The YouGov survey commissioned by Shelter suggested up to 2m people may have been exploited by rogue operators in the private UK rental sector.
Shelter collated a list of the top five rip offs, including let and run, where tenants break into properties, show prospective tenants around and take deposits disappearing shortly afterwards and extortion, where hidden costs are suddenly charged for a tenancy inspection putting tenants into arrears.
Others include asking a tenant to wire a good faith payment to a friend or relative to show they can afford the property, then through the proof of receipt, the fraudster steals the funds using the transfer details.
Landlords have also asked for the names of guarantors instead of a deposit, making those names liable for costly and unnecessary “repair” bills. Unprotected deposits are still a problem despite being a legal requirement, with many still withholding cash for no reason, said Shelter.
Other results from the survey show that a fifth (20%) of tenants still have not heard about the Tenancy Deposit Protection Scheme introduced by Government in April 2007 and one in four landlords.
Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: “It is simply not acceptable that people who just trying to secure the basic human need of a roof over their head should end up ripped off.”
“With more and more people set to become private tenants in the future we believe this is a widespread problem that will create thousands more victims unless we urgently do something about it,” said Robb.
Shelter urged the industry to expose rogue landlords through its new website.
Robb said: “We want to expose as many rogue operators and con artists as possible and would urge anyone who has fallen victim to this kind of scam to get in touch with us immediately so we can offer advice and ensure their experience becomes part of our investigation.”
David Salusbury, chairman, National Landlords Association (NLA), said: “Given that there are over 3.4 million households in the private-rented sector, tenancies go wrong in a relatively small number of cases. Some of the scams mentioned by Shelter have nothing to do with landlords but are the acts of professional criminals – we roundly condemn such practices.”
