Spotting a fake off-market: the six checks that take ten minutes

The phrase off-market sells, and that is exactly why it should be checked. A buyer living abroad has no way of knowing that a property presented as confidential has been sitting online for six months, and that ignorance is paid for when the price is discussed. This page gives the checklist, alongside our reference page on off-market access.

One: look for a prior listing

This is the most profitable check and nobody does it. Three cross-checks are enough, and they take ten minutes.

Text search first: the street, the exact floor area and the asking price, entered together in a search engine. Listings keep their trace for a long time, and aggregators republish. An unusual floor area, 82.4 square metres rather than 82, is an almost unique identifier.

Reverse image search next, on a distinctive photo: a fireplace, a view, a particular parquet floor. If the property has been listed, the same shots circulate, often cropped.

The property value declarations database last, on the address: it lists transfers for value taken from notarised deeds and says what sold, when, at what price. It will not say a listing exists, but it says whether the property changed hands recently, and at what price it entered the current seller’s estate.

A listing found does not disqualify the property. It disqualifies the scarcity argument, and it gives you a time on market, which is to say a lever.

Two: check the credentials of whoever is presenting

Presenting properties for a fee falls under the Act of 2 January 1970. The professional holds a licence bearing the property transactions wording, with a number, a validity period and the name of the chamber of commerce that issued it, backed by a financial guarantee and professional indemnity insurance.

An independent sales agent, often called a commercial agent, works under a licence holder’s attestation, without holding funds or signing mandates in their own name. The arrangement is regular and very widespread, but the guarantee you benefit from is the holder’s: it is their name, their licence number and their insurer you need to obtain. Those three items can be requested by email, and no answer is itself an answer.

Three: refuse any sum demanded in advance

Section 6 of the same Act is categorical: no sum, in any form whatsoever, before the transaction is actually concluded and recorded in a single written instrument containing the parties’ commitment. Neither an entry fee, nor a subscription, nor file charges for access to a selection.

That rule is a matter of public policy, and it is the best filter in existence on the off-market scene, precisely because the fraudulent arrangement lives on the deposit. A licensed professional knows it and will not propose it. The search fee, for its part, is due only on a completed acquisition, as our page on the search mandate sets out.

Four: insist on the documents, despite confidentiality

Confidentiality covers the circulation of information, never the seller’s obligations. A property sold without a listing remains subject to the technical survey file of article L271-4 of the Construction and Housing Code, to the co-ownership information of article L721-2, and the buyer keeps their ten days of withdrawal.

A refusal to produce the surveys or the general meeting minutes is therefore not a discretion clause: it is a signal. Check too that the clause you are asked to sign expressly carves out your notary, your banker and the professional representing you; without that carve-out, you are signing away the ability to have what is offered to you checked. We set out what such an undertaking covers, and what it cannot, in the confidentiality clause in a property purchase.

Five: ask why the property is off-market

The question is simple and the answer is instructive. An estate, a separation, a move abroad, an address too recognisable, a property withdrawn after failing to sell: each origin says something about the seller’s timetable and their room to move. A vague answer, or the claim that the seller does not wish to explain, leaves the buyer without the one piece of information off-market is supposed to give them in exchange for the absence of a listing.

Six: have it costed by a third party with no interest

With no public comparable on the property itself, two sources remain solid. The property value database, for the prices actually paid in the street and in the building. And the lender’s valuation, which will value the property before granting finance: a bank costing below the agreed price is the most useful warning a buyer can receive, and it comes before the deed is signed.

These checks are carried out during the ten days of withdrawal, the only moment in the path where you can still walk away at no cost, as our page on the deadlines from offer to deed recalls. They are completed by careful reading of the co-ownership documents, which the absence of a listing makes all the more decisive.

You have been offered a confidential property in France and want it checked before going further: the personal study offered by French Realty goes through the file with your dedicated contact.