Common patterns
- Rent priced well below market
- Refusal or inability to do an in-person inspection
- Landlord 'currently overseas' and asks for bond by transfer
- Fake real estate agent profiles or duplicated photos from real listings
- Fake mortgage broker offering pre-approval for a fee
- Doctored settlement / bond emails (business email compromise on conveyancers)
If you have already paid
- Call your bank immediately and request a recall or freeze on the payment.
- Report to the police if you sent funds based on a fake identity.
- Save the listing, all messages, and the transfer record as evidence.
- Report the fake listing to the platform (Domain, realestate.com.au, Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree).
- Report to Scamwatch and ReportCyber.
Verify your real estate agent's licence (by state)
Tips before you sign or transfer money
- Inspect the property in person, or send a trusted person to inspect.
- Verify the agent's licence using the table above.
- Reverse image search the listing photos to check they were not copied from elsewhere.
- Contact the agency through its official phone number from its own website — not numbers in the listing.
- Pay the bond through the official state bond authority, not direct to a landlord.