Its a sad world when people are happy to just rip others off.
Just think of the large number of people who buy a house through some of these people only to find out afterwards that the price they bought the house for was inflated especially for them!!!
this practice of over charging buyers is terrible, during the last few months i have come across several advertisers that regularly have property advertised at a much higher price than the house actually is, sometimes several thousands more. the worse case i have seen is from a well known advertiser that had a house at 40,000 euros more than the local Estate agencies.

I also met up with a couple of these people when i was viewing properties, no office or business address, they just meet up with you in cafe or garage or someplace, show you the property, normally they dont even have copies of the paperwork, they dont know about the property, some have never even been in the house and have only taken pictures from the outside.
they then try to sell you a house that they have just added 10,000 or 20,000 euros to the asking price. if they are lucky (and they must be sometime) they will get a buyer interested, they then approach the owner and say they will handle the sale, the owner gets the original price, the advertiser gets a huge payment from the unsuspecting buyer!

the other thing that i have come across a lot was some Portuguese estate agents use these people and thier websites to attract buyers, but because they charge the agencies 2% or 3 % the agents will just increase the price to cover the extra costs, the seller gets the same amount, but the commission goes up. in one particular case an agency added 10,000 euros to every single house they put on an advertisers web site. even the cheaper properties got the 10,000 treatment in effect almost doubling the price of a cheap house!

If anyone is looking to buy in Portugal, do your homework, check out and only use registered INCI estate agents, dont forget just because they say they are legal doesnt mean they are, ask to see thier license and AMI number etc.

It turns out that INCI the governing body is trying to stamp out these illlegal agents and websites, some of them have had 20,000 euro fines from the tax people because they are not legal and registered but it does seem that a lot of them are still willing to break the law and take the chance, well i suppose if the fine is 20,000 euros thats just the commission from one house sale!! and they are probably selling one a month so its worth it to keep doing it.

The more people that learn about these people the better, If your buying in Portugal look around and find the good agents, there are some real gems out there. luckilly i have gone through the rubbish to find the good guys.