Prevalence of Home Rental Scams Using Online Platforms as Conduit

7 Ms Yeo Wan Ling asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) whether the number of home rental scams using online platforms has increased in the past 12 months; and (b) whether the Ministry will consider introducing further safeguards to protect homeowners whose homes have been used in such scams from liabilities.

The Minister of State for Home Affairs (Ms Sun Xueling) (for the Minister for Home Affairs): Mdm Deputy Speaker, the number of home rental scams perpetuated via online platforms, such as e-commerce platforms and social media platforms, increased from 192 cases in 2021, to 979 cases in 2022.

These cases generally involved scammers impersonating property agents and listing home rentals on online platforms. Victims who come across these listings would contact the scammers via the phone numbers on the listings. The scammers would impersonate legitimate property agents by sending the victims pictures of a legitimate property agent's business card, as well as pictures or videos of the home units to be leased. There were also cases where the scammers posed as landlords.

In both these variants, the scammers would inform the victims that they are required to place a deposit in order to secure a viewing or to rent the unit. After the victims transfer the monies to the scammers, the scammers would become uncontactable.

The Member asked about safeguards to protect the real home owners, whose homes have been used in such scams, from liabilities. Such home owners will not be penalised unless they are involved in perpetrating the scams.

The Police have been working with online platforms to remove suspicious accounts and advertisements, as well as with the Council for Estate Agencies, or CEA, to include advisories on rental scams on CEA's social media channels.

The best defence is a vigilant and discerning public. We also encourage the public to verify the identity of the persons with whom they are dealing with. If the person claims to be a property agent, please verify their identity via the CEA Public Register. They can also contact the person's property agency before entering into any dealings with them. If a search of the advertised phone number does not lead to the property agent's profile page, this could be an indication that the listing is a scam, even if the property agent's name or registration number has been verified against the CEA Public Register.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Ms Yeo Wan Ling.

Ms Yeo Wan Ling (Pasir Ris-Punggol): I thank the Minister of State for the answer. Given that there has been an uptick of home rental scams using online platforms as the conduit, will the Ministry be taking ownership and enforcement measures against this online host?

One Punggol resident who saw me at a Meet-the-People session told me that his home had been used, not once, but multiple times in home rental scams and he had multiple victims turn up at his doorstep over a period of a few months with their belongings ready to move in. Thankfully, the victims understood that my resident had nothing to do with the scam.

However, for home owners whose homes and identities had inadvertently been used in these rental scams, what protections would be afforded to them from the Government, should civil suits and Police investigations be launched against them?

Ms Sun Xueling: I thank the Member for the supplementary questions. I will answer the second point first. As I have mentioned in my main reply, as long as the home owner is not involved in perpetuating the scam, the home owner will not be penalised. On the point about working with the social media platforms, indeed, we have been actively following up with online platforms to work with them to take down fake listings.

In May 2022, the Ministry of Home Affairs had launched the e-commerce marketplace transactions safety ratings, which rates major e-commerce marketplaces on the extent to which they have adopted the identified safety measures. This would include user verification, user authentication, secured payment options, so on and so forth.

In the particular case of property rental scams, we will urge the public to go to formal online platforms whose main business is in property rentals such as Property Guru and other marketplaces, and not to go to other online platforms, such as Facebook or Carousell, whose not main business is not in the property rental space.

As I mentioned, the most important thing is to verify that the so-called estate agent is a bona fide estate agent. You can do so by looking at the phone number that is being advertised, check it against the CEA public register. It is a simple search function: just put in the phone number and if that phone number is a legitimate one, it will then lead you to the details of the estate agent who is registered with CEA. If the phone number that you put into this search function under CEA does not give you the property agent's name or leads to no search results, then it means that this so-called property agent is a fake and that you are looking at a fake listing.