idealista Reviews 

Spent 4 months searching for an apartment in a large area through idealista. All the responses made were scams, where they send fake links for payment or want cash to be handed without even showing the apartment. All turned out to be scams. Idealista seem to not take nearly enough responsibility that the site primarily has turned in to a source of income for criminals. Its quite offensive.

Too many outdated listings, unanswered enquiries, and questionable ads waste people’s time. Idealista is only an advertising portal, while availability depends on agents and owners—so it should do far more to verify listings and remove inactive ads quickly.
A better alternative would show verified availability dates, advertiser response rates, stronger identity checks, and real accountability for agencies. Idealista does allow suspicious ads to be reported, but users should not have to do so much detective work just to find a genuine long-term rental.

Why don't Idealista respond to enquiries about properties, I have found a property that I want to view 😫

Estoy sinceramente cansada de perder el tiempo buscando pisos anunciados como **alquiler de larga duración**, para después hablar con el propietario o la agencia y descubrir que, en realidad, solo están disponibles hasta el verano.

¿Por qué no ser honestos desde el principio y anunciar claramente que se trata de un **alquiler de temporada**? Las personas que buscamos una vivienda para larga duración no deberíamos perder tiempo enviando mensajes, haciendo solicitudes y organizando visitas para descubrir después que tenemos que dejar el piso a los pocos meses.

En España existe una diferencia legal importante entre un verdadero alquiler de temporada y un alquiler destinado a ser la vivienda habitual. El contrato debería reflejar la verdadera finalidad del alquiler.

Por favor, sean transparentes en los anuncios. Si el piso solo está disponible hasta junio o julio porque quieren recuperarlo para el verano, **díganlo claramente en el anuncio desde el principio**. Así se evitaría perder el tiempo y se ahorraría mucha frustración a todo el mundo.

I’m honestly tired of wasting time looking at apartments advertised as long-term rentals, only to speak to the landlord or agency and then be told, “It’s only available until the summer.”

Why not be honest from the beginning and clearly advertise it as a **seasonal/temporary rental**? People looking for a long-term home shouldn’t have to spend time applying, messaging and arranging viewings just to discover later that they have to leave after a few months.

In Spain, there is an important legal distinction between a genuine temporary/seasonal rental and a rental that is actually being used as someone’s habitual home. The contract should reflect the real purpose of the tenancy.

Please be transparent in your listings. If the apartment is only available until June or July because you want it back for summer, **say that clearly in the advertisement from the start**. It would save everyone a lot of wasted time and frustration.

Thought this would be a trusted site. How wrong was I. A person likely scamming off the back of Gran Canaria Property S L tried to scam, pix looked impressive,
So I asked for a walk round in person visit, all agreed, then came the excuses as to why I couldn’t
Instead attached a video taken two weeks ago apparently which showed a dated apartment, looking nothing like the modern pix
Rookie error.

Reported it to Idealista but judging by reviews I’m not expecting a response

My experience with idealista in Spain was very frustrating, spent a lot of time searching for an apartment, but most listings were handled by agencies, and many of them required personal and financial information at a very early stage, before there was any real progress. When I found listings from private landlords, some of them looked suspicious or felt like possible scams, especially when they asked for payments or fees before a proper visit or contract. To be fair, the platform seems to react quite quickly to reports, which is positive.

Still, I did not manage to find a suitable apartment through this platform. The process felt complicated, stressful and not very transparent, especially for a foreigner looking for housing in Spain

Scam - dont trust Idealista, they literally changed the amount for my listing.

Not sure, why this app is still legal.

Oh and they also "publish" your item without you consent.

Update:

When you call customer service, they tell you that you are the only one with this problem - ask you to record a video and show them that is does not work

Borderline scammers, will not return money, they taking a side of rentor even if they're engaging in suspicious activity

THEY KEEP SENDING ME WHAT THEY WANT, AND NEVER WHAT I WANT, AND THEIR FILTER DOES NOT WORK AT ALL, I HAD TO DELETE THEM AS THEY NEVER FIXED THE PROBLEM AT ALL . . .

Should be -5. A total waste of time. Almost all of the listings are fake or fraudulent. If they aren't either, then they are a bunch of egotistical idiots who never reply. This company needs to step up. They are doing more harm than good. Time to kick off all the 'agencies' that put advertising on that don't exist, just to get your attention. Those are the ones who never reply and the biggest time wasters. Looking for a home is one of the most stressful and this app does nothing, but add to the situation. Psyhetic

Lack of functionality to review the products and services they advertise. Like on Amazon. Why they will not implement this easy functionality? Because the scammers would change the portal and Idealista would loose revenue. In my opinion it is a portal of scammers.

Support ignores you and the service is full of scammers. Way too expensive as well.

We paid 1350 euro online as deposit for at apartment in Rome. The apartment was not available and we wanted to have the deposit refunded. This was not possible unless we made a frozen deposit on twice the amount. After doing this website was closed down and we were not able to get in contact with provider again. DO NOT USE IDEALISTA AND DO NOT PAY ANYTHING ONLINE - IT IS ALL A SCAM !!!!!

Idealista in Spain should be thought of as mostly scams until proven otherwise. They outwardly refuse to remove scam postings, reported with proofs via their own platform chat. Be careful, never trust idealista, assume it's a scam. You are on your own. They would rather have you lose thousands and end up on the street, for the pennies idealista gets from their scammy clients.
In my experience, after having contacted Idealista about a rental posted by a company (on behalf of owner), Idealista refused to take down the listing where the company was asking the potential tenant to pay 1 month of fees (this is illegal in Spain, where only the landlord should pay this). The proof was in the chat. Idealista did not remove the listing, and told me they found nothing wrong with it. After experiencing this more than 1 time, I stopped using Idealista altogether. Agents who illegally ask for 1 month of rent are in fact blocking the few rentals that remain in Spain, and Idealista is enabling this.

I have advertised a property for sale and I get responses from prospective buyers. No problem there. Also, it is very good for searching properties to buy.

Horrible Scammers they kept my deposit for Bs reasons

The Idealista website itself is easy to use and many properties to choose from. I have not been in contact with any customer service. This is mainly a rewiev to save others from trusting bad property owners listing property on this site.

Unfortunately, as stated in many reviews, many of the owners of apartments listed on Idealista Portugal, not the least in areas around Oeiras and Carcavelos, are in different ways scam and not trustworthy. These are popular areas, the apartments are clearly overpriced and owners do what they can to use trusting foreigners. I was lead to believe this owner and realestate woman was trustworthy and they were in cooperation with a lawyers office convinsing me this was legit and professional. I signed a 17 pages long contract from my homecountry. Of course formulated mainly for the owners protection, not mine as a tennant. With several issues not being as they promised with the apartment, and now after many horrible months of rental period, the owner refuse to confirm the apartment is ok before I leave the country, and therefore it is of great concern about my very large deposit.

My absolut rekomendations to others are to;
1 Choose a rental website where that company keeps the deposit, not the owner himself.
2 Whatever they say about fixed term rentals, NEVER sign a fixed term contract without any kind of notice period so you can get out if you need to, and also still have the written aggreement to get your deposit back.
3 There are plenty of rentals to choose from. DO NOT feel stressed to sign a contract from your homecountry!
4 Never trust any verbal aggreements, everything you wish to be aggreed on, demand it in writing. If they don't agree to that, take it as a warning and don't sign anything with them.
5 If you are going to live in Portugal during the winter period, NEVER sign a contract to an apartment without heating. And during the summer period, if you don't need an AC, at least make sure there is not humidity damages in the apartment, you may get sick.

They allowed my house to be listed there via different real estate agencies without confirming their legitimacy or legal grounds to do so.

Imagine having your own house being sold without knowing and Idealista refusing to remove the ads because they are profiting with the real estate agency packages they buy.

I am moving with legal action against Idealista. Never use this.

Idealista’s phone verification system is badly designed, misleading, and borderline deceptive. The platform asks you to make an international call, does not clearly warn that certain countries are blocked, and then simply rejects the verification after you have already paid for the call. Croatia is apparently not supported, yet this is not disclosed before the user is instructed to dial a Spanish number. The result is wasted time and wasted money due to a poorly implemented, country-restricted verification process. For a major international property portal, this is amateurish and unacceptable. If you advertise “free listings” but force users into paid international calls that silently fail due to regional restrictions, that is not a technical glitch — it is bad design and bad transparency.

Terrible company. Far too many reps adding multiple entries for the same properties [Spain]. There appears to be no apparent rules or regulations and anyone can add a property. There are properties for sale with AI representations as main pictures and many adverts missing important/relevant information e.g. legal access disputes! The most annoying part is many properties for sale have either no pictures of the outside [front of the property], poor quality images, images of ornaments, or cropped images showing only partial rooms!!! When you message to enquire you either get a standard response that doesn't answer your question or they advise to view the property - that is if they actually reply.
With buyers looking to invest huge amounts of their life savings in a property this company falls way short of providing the basic level of service expected of a professional estate agent/realtor.
If you find a property on here - my advice is to locate the actual seller or realtor who has the contract to sell the property, as the sellers on here appear to be nothing more than 'middle-men'.