{"id":599675,"date":"2026-08-21T00:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T00:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/599675\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T00:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T00:38:10","slug":"cork-students-losing-deposits-on-housing-that-doesnt-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/599675\/","title":{"rendered":"Cork students losing deposits on housing that doesn\u2019t exist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"contextmenu internal_Body1st\">Cork students have lost deposits on properties that did not exist, a representative of housing charity Threshold has said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">National housing charity Threshold has partnered with the Irish Council for International Students (ICOS) and Aontas na Mac L\u00e9inn in \u00c9irinn (Aml\u00e9) for a Scamwatch campaign to raise awareness of rental scams and help students protect themselves when searching for\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.echolive.ie\/corknews\/arid-41897890.html\">accommodation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The annual campaign launches as thousands of students begin searching for accommodation ahead of the new academic year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Limited availability, rising costs, and the pressure to secure accommodation quickly can leave students more vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated scams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Jerry Killingbeck, housing advisor at Threshold\u2019s Cork office, said: \u201cI deal with a lot of calls from people who have fallen victim to rental scams, and international students can be particularly vulnerable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cMany are trying to secure accommodation from overseas and have little opportunity to view a property or establish whether the person advertising it is genuine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\n            \u201cI\u2019ve spoken to students who have lost deposits on properties that didn\u2019t exist, as well as others who arrived to find accommodation in a completely different condition to what was advertised.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">As part of the campaign, Threshold has developed a dedicated Scamwatch toolkit to help support student unions, accommodation officers and others who are working directly with student renters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu caption\">Student accommodation crisis<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Daniel Walsh, president at Aml\u00e9 said: \u201cOver the coming weeks, thousands of first-year students and their families will begin their search for accommodation and will be immediately confronted with the depth of the student accommodation crisis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\n            \u201cThis environment can create a sense of urgency, pushing students to enter more precarious rental agreements, and leaving them vulnerable to scammers.\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Orla Lehane, acting executive director at ICOS, added that international students can be particularly vulnerable as they often begin searching before arriving in Ireland so can\u2019t view properties in person, and are often unfamiliar with the rental market here.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said: \u201cWe would strongly encourage students not to transfer money simply because they are afraid of losing an accommodation offer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cTake the time to verify who you are dealing with, ask questions and seek advice if anything seems unclear or suspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cork students have lost deposits on properties that did not exist, a representative of housing charity Threshold has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,79,61,60,24555],"class_list":["post-599675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-student-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}