For tenants
How to avoid rental scams in Nairobi
House hunting is one of the few times an ordinary person hands a stranger a month's salary in cash. The scams that work do so because a good unit at a good price creates urgency, and urgency is the thing being sold. None of the precautions below require you to be suspicious of anybody. They just remove the situations a scam needs.
Never send money before you have stood inside the unit
This single habit defeats most of it. A deposit to hold a unit you have not seen, a fee to be sent the location, a payment to jump a queue of other interested tenants: all of these ask you to pay before you can verify anything exists.
If you are told the unit will be gone by evening, let it be gone. Stock in every estate in this city turns over weekly.
Be careful with a price well under the area
Rent tracks the estate closely. A unit priced far below everything comparable near it is either not what the photographs show, not available, or carries costs that have not been mentioned. Look at four or five listings in the same area first so you know what normal looks like there.
Check who you are dealing with
- Ask for the name of the agency and an office you could walk into.
- Call the office line rather than only the number that contacted you.
- Ask the caretaker on site who manages the property. They always know.
- Be wary if the person showing the unit cannot say who owns it.
Get a receipt for everything, including the viewing fee
Any payment should produce a receipt naming who received it, for what, and against which unit. If a viewing fee is credited against your deposit later, that promise needs to be in writing at the time you pay it, not remembered afterwards.
Read the agreement before you pay the deposit
Take the agreement away and read it somewhere you are not being watched. You are looking for what the rent covers, what the service charge covers, when rent is due, what happens if it is late, and the conditions on getting your deposit back. If any of those are missing, ask for them in writing before money moves.
Photograph the unit on the day you move in
Every wall, the floors, the fittings, the meter readings. It takes five minutes and it is the only evidence that settles a deposit dispute about damage a year later.
Every listing on this site publishes its full move-in cost, so none of the asking above is needed on ours.