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Fraudsters Drain Lagos Renters' Savings With Fake Property Listings
Duplicate and fraudulent property images recycled across dozens of rental platforms are draining the savings of Lagosians already squeezed by the naira's collapse and rising rents.
How we reported this
Thousands of Lagos residents searching for affordable accommodation are losing money to a surge in duplicate property image fraud, where the same apartment photographs are cloned, reposted, and used to con prospective tenants out of deposits they will never recover. The scam is not new, but housing agents and tenant advocates say its scale has grown sharply since early 2025, tracking the naira's slide past ₦1,600 to the dollar and a rental market that has tightened to near-breaking point across the city's mid-income neighbourhoods.
The timing is punishing. Fuel subsidy removal has pushed transport costs higher, the cost of imported building materials has driven landlords to raise rents aggressively, and many families are competing for the same shrinking pool of units they can actually afford. Against that backdrop, losing ₦150,000 to ₦300,000, the typical upfront inspection fee and first-month deposit demanded by fraudulent listers, is not an inconvenience. For most households in Surulere or Gbagada, it is catastrophic.
How the Scam Works on the Ground
The mechanics are straightforward. Scammers scrape legitimate listing photographs from credible platforms, sometimes lifting images from verified agents on Property Pro or Nigeria Property Centre, and repost them under fabricated addresses with new contact numbers. Victims are directed to inspect properties in neighbourhoods like Yaba, Ojodu-Berger, or Isolo, shown a unit that bears no resemblance to the listing, and then pressured to pay quickly before another interested party "takes the apartment." By the time the fraud is apparent, the contact number is dead.
The Lagos State Consumer Protection Agency has registered a growing volume of complaints linked to online housing misrepresentation, though the agency has not published consolidated figures for 2026. Tenant rights group Shelter Watch Lagos, which operates an advice clinic out of Ikeja's Allen Avenue area, documented more than 400 cases of deposit loss linked to duplicate image listings between January and May of this year, according to materials circulated at a public awareness session the group held in June at the Tafawa Balewa Square precinct.
Reverse image search tools, freely available through Google Images and TinEye, can expose a fraudulent listing in under sixty seconds. But digital literacy remains uneven. A 2024 survey by the Lagos Digital Skills Initiative found that fewer than 30 percent of residents in densely populated local government areas like Alimosho and Kosofe had ever used a reverse image search function. That gap is exactly what fraudsters are exploiting.
What Residents Can Do Right Now
The practical defence is low-tech and free. Before paying any fee on a rental listing, screenshot the property photographs and run them through Google Images by selecting "Search by image" in the browser. If the same photos appear under different addresses, a flat listed as being in Lekki Phase 1 on one site also appearing under an Ajah address on another, that is a near-certain red flag. Shelter Watch Lagos also advises that no legitimate agent should request an inspection fee before an in-person visit is confirmed with a named caretaker or landlord.
Lagos State's Real Estate Regulatory Authority, known as LASRERA, which was established under the Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Authority Law of 2021, has the statutory power to sanction agents engaging in misrepresentation. Residents who lose money to duplicate-image fraud can file a formal complaint with LASRERA at its offices on Secretariat Road, Alausa, Ikeja. The process is free. Complaints can also be filed with the Consumer Protection Council's Lagos office on Customs Street on Lagos Island.
The broader fix requires platforms to build automated duplicate-detection into their listing pipelines, technology that exists and is already used by major property portals elsewhere. Several Nigerian platforms have indicated they are developing such filters, though none has set a public deadline. Until those systems are live, the ₦300,000 in a Yaba family's savings account remains one bad click away from disappearing entirely.