So me and the thinly veiled are looking for a new place to live as our current lease runs out at the end of June and it's been a nightmare for various reasons.
There are lots of places available at this time of year as students are moving out. I found 11 places on a private ads site that looked suitable in terms of budget, location, accommodation etc. One place looked like the listing price was just plain wrong (far too cheap) and a couple looked a bit too good to be true but I thought I may as well contact them all anyway.
So the first 2 to respond are the 'a bit too good to be true' places and both apparently situations where the owners are living abroad. If genuine I can see the logic of the price being relatively low - they just want to cover their main costs and have people they can trust living in the place.

But, I don't know, they just seem too cheap. One place for example is 600 euros a month and is 'all inclusive'. If this is really all inclusive that would be about 300 euros of bills accounted for. 600 euros excluding bills for this place would still be very good value - I've seen very similar looking places for over 1,000 euros and although there are plenty of similar sized apartments for 450 to 600 euros they are generally not in as nice a condition or good a location.

I guess as long as we don't hand over any cash we are safe but I was just wondering if anyone knew if completely bogus apartment listings was a common scam? Any obvious ways we can do some checks? Is it reasonable to ask the landlord to provide a reference?