idealista Reviews 20

I spent a lot of time searching for decent apartments in Lisbon. But I was lucky enough to find one directly from the owner, with minimal documentation required, and a very reasonable price. The search platform itself is very convenient. So, I recommend it.

I was scammed by a fake rental agency called ING real estates that advertised on idealista. Idealista would take no responsibility for the fact that I had used their website. I lost my money and the company Arne still advertising the property for others to be scammed

Idealista presents itself as a marketing platform serving both B2B and B2C clients, allowing real estate agents to list their properties. However, in practice, it operates through a restrictive yearly subscription model. Their sales representatives often use misleading tactics and evasive communication to pressure agencies into signing contracts that are unfairly binding. I strongly advise approaching them with caution.

Both my experiences of finding rentals on Idealista.pt were really good. Coming from South Africa to Portugal end 2023, it was really nerve wrecking to find a contract compliant with visa requirements but we found an excellent property in Coimbra on Idealista.pt. Now, 2 years later we moved to Lisbon and again found the perfect property on Idealista with a verified and reliable agent. There are fraudsters on the app of course but it's easy to spot when the price is much lower than others in the area, photos don't match from one frame to the next or when a deposit is asked upfront without a viewing. Stick to the app safety recommendations.

Im at my absolute witsend with the amount of real estate agents that have called, messaged & turned up to my property! THIS SITE IS SHIT. It looks like i have had over 500 views on my property but they are all agents & timewasters. There should be a lockout function to stop agents from checking out & contacting private sellers!

I was the victim of a rental scam involving a fake apartment listing which seemed real because I had actually seen the apartment from the street. A little over $2000USD was transferred to two different Lithuanian bank accounts to the names of Robert Ferenc and Peter Sevria via WISE.

I believe my passport was also compromised. The scammers initially requested payment through a crypto site named MOONPAY. After trying to establish an account on Moonpay which scanned my passport and my face, I decided to cancel that account because it would not let me use my credit card and I was uncomfortable.

Within the communication with the scammers, I was provided a fake contract that had my passport number on it. I did not directly give the scammers my passport number. So they could've only gotten it through the setup with "MOONPAY" or IDEALISTA has had a security breach. I reported the fraud immediately after discovering the fraud on 6-13-25, I received an email two days later where Idealista provided no real support and showed no sense of responsibility. They suggested I "contact authorities" but did not suggest which authorities. Since I am in the U.S., the fraud was committed on a Portuguese website, and the money was sent to LIthuania, I have no idea what authorities to contact.

The platform allows fraudulent ads with little to no verification and slow response time to actually take down the fraudulent ad on 6-15-25. Very disappointing and unsafe for users!

⚠️ Be careful when renting through Idealista!
My daughter was the victim of a rental scam involving a fake apartment listing. The money was transferred to a Lithuanian bank account. We reported the fraud immediately, but Idealista provided no real support and showed no sense of responsibility. The platform allows fraudulent ads with little to no verification. Very disappointing and unsafe for users!

This company has scammer estate agents operating on it, who rip off people, people who do not live in Spain, people that want to buy a house. Be very aware of this, they pretend to be nice when in fact they are robbing you blind.

One particular estate agent in Spain, Murcia on this web site is ripping English, German etc. people off, demanding people pay 3% for buying a house, yes BUYING a house .

This estate agent is deceiving people, which is a crime and advertises on Idealista.

The estate agent scams people into signing forms then demands 3% payment for BUYING a house.

DO NOT SIGN ANY FORMS WITH ESTATE AGENTS IN SPAIN. READ EVERY WORD 3 TIMES. BE VERY AWARE.

This estate agent and idealist need to be exposed in the media, and taken to court for deception.

ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN ETC PEOPLE BEWARE

Apparently sells your data (received realty spam via SMS shortly after I submitted my phone number there).

Sends you e-mails about your listings/properties without identifying the listing/property (?!).

Otherwise good.

Free listings.

Absolute junk 90% non reply on chats (did a test). If you do get a reply it is “reservado”

I booked an apartment on 9/23/2023 for 9/24/2024 - 01/24/2024. They made me to pay monthly fee and deposit in the evening. On 9/24/2023, I could not go to the apartment I booked because I could not reach property owner. Idealist customer support does not help me to reach out the apartment owner and does not refund my money.

Good app. Unfortunately it's very easy for crooks to post adds on idealista. Houses or flats which are in fact not for rent or sale are used to lure people.
Most of the posts contain rooms or flats which are no longer available. Wasting a lot of our time.
A serious website for such properties would be better at checking if the post are actually serious offers or if the flats/rooms are in fact available.

A vast number of adds here refer to houses that are not available. They just work as decoys. When you contact most of real estate agents just reply "ohh that house is not available anymore. Please share details of what you are looking for and we will match it to our current offers". Anoying. And not honest. When adds are reported, Idealista does nothing.

Idealista.pt is teeming with time wasters, and scammers. People do not respect free loader sites that do not charge a fee. Freeloaders and time wasters love free for all sites and waste homeowners' time by asking to sell while they either don't have the funds or simply are playing unfair games. How many times the time wasters, even those from some serious professions and companies set up a visit with my property to look at it and make an offer, but never have arrived, thus wasting my time and even changing my plans for the day or for the week. One of the "buyers" even made a serious offer and when I I said I will agree to it but please pay a visit to my property and see it live and then we will make a good deal, he simply ignored me. Some one even scheduled a meeting at the airport or at my place or elsewhere, to have never showed up. Therefore if you want to list your property for free and have your time wasted, try idealista. Not that a FREE listing is always wrong. It is appreciated and if you have good morals, you can do it well with the people. And if you are a "weekend shopper" and if you play games with people's time you may even end up blocked indefinitely for all business deals as a bad review celebrity on the internet.

Therefore I suggest to Idealista, keep home listings free, to attract content, but charge a small fee to contact the home owner or especially to make an offer on their property with a non-refundable deposit, even if that is $1 or €1 because no scammer or a game player will use their Visa. And pay 50% of that fee to the homeowner with a free Idealista listing, for their wasted time, if the buyers backs off or simply plays "weekend shopper" games.

It's one of the best websites to look at properties in Portugal however as most websites the properties listed many times have already been sold, that's why the 3 stars.

So go straight into the local real estate websites it's more accurate than idealist and use idealist as the initial database for the search.

Great properties online. You can learn all the Portuguese market from your phone.