What landlords can do about rising fraud and rent arrears

If you manage rental property anywhere in Europe, you have probably noticed the market shifting. Applications just feel less trustworthy, and arrears are harder to recover than ever. Evictions seem to stretch on forever. The occasional headache has become a persistent one that seems to keep coming back.

It's not just a feeling, because rental fraud really is rising everywhere, according to global data trends.

Escalating Trends

In the United States, a landmark 2024 survey by the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) found that 93.3% of housing providers had experienced fraud within the previous twelve months. Over 70% reported an increase in fraudulent applications, with the average yearly rise sitting at roughly 40%. Nearly a quarter of all eviction filings over the last three years could be traced back to fraudulent applications and failure to pay rent.

Over in Europe, Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) reported a 25% increase in rental fraud cases between 2020 and 2023, with case numbers in the thousands each year. In the United Kingdom, social housing arrears have risen 55% since 2019, with local authorities now owed an average of £2.86 million each in unpaid rent according to the 2025 Rental Arrears Index. The total arrears across all 229 UK councils could reach £655 million.

Every landlord who depends on rental income to cover mortgages, maintenance, and operating costs should be concerned about these global trends.

The Rise of the Average Fraudster

It's no secret that the 2020s has seen the dizzying rise of artificial intelligence. In the past, document forgery required a certain level of skill. A fraudulent pay stub or a manipulated bank statement would often contain tell-tale signs, like a misaligned font or a subtle pixel artifact. Unfortunately, that era is ending.

AI has lowered the barrier to creating convincing fake documents for everyone. AI-generated documents feature perfect logos and convincing data, all designed to fool the human eye.

According to Snappt's 2026 Fraud Report, one in eight rental (12%) applications contain some kind of document fraud. In Veriff's 2025 Identity Fraud Report, global fraud attempts grew by 21% every year, with deepfake attacks now behind one in every twenty (5%) identity verification failures.

Fraudsters are generating entirely fake documents, building fabricated identities from scratch, and in some cases using real-time face-swapping technology to pass video checks. For a landlord reviewing applications by hand, these forgeries can go unnoticed, especially with how convincing AI has become in recent years.

The True Cost of a Bad Tenant

Fraudulent tenants do more financial damage than just unpaid rent. The total cost of a single bad tenancy can be genuinely devastating, and can even push out a small landlord without the cash to tough it out.

Consider how the numbers add up. In Germany, a landlord can initiate termination proceedings once arrears exceed two months' rent. However, the process that follows is far from quick. German eviction proceedings often stretch across many months of court dates and legal filings. Throughout that entire timeline, the landlord continues to absorb the loss of rental income. Add court fees, legal representation, bailiff costs, and potential property damage into the mix, and a single default can easily spiral into tens of thousands of euros.

Evictions in Berlin rose by 22.7% in 2023, climbing from 1,931 to 2,369 cases, with rent arrears as the primary driver. In a market where vacancy rates sit below 1% and rents rose by 8.5% in late 2024, every month of lost income during an eviction represents a growing financial hit.

Switzerland has also seen a rise in evictions linked to unpaid rent. In Lausanne, eviction requests climbed from 103 in 2020 to 152 in 2024, a 50% increase. Geneva saw 239 evictions in 2024 alone.

The UK tells a similar story. Ministry of Justice data shows that the median timeline from a landlord's possession claim to actual repossession now extends to nearly 28 weeks. In the private rental sector, arrears averaged £1,861 per case in Q2 2025, while the average cash deposit of £1,316 falls well short of covering that gap.

The NMHC found that the average US housing provider wrote off nearly $4.2 million in bad debt over twelve months, with roughly a quarter attributed to fraud.

A Vicious Cycle

One of ironies of the current rental market is that the same housing shortage protecting landlords against vacancies also fuels the conditions that make fraud more likely. When supply is low, competition among applicants intensifies. The added pressure incentivises dishonest behaviour among applicants. To many, becoming a fraudster is the better choice when the alternative is not having a home at all.

Germany built only about 240,000 new dwellings in 2024, which is below the 400,000 annual target. Austria's rental supply dropped by over 13% in 2024 while rents climbed nearly 5%. Switzerland's national vacancy rate sits at just 1.08%, with Geneva at 0.46%. In markets this tight, a single listing can attract dozens of applicants. Over on social media, videos of many dozens of prospective tenants lining up across an entire block to see a single property have surfaced.

Tight supply drives competition. Competition increases fraud. Fraud leads to defaults and evictions. Evictions create temporary vacancies that further tighten supply. Throughout this vicious cycle, the landlord bears the financial burden every step of the way.

Why Manual Screening No Longer Works

In 2025, a report found that more than 40% of small landlords worldwide still depend on manual tools for property management. It's an aging approach that has become dangerous to property managers as fraud trends rise throughout the years. When documents are reviewed by hand, there is no reliable mechanism to detect an AI-generated pay stub or a manipulated credit report. The old indications of forgery no longer apply to documents created by generative AI.

Manual screening also introduces legal risk. In Germany and Austria, anti-discrimination protections prohibit making decisions based on protected characteristics. Landlords are people at the end of the day, and everyone can make mistakes or be biased without even knowing it.

Research from the US found that firms that used manual reviews produced inconsistent decisions in nearly 20% of cases, which dropped to 5% under a standardised digital system.

Protect Yourself

Effective tenant screening is about making sure you can protect yourself even before issues occur. Today, platforms like Syncrent offer a one-stop solution to all your needs. It integrates everything into a single platform. Syncrent offers robust identity verification that can detect forged or synthetic documents, especially AI-generated ones. It has advanced risk analysis tools that evaluate multiple data points make sure property managers are fully informed before making their decision. It creates and manages contracts and payments for you.

It's fully compliant with European data privacy laws from the ground up, so you don't need to worry about messy data handling. When every step of the process is in one place, there's less room for errors.

Act Before It's Too Late

The concerning pattern of rising rental fraud is consistent across every market we have examined. The landlords and property managers who will weather this storm are the ones who can prevent problems before they occur.

A single fraudulent tenant can cost more than an entire year of platform fees in lost income and legal proceedings. While the rental market isn't getting any easier, the tools to navigate it safely are better than they have ever been. If a single investment can prevent you from falling into a financial trap, then why not take it now?