How to spot a fake rental listing? 5 warning signals

A fake rental listing is easiest to spot by five signals: a price 30–40% below the market (as of July 2026 a studio in Warszawa costs 2,300–3,200 zł plus 350–550 zł of charges, and the median rent in the capital is about 3,500 zł), a demand for a “reservation” or a deposit before you see the unit, an “owner abroad” promising keys by courier, time pressure combined with moving off the portal chat to a private messenger, and a refusal to give the księga wieczysta (land and mortgage register) number. Verification takes a quarter of an hour: compare the price with similar offers, run the photos through a reverse image search, ask for a video call from inside the flat, view the unit in person and check the owner free of charge at ekw.ms.gov.pl. Until you have seen the flat and read the agreement — you do not pay a single zloty.

Obtaining an advance payment by deception is an offence under art. 286 of the Criminal Code, but recovering the money can be difficult. Moving season is harvest time for fraudsters: photos stolen from Airbnb and Booking.com and “reservations” for a transfer after which contact goes dead. Below we take each signal apart.

Why is a price clearly below market a bait?

As of July 2026 a studio in Warszawa costs roughly 2,300–3,200 zł a month plus metered and administrative charges (usually 350–550 zł), while the median rent across the whole city is about 3,500 zł. In Śródmieście and near metro stations rates can reach 4,000–5,000 zł. We have gathered the current brackets for individual districts in our overview of rent prices in Warszawa.

So if you see a “renovated studio, 5 minutes from the metro” for 1,600 zł, that is not a bargain — it is bait. The fraudster deliberately goes far below the market because they need a flood of enquiries: the more people interested, the easier it is to create the pressure of “whoever pays first, takes it”. Before you write to the advertiser, compare the price with three or four similar offers in the same district. A deviation of a few hundred zloty is a matter of negotiation; a deviation of 40% is almost always fiction.

Do you have to pay before viewing a flat?

No — that is the simplest honesty test for a listing. “Interest is huge, please transfer 500 zł as a reservation and I will take the listing down” is the most common fraud scheme. An honest landlord takes money only after you have seen the unit and signed the agreement, never before. It is worth distinguishing three concepts that fraudsters like to juggle:

Concept	What it is	When it makes sense
Zadatek (art. 394 of the Civil Code)	Secures the conclusion of the agreement; if the other party withdraws, you can demand it back twofold	Only with a written agreement (e.g. a reservation agreement)
Zaliczka	An ordinary advance payment against the rent, refundable	After signing the tenancy agreement
Kaucja	Secures the landlord’s claims; the statutory limit is 12 months’ rent (art. 6(1)), and for najem okazjonalny (occasional tenancy) and institutional tenancy 6 months’ rent (art. 19a and art. 19f(5) respectively of the Tenants’ Rights Protection Act of 21 June 2001); the market standard is 1–2 months’ rent	On signing the agreement, before the keys are handed over

None of these payments is justified until you have stood inside that flat and read the agreement. “Deposit by transfer, keys tomorrow by courier” is not a procedure — it is the script of a crime.

What does “the owner is abroad” really mean?

A classic of the genre: the owner “works in Norway”, cannot show the flat, but once the deposit is paid “a courier will send the keys” or “a trusted relocation company” will hand them over. There is no person — there is no flat, and after the transfer there is no contact either.

An increasingly common variant in 2026 is a link to a spoofed payment page, deceptively similar to a listings portal or a courier service — there, on top of the “reservation fee”, you also lose your card details.

The rule is simple and admits no exceptions: without seeing the unit in person and meeting the person entitled to let it, you do not pay a single zloty. If the owner really does live abroad, the letting is handled on their behalf by an attorney or an agency — and both can be verified on the spot, with the documents in hand. The order of steps in an honest tenancy — viewing, documents, agreement, and only then payment — is described in the section for tenants.

Which red flags reveal haste and pressure?

Fake listings have a common denominator: everything has to happen fast and outside the official channel. Watch out for these red flags:

• the advertiser’s account created a few days ago, no phone number in the listing;
• an immediate proposal to move from the portal chat to private e-mail or a messenger;
• “catalogue” photos — run them through a reverse image search (e.g. Google Lens); stolen photographs often come from booking services and other people’s listings;
• avoiding a phone call and a video call from inside the flat;
• a request for payment in cryptocurrency, by gift card, by BLIK “to a phone number” or to a foreign account;
• a “viewing fee” or a fee for “access to a list of verified offers” — once paid, the offer turns out to be out of date, because it never existed.

Each of these elements on its own should raise your guard; two at once mean your time is being wasted.

How do you check the documents and the owner of the flat?

A genuine owner will give the księga wieczysta number without hesitation. Browsing the register online at ekw.ms.gov.pl is free — in section II you will see who the owner is and can compare those details with the ID of the person signing the agreement. What exactly each section contains is explained in our guide on how to read a księga wieczysta.

If the agreement is signed by an attorney, ask for a written power of attorney; if it is a sublet — for the owner’s written consent, because without it a tenant may not sublet a residential unit (art. 688² of the Civil Code). A refusal to show any documents ends the conversation. It is not about distrust, but about a minimum of diligence: you are signing an agreement worth tens of thousands of zloty a year.

How do you verify a listing in 15 minutes?

1. Compare the price with similar offers in the same district and of a similar size.
2. Check the photos with a reverse image search — see whether they are circulating on other services.
3. Call and ask for a short video call from inside the flat; a fraudster will avoid it.
4. View the unit in person and note whether the person showing it moves around freely and has keys to all the doors.
5. Ask for the księga wieczysta number and verify the owner at ekw.ms.gov.pl.
6. Read the agreement before any payment; draw up a protokół zdawczo-odbiorczy (handover protocol) with photos of the condition of the flat and the meters.
7. Pay only by bank transfer to an account matching the details in the agreement.

That quarter of an hour of caution costs less than one lost “reservation”.

What should you do if you have already paid?

Obtaining an advance payment or a deposit by deception is fraud under art. 286 § 1 of the Criminal Code, punishable by 6 months to 8 years’ imprisonment (in a case of lesser gravity — a fine, restriction of liberty or up to 2 years). Act at once: ask the bank to stop the transfer or block the card; file a report with the police or the prosecutor’s office including screenshots of the listing, the correspondence and the payment confirmation.

Also report the listing to the portal’s administrators, and the spoofed payment page — to CERT Polska via incydent.cert.pl. The trail of a bank transfer is often the only thread leading to the perpetrator — which is exactly why fraudsters insist so hard on anonymous forms of payment.

At allproperty we view every flat in our rental offer in person, the photos come straight from the unit, and we check the legal status before publication — you always sign the agreement before any payment. The letting commission is 50% of one month’s rent, with no hidden charges. Have you come across a listing from another source and something about it does not add up — on a Sunday evening of all times, while the “owner” pushes for an immediate transfer? Do not decide under pressure: we work 24/7, call +48 666 866 468 or +48 692 649 839 at any hour and we will check the listing free of charge before you send even a single zloty.