How to check a place is real before you pay anything

This is the one that costs people the most money, and it is almost always the same shape: a convincing listing, a friendly conversation, and a request to send one to three months' advance by wallet or bank transfer to hold the room. The money and the account both disappear.

There is no version of this that is safe, however reasonable the reason sounds: another tenant is interested, the owner is out of the valley, the room will be gone by evening. Urgency is the tool. A genuine landlord will let you see the room.

If you cannot visit in person, a live video walkthrough is the minimum, and it should be live rather than recorded.

Stolen and years-old photographs are cheap and common. The test that defeats both is asking for a picture of something specific, taken now: the electricity meter, the stairwell, today's newspaper on the bed.

Someone with the room will send it in a few minutes. Someone without it will explain why they cannot.

It is worth doing even when everything else looks right, because it costs you one message.

On sahayogi, verification is a ladder rather than a sticker, and every listing shows which rung it is on. A phone badge means a code was sent to that number and entered back. The account is reachable, and nobody checked who owns the SIM. An email badge is the same idea, weaker still as identity. An ID badge means a person on our team looked at a citizenship certificate, passport, licence or national ID and accepted it; that is the strongest signal about who someone is. An organisation badge means a registered company's registration and tax documents were accepted, and it applies to the company rather than to each member of staff.

A listing only earns the Verified badge when its address also resolves to a real ward, so a checked lister at an address that does not exist still does not get it.

What no badge can tell you is how someone will behave. It records a check that happened in the past. A verified landlord can still be a difficult one, so use badges to narrow your risk, never to skip the steps above.

Moving early to a private chat nobody else can see is how a dispute becomes your word against theirs. If something goes wrong, a thread we can read is a thread we can act on.

Every listing carries a report button, and reports are read by our moderators. You are not identified to the person you reported, and repeated upheld reports cost a lister standing on the platform.

One open report per account is enough. A second does not make it move faster.