trading name, and cloning a real member firm’s name is the commonest high-value scam. Matching a name is not the same as speaking to that firm.
Incorporation, directors, filing history, and whether it is being struck off. Useful, and routinely misused: in two of the largest reported London cases the fraudster quoted a real company registration number belonging to the firm they were impersonating. Existence proves the company is real, not that you are talking to it.
Searchable by postcode. An EPC proves a qualified assessor physically inspected a dwelling at that address, and gives floor area and room count — so it catches the flat that does not exist and the listing whose photographs show somewhere much larger. It says nothing at all about ownership.
A property entered in the valuation list with its own band is a self-contained dwelling. This is the check that catches phantom flats and unlawfully subdivided houses — the room that was a landing until somebody put a door on it.
HMO and selective licensing registers name the licence holder and manager. Where a licence exists it is strong corroboration. Councils are only required to make the register available at their offices rather than online, so coverage is patchy — and an absent licence may mean fraud, or may just mean an unlicensed landlord.
We would rather tell you this than sell you a badge. There are two patterns behind a lot of the recent London cases, and both of them survive everything above — including the advice everybody gives, which is to view in person.
They book the property legitimately on a short-let platform for a few days, get the keys, and run genuine in-person viewings of a genuine flat. Contracts get signed. Money gets taken from several people. Then the booking ends and everyone turns up on move-in day.
This defeats the single most repeated piece of official advice. Viewing the property in person tells you the property is real. It tells you nothing about whether the person holding the door open has any right to let it — which is precisely why the ownership check matters more than the viewing.
A genuine property, a genuine agent, a genuine tenancy. Criminals sit on the email thread and swap the bank details at the moment of payment. Every check on this page passes, because everything about the transaction is real except the account number.
The only thing that catches this is you. Before you transfer anything, telephone the agent on a number you found yourself — from the portal listing or their website, never from the email — and read the account details back to them. Then send £1 first and confirm receipt. Two minutes, and it is worth more than any report we could write.
Because it would be a lie of exactly the kind this page exists to protect you from. A badge saying verified implies we have warranted that a transaction is safe, and nobody can warrant that — not against the two patterns above. What we can honestly give you is a dated record of what each public register said when we looked: the registered proprietor on this date, the redress membership found or not found, whether the address appears on the EPC and council tax registers. Facts, with sources and dates, so you can decide. If a firm offers you a verification badge for a rental listing, ask them what happens when the payment diversion above hits their verified client, and read the answer carefully.
The screening tool is free and always will be, because a fraud check behind a paywall protects nobody. What you pay for is us actually pulling the registers, reading them, and writing down what they said.
We do not issue a verification badge and we will not call anything “verified”. Two of the commonest current frauds pass every check that can be performed, so a badge would be a false promise — and under the Consumer Rights Act we could not limit our liability for one anyway. We report what each register said on the date we looked at it. We report facts, not verdicts. You will read “no matching entry was found on the redress register on this date”, never “this agent is a fraud”. That is deliberate: it is more useful to you and it is fair to people who may simply be disorganised. We never hold your money and will never ask you to route a payment through us. Fourteen days to change your mind as a distance contract with a consumer, though if you ask us to start immediately you keep that right until the work is done. The report is for you alone — forwarding it to a guarantor or a flatmate gives them something that was not written for them.
The address and a link if you have one. If it is obviously a scam you will hear from us quickly and we will not invoice you for it. If it looks legitimate we will tell you that too — and still tell you to ring the agent on a number you found yourself before you transfer anything.
Four questions. If it is obviously a scam we will tell you within the hour and charge you nothing, because that is not worth an invoice.
It changes what we can realistically check and how fast.
Choose as many as apply.
The address and the link is ideal. The address alone is enough to start.
If it is clearly a scam you will hear from us quickly and it will not cost you anything. If it looks fine we will say that too — and remind you to check the bank details by phone anyway.
Check it over. Tapping the button opens WhatsApp with this ready — nothing has been sent yet.
Send this on WhatsAppEvery one of these has a free tool on it. None of them asks for your details before it gives you an answer.
For tenants. Since May the tribunal cannot raise your rent above what the landlord asked — only confirm it or cut it.
Your increase against real ONS regional datafree, or £99 assessed →For tenants. The deposit is your money and the landlord has to prove every deduction — we build the case that says so.
Score every deduction against the rules adjudicators usefree, or £49 prepared →For tenants. Rent repayment orders of up to two years’ rent where the landlord broke licensing or eviction law.
Every remedy screened, with what we can and cannot touchfree, or £295 assessed →Because it would be a promise we cannot keep, and because the law would hold us to it. A badge saying verified reads as a warranty that a transaction is safe. Two of the commonest recent frauds — a fraudster who has legitimately booked the property on a short-let platform and genuinely shows you round it, and an interception of a real agent’s email that swaps the bank details at the moment of payment — would both pass every check anyone can perform. Under the Consumer Rights Act we could not limit our liability for that even if we tried, and under the new consumer regime the Competition and Markets Authority can now fine a business up to 10% of worldwide turnover for a misleading claim without going to court. So what we issue is a dated record of what each register said when we looked, with the sources. Facts you can act on, rather than a badge you cannot rely on.
Who owns it, which is the single most useful fact available and costs £7. The register gives the registered proprietor and their address for service, any mortgages, and any restrictions on dealing. If the person letting the property has no visible connection to the proprietor and cannot explain the connection, that is the moment to stop. What it does not prove is authority to let: a genuine landlord may hold through a company, a trust or a head lease, and a rent-to-rent operator can be entirely legitimate. So the ownership check is not a yes or no. It is a question you can then put to the agent, and how they answer it tells you a great deal.
Five things, in order. Get the exact address, not the street — a listing that will not give you a flat number is already telling you something. Buy the title register for £7 and see who owns it. Search the free Property Agent Checker for the agency, and if they claim redress membership, check it rather than believing the logo. Search the address on the free EPC register and the council tax valuation list, which between them establish that a self-contained dwelling exists there. Then, before any money moves, telephone the agent on a number you found yourself — from the portal or their own website, never from the email — and read the account details back to them. Send £1 first and confirm it arrived. That last step takes two minutes and defeats the one fraud that passes everything else.
One month, and not before the tenancy agreement is signed. Both of those became law on 1 May 2026 under the Renters’ Rights Act, and they matter enormously for spotting fraud because “six months in advance because you are from overseas and have no UK credit history” used to be aggressive but lawful, and is now simply unlawful. That demand appears in the largest reported London cases — one pair of international students lost £13,000 to exactly that framing. Separately and since 2019, a holding deposit is capped at one week’s rent, a security deposit at five weeks (six where annual rent is £50,000 or more), and there is no lawful fee of any kind for a viewing. If somebody is asking for more than that, you do not need to establish whether the property exists. You already know enough.
Probably not, if you paid by UK bank transfer, and this is the most under-known thing on this page. Since 7 October 2024 banks have been under a mandatory reimbursement rule for authorised push payment fraud, covering up to £85,000 per claim with a decision normally within five business days. In the scheme’s first year roughly 88% of in-scope losses were reimbursed. Rental fraud losses average under £2,000, so they sit well inside the cap. You have 13 months from the payment. Ring your bank’s fraud line today and use the words “authorised push payment scam”. Report to Action Fraud as well, but understand that Action Fraud gathers intelligence — it does not return money, and victims in reported cases were told 28 days before a case would even be reviewed. If you paid by international transfer, money transfer service, crypto or gift card you are outside the scheme, which is precisely why you were steered there.
Less than you would hope, and we would rather say so. Both of the largest London cases we found began on major portals — one on OpenRent, one listed on both OpenRent and Rightmove. A BBC investigation found criminals paying to join one major portal without redress scheme registration, exploiting a policy that allowed new agents to advertise before obtaining membership, and the portal said it had no plans to change it. Portals do real work on this and reporting a listing to them is worth doing. But presence on a well-known site is not a safety signal, and treating it as one is how careful people get caught.
Increasingly, organisations rather than individuals. The people most exposed are international students and staff arriving for a September start, relocating employees, and anyone committing money to a city they have not yet seen — and the bodies that place them, universities, relocation firms and employers, carry the reputational consequence when it goes wrong. Checking a batch of listings for an intake is cheaper per property, faster, and reaches people before they have paid rather than after. We are actively looking for those partnerships and would rather build the service that way. Individual renters are welcome, and if a listing is obviously fraudulent we will tell you so within the hour and not invoice you, because charging for that would be its own small scandal.
Fair question, and the right instinct on a page about fraud. Fraser Bond is a property consultancy, not a regulated financial adviser, and this service is not a regulated activity. Three things we will tell you plainly. We report what a named public source said on a stated date and we do not publish conclusions about whether a person is honest — that protects you from false confidence and us from being wrong in an expensive way. We do not hold your money at any point, and we will never ask you to route a payment through us. And our report is for you alone; if you forward it to a partner or a guarantor, they are relying on something that was not written for them. If any firm offering this kind of service will not answer those three questions in writing, that is your answer.
If you do nothing else on this page, do that. Ring the agent on the number from the portal or their own website — never the one in the email — read the account details back, then transfer £1 and confirm it arrived before sending the rest. It costs two minutes and it defeats the one scam that passes every other check. The rest of what we do is worth having. That is worth more.
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