Note: I hope this is the right sub to ask such a question, if not I'd be grateful if someone could suggest a better-fitting sub.
So my gf and I are looking into buying a house in Germany. As it turns out, the current owner is from France, now living in the UK. She ordered an "international agency" to handle the whole business of making appointments to visit the property, payment and so on.
Today, I received an email stating that one of the next steps would be to deposit 1.7% of the total buying price ( roughly 10k €) in one of the agencies accounts as a sign that we are serious about buying. If we decided not to buy later on, we'd be reimbursed by the same amount.
As a newbie in property aquisition: Is this standard operating procedure or just a more elaborate scam to score 10k from us? How can we make sure that we indeed get our money back?
I was sent an ID card scan of the current owner, but that might of course also be a fake - we haven't seen anyone in person as of now.
Submitted October 12, 2017 at 08:21AM by barghest89 http://ift.tt/2xBaGd3
