How to check in ten minutes that a confidential property is real

The answer, straight away

A confidential opportunity is checked with three questions, before you travel or sign anything. Who holds the relationship with the owner, whether a written instruction exists, and how many people are already presenting the same property.

If whoever offers it cannot answer the first, there is usually nothing concrete behind it.

The check that costs ten minutes

Run a reverse image search on a photograph. Search the street name. Search the description in quotation marks.

If the property has been published it almost always surfaces, along with the price history.

The signals that something is wrong

No document at all, not even an anonymous sheet.

The price changes between one message and the next.

You are asked to sign before being told even which municipality it is in.

You are asked for money, on any pretext, before seeing anything.

The photographs are traceable in thirty seconds because they come from an old listing.

What you are entitled to know before signing a confidentiality agreement

Such an agreement is normal and should be signed. Before it, though, you are entitled to the municipality, the type, the order of magnitude of the price, and who represents the owner.

If those four are withheld, you are not protecting a secret: you are signing blind.

Why it happens

In most cases there is no bad faith. There is a chain of people passing a rumour along, each hoping to catch a fee, each describing it in good faith as their own.

The result is the same: wasted time, and an owner who discovers they are on the market without having decided to be.

What a serious professional does instead

Asks the colleague for the instruction before bringing a client. Records the introduction in writing, with date and channel. Tells their own buyer what they know and what they do not.

Somebody who skips those three is not saving you time. They are costing you time later.