Morocco’s Unregulated Rental Market: Consumers Demand Action Against ’Street Broker’ Scams

"The residential apartment rental market in Morocco remains unstructured and often follows the law of the jungle. It also experiences a great disorder, mainly manifested by the dominance of street brokers in this market, particularly in areas with strong tourist appeal, who take advantage of the summer season to impose exorbitant prices on consumers," said Bouazza Kharrati, president of the Moroccan Federation of Consumer Rights, to Hespress. According to him, the disorder in this sector also extends to the digital space, where, on the occasion of the arrival of the summer holidays, misleading offers proliferate remarkably on social networks, promoting attractive images of carefully furnished apartments to attract customers and push them to book.

But once on site, "they discover that the reserved apartment has no relation to the published photos, which constitutes an act of fraud," explained Kharrati, stressing "the need for the intervention of the competent authorities to regulate this field and put an end to the disorder that prevails there." He recommends the creation of accredited mediation agencies overseeing the activity of these brokers and subjecting them to legal supervision and responsibility. According to him, this would contribute to their integration into the formal economy on the one hand, and to the protection of consumer rights on the other.

"Tourist accommodation through the rental of residential apartments continues to experience a certain form of anarchy that worsens during the summer period, despite a government orientation aimed at regulating and supervising it," added Abdelkrim Chafii, president of the Regional Federation of Consumer Rights of the Souss-Massa region. According to him, digital platforms see, during this period, the proliferation of fraudulent and misleading offers presenting apartments with high specifications to encourage the customer to pay a deposit, while in most cases the reserved apartment is not the one presented on these platforms.

These fraudulent practices have a negative impact on tax revenues. "Many apartment owners who rent out their properties do not pay the obligations and taxes due to the State, related to the rental activity, whether daily or monthly, which leads to a decrease in tax revenues and deprives the public treasury of significant financial resources that could have been used to develop public services," Chafii pointed out.

He urged consumers to file complaints with the competent authorities against these scammers. He also noted that "the problems experienced by this sector are not limited to the damages suffered by the consumer or the State, but also involve a security risk, as the lack of registration by these brokers, as well as by some owners, of tenant information and the non-verification of their identities using official documents can be exploited by some fugitives or terrorist cells to hide in these apartments, which highlights the urgent need to accelerate the regulation of this unstructured sector."