So right behind me is a bit of a crazy real estate title property scam that has gone down a local
friend living here told me all about it I came down to the building that's in question
actually got on the phone with the owner of the building and in today's Tip Thursday with me
Conor Clyne I'm going to be outlining a few tips for you to avoid real estate
property scams here in Ukraine a few of the most common ones and why in particular you
really need to focus on doing your due diligence before you invest in
your dream Odesa Black Sea villa maybe or you know that Kyiv penthouse поехаил!
So when my friend wrote me and sent me some photos from this building beside me we're in
the center of Odesa just the edge I would say of the historic center you have older buildings here
and there are all these signs up telling you that this building is not for sale and there's
actually a phone number to the owner of the building now it was in Russian and in English
so what she said is that many false titles to this building were sold and as a result people invested
money thinking they were buying this property when they didn't have actually the legal title to it
and that is something that you have to be really careful of when you're investing in real estate
in general but in particular in the crazy wild east of Europe here in Ukraine and especially
in Odesa Mama now if you go down you read those articles I've linked below it's not just here it's
actually even in lovely Lviv which tends to be less corrupt and more honest I would say
in my experience in the west of Ukraine also had a scandal there and if you read through the article
it's pretty similar to what has been alleged happened with this building in the center of
Odesa so the question for you is well how can you put yourself in the best position to avoid
these scams as a foreigner if it's catching out like literally tens of thousands of locals this
thing with the title obviously a couple of people but you know construction scams well we'll say
the construction have been fulfilled and actually getting your apartment inside a building being
also a problem at times in Kyiv the capital what can you do to make sure that you are in the best
position when you take advantage of the massive investment opportunities that there are here in
Ukraine it is extremely attractive in terms of price to invest here you know a comparable
property in say the center of Paris or London you know another big European capital or say seaside
town like Marseille in France might be a bit more comparable to Odesa here it's going to be multiple
times the cost so let's see what I recommend that you can do in order to minimize the risk
So not only do property scams affect the actual real estate market and purchasing property
they also are prevalent in the rental sector so if you're coming here to Ukraine and you're thinking
of renting something and maybe in the beginning before you buy a place or you're coming just for a
couple of months a year maybe up to three months splitting it up and you don't want to actually
purchase somewhere at the moment then you may be caught out by these rental scams now down below
again I'm going to drop a link to a Ukrainian show where they outline three scams but I think
first of all you have to be able to understand Ukrainian to be able to
watch the video but on top of that I think just really the third scam is the most
interesting one so I'm going to describe it briefly so basically what that happens
is the scammers they rent out an apartment on airbnb and they rent it for say two three days
and they then post that with all the photos all the nice photos they probably were taken
by the airbnb host they post them on a local Ukrainian long-term rental website so gonna
rent it out for you know a long contract at least a year maybe less than maybe six months
and they put it at a very attractive price get a lot of interest so maybe the apartment
that they were going to rent out should be US$800 a month but they're renting it there for US$500/600
looks undervalued they get huge interest immediately you know in the first few days
and they absolutely pack the appointments to see the apartment when people call up
they're like yeah apartment is available there's a lot of interest so you want to get
down here really quick to to get this bargain rental next they show the prospective renter
their documents which are fake they're actually fake title to the property plus maybe even
a fake Ukrainian passport so you don't know that they're not actually the owner of the building
and they request that you pay the first month the last month and maybe a third
month as some sort of deposit so you got three months rental so just say
for you know our simple on the back of an envelope calculation they do that for three months at US$500
that's US$1,500 that they take immediately from each victim they pack that you know with
20 appointments a day for half an hour for two days they get maybe 40 people in maybe they close
let's say 25% that's like close 10 people that will be US$15,000 in a two-day scam of course they
disappear so don't be caught out it's pretty hard one actually to protect yourself against because
verifying the documents is a little bit tricky and if the person has a fake title and a fake passport
and obviously they're using urgency the fact that it's a really amazing bargain for you to
get it's good to too good to be true if it's too good to be true then it probably isn't real
Now recently I had another video here on my channel, vodkast about a big romance scan but
it actually also involved a property scam here in Odesa in that video I'll link it down below
in description also up in a card the gentleman was from Britain or the investor we'll say from Britain
he later in the article it's a BBC exposé described himself a bit of an idiot for
doing it but on the real estate he basically sent money to a company that then bought
the property in someone else's well in that company's name and it became a complete
mess and of course he trusted someone he shouldn't have been trusting so
you need to get proper legal advice you need to get a notary who's going to check the title for
you in general not rely on someone who's trying to pitch it to you or whatnot that might seem you
know pretty obvious get proper legal advice but you need to know a good reliable notary here and
you know my assessment is that well they can't be a 100% certain in any case in a country
like Ukraine particularly in Odesa but they can get you maybe around something like 90%
of the way in terms of ensuring your property rights there are still at times legal issues so
it is a little bit of a minefield here but they're going to go and they're going to search for you
in all the government registers and cadasters you know for obviously the title documents
any mortgages any liens any outstanding debts that are connected with the property that might hinder
the transfer you know with any transaction that then you engage with later obviously then verify
the identity of the true owner of the property something that seems to have been at issue right here
at this building uh and that's what they're gonna do and then they're going to draw up a report for you
and then based on that assessment you can decide whether you want to go ahead with the transaction
or not now this is something that is becoming more and more pertinent for my clients who come to
Eastern Europe and in particular to Ukraine to live the tsar experience for themselves
over the longer periods so they may come here to move for three to 12 months a year and a lot
of them are tempted to invest in the real estate market here because of the extremely attractive
prices and if you're spending a lot of time here then you know a lot of them want to
live in the house or apartment that they then purchase or they want to actually rent it out as
you know as a property on airbnb or something else so they can buy several of those and they need
that kind of assistance so there are two ways in which I help my clients one is that they join my
program which is for a high level guys my high level consultation group for guys who want to live
here in Ukraine for three to twelve months a year it's called Slavic Utopia Secrets: Ukraine I will
put a link to that down below in the description to this video and that is on demand it's opened
up about once a year for the live enrollments watch out for that as well make sure that you're
on my free mailing list I'll put a link to that down below as well and then you sign up for that
and then later on you know I will send you an email when it opens up for live enrollment again
alternatively prospective clients they reach out to me and they reserve a consulting call and
we go through together exactly the strategy that they need normally for moving here
to Ukraine and obviously investing in property is part of that I'll put a link to that down below in
the description to this video as well and on that we dive deep into getting the right strategy for
you if you are planning to come here and buy real estate which normally means you're probably
planning to spend a good bit of time here in Ukraine more than the 90 days visa-free so
we go into that particular strategy for you so those two links are down below in the video
description so if you are considering coming here and thinking about real estate or relocating then
they are two great resources for you in any case maybe you're watching this video and you are not
planning to buy property here yourself and not planning to relocate but you have a friend who
is thinking about it then they should definitely be aware of these kind of scams and just be wary
extra wary if they are planning to come here and invest so obviously send them on this video cool
so I'm going to go out because I have a French friend over for the weekend here in Odesa Mama
it is pumping it is the middle of summer it's the last weekend in July when I'm filming this
and it's about 33 or 34 degrees celsius during the day absolutely sweltering but we do have the sea
breeze off the Black Sea if you had your Black Sea villa in Odesa overlooking that Black Sea
well you'll be able to enjoy this weather on your balcony so just picture that anyways in
the meantime I'm gonna go and bring him around and show him the stellar nightlife that we have here
in the summer so I'll see you in the next video до побачення до свидания from Odesa Mama Ukraine!