How to spot a fake shortlet listing in Nigeria

Nearly everyone looking for a shortlet in Lagos or Abuja has a story about a place that turned out not to exist, or to exist in a state nothing like the photographs. The listings that waste your time have patterns, and once you know them they are hard to unsee.

The signs

• The photographs are too good, and too few. Three immaculate wide shots and nothing of the kitchen, the bathroom or the corridor usually means three shots are all anybody has.
• No photograph shows the building from outside. A real operator is proud of the compound. A reseller does not have a picture of it.
• The price sits well under everything nearby. Not slightly under, which is competition, but obviously under, which is bait.
• The address is vague in a way that cannot be accidental. "Lekki" is an area. "Off Admiralty Way" is a place.
• You are asked for an inspection fee before anyone will say where it is, and the fee goes to a personal account.
• There is urgency that did not come from you. Two other people are looking at it today, every day.
• The person answering cannot answer an operational question. Ask what time checkout is and whether the generator runs at night.

The two questions

Ask for a short video walkthrough taken today, with the front of the building in it. Almost nobody running a real place will refuse, because it takes two minutes and saves them a wasted viewing. Almost nobody reselling somebody else's photographs can produce one.

Then ask who you would call at eleven at night if the water stopped. A real operator answers immediately, because it is their phone. A middleman has to check.

About inspection fees

An inspection fee is not automatically a scam. Showing someone a property costs somebody an afternoon, and in a market where most viewings go nowhere it is a reasonable thing to ask for. What makes it a scam is where the money goes and what happens when the place is not as described.

The fee should be the renter's money, held by somebody neutral, and returned if the home is not what the listing said.

That is how it works on DenHunt where a listing offers one: held in escrow, refunded if the place is not as described, and never a commission on what you eventually pay. If you are asked to send an inspection fee straight to a personal account, you are not paying for an inspection. You are paying for a promise.