This Krakow Property Manager is Scamming Students, Refugees, and Expats
A warning for all foreign students in Kraków, Poland
In recent years Poland has become one of the most popular destinations in Europe for Erasmus students, with about 86,000 foreign students from 170 countries studying in Poland, according to a February report.
Of those students a large percentage of them study at the prestigious Jagellonian University in Central Krakow.
Unfortunately due to the war it is extremely difficult to find an apartment to rent in Krakow, especially for durations of less than 12 months. This leaves thousands of foreign students of Jagellonian in stress trying to find a place to live.
AirBnB is sometimes recommended as an alternative, but is not often possible since the average monthly rent in Krakow on AirBnB is 4,000zł or more for their own place, while renting a room in a shared apartment is not much cheaper.
otodom.pl and local real estate agents are also options, but they are also either too expensive or the minimum duration of stay (1 year) is too long.
This is usually when students stumble upon the website HousingAnywhere.com and our story of abuse, disrespect, and theft begins.
Housing Anywhere
If you go to the home page on Housing Anywhere showing apartments for rent in Krakow, or Cracow (different spelling) you will immediately notice that all of the current 129 listings are offered by just 3 names: Stefano, Gabriela, and Teresa.
What visitors of the site don’t know however, is that all 3 of these people are in fact just one single man, Stefano Trani, an Italian property manager.
Of the 129 listings:
Stefano has 29 listings in Krakow and 15 listed under Cracow
Under the name Gabriela he has 26 listings in Krakow, and 31 in Cracow
Under the name Teresa he has 11 listings in Krakow, and 17 in Cracow
This means that Stefano Trani has a complete monopoly of all listings on HousingAnywhere, leaving no other options for desperate renters.
When first looking at the website everything seems normal, the prices look great, and the conditions seem reasonable, but everything changes once you begin corresponding with Stefano himself.
Signing The Contract
Stefano conducts all of his business in central Krakow at a bar on Dietla and tells all potential renters to meet him there in order to sign the rental contract.
According to reports we have received from previous renters he is almost always late at least an hour or more, but states that if you leave before he arrives, your apartment will be given to someone else.
As he finally arrives he initially seems nice and makes small talk, talking about politics, education, Poland, and especially his apparent ability to speak and learn multiple languages very easily, but once he sits down to go over the contract his attitude changes.
When potential renters ask to see the apartment in person before signing the contract he tells them that it is not possible for a number of reasons, and he gets upset if you keep asking.
Here is a personal account of a meeting one Jagellonian student had with Stefano last year:
“He shouted in my face and raised his voice at me only because I didn't accept to sign the contract blindly even before I see the apartment and after he kept me waiting for him for over 6 hours, and eventually I didn't take the place and he didn't return 2800 zloty that I paid in advance through HousingAnywhere” - Anonymous student
The real reason why Stefano does not allow the apartments to be viewed before signing is because most of the apartments look nothing like the photos and are extremely dirty, as pointed out by renters we interviewed.
A Ukrainian refugee told us that the apartment she received from Stefano this summer had urine stains on the couch and bed, cockroaches in the bathroom, and just was overall filthy. She said that likely no one had lived there for over a year.
Experiences of Violence, Theft, Racism and Disrespect
This Jagellonian student from 2 years ago dealt with Stefano and claimed that Stefano uninvitedly came into the apartment and started to argue with him and even tried to throw the student’s clothes from the window.
“One time he came to the room and started to fight with me. He wanted to throw my stuff from the window, so I called the Police to avoid the fighting. But when Police came he deceived them, because I don’t speak Polish, also he said some racist things to the Police that I’m a ‘Muslim, Arabic guy’. The Police left without doing anything.” - Anonymous student
A separate Erasmus student from France told us that Stefano always spoke extremely disrespectfully to him and even asked the student if he wanted to do drugs in his office:
“And he would ask me if I want to take drugs in his office. I saw him during his paranoia crisis, like I’ve never seen that before it’s just strange and scary. Actually I was a bit traumatized by this experience”. - French Erasmus student
Other than the immense disrespect to the students, Stefano intentionally disrespected one of the Ukrainian refugees that met with him.
In their first meeting together, Stefano told the 23 year old Ukrainian that “Ukraine deserves this war, because of everything they’ve done in the past”.
When we asked her why she continued with the agreement, she told us that she simply had no other options.
Stealing Security Deposits
Apparently Stefano Trani has been illegally not returning security deposits for multiple years now, due to reasons that he makes up on the spot so that he can keep the money.
In one situation this year, Stefano rented an apartment to an Expat with a minimum period of 6 months, from July 1st to December 31st.
However, Stefano failed to mention that he had gotten a letter of termination with four months notice period from the apartment owner in early June, effectively cutting his control of the apartment at the end of October. Knowing this, he still offered the contract for the flat to the Expat extending until the end of December.
Stefano never cleared this up with the Expat, where they were supposed to live November onwards. As far as the Expat knows, Stefano has also skipped payments to the apartment owner, thus giving the owner the right to terminate the contract between Stefano and the owner immediately.
Stefano has not returned the renter's deposit and there is an ongoing police investigation surrounding the case.
But this is not the only time Stefano didn’t return a deposit.
He did not return the security deposit of any of the 3 students quoted above, and in fact has not returned it to any of the other renters we interviewed for this article.
Strange Contract Terms and Extra Costs
The most suspicious part of Stefano’s contract terms include an agreement that you will not leave any comments or reviews online about your experience with him, as highlighted in one of his contracts below:
This is likely due to the fact that almost all reviews about dealing with him have been entirely negative, with most people warning others to stay away.
In order to try and avoid these reviews Stefano has registered his business under multiple different names, including:
Fideste
LokalNest
Localife
Below are some of the reviews and comments from previous renters over the past 2 years:
A New Start in Krakow
For many of these students and expats looking for an apartment is one of the first experiences they have in Krakow.
They come to Krakow to enjoy all of the wonderful things about it and when they deal with such a man as Stefano Trani it immediately ruins the magic of the city.
To see an excel sheet from an inside source that shows all of Stefano’s current properties as well as the first names of the renters involved in a contract with him, please send an email to kriptovalutanews@gmail.com
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All reports were gathered in person in Kraków, Poland or from direct correspondences with previous renters.
This man is a thief, the same situation happened with me.
I have a recorded video for me and him when he tried to steal us 😂😂😂😂
And in my experience, Erasmusu sided with Stefano when, after paying a booking fee, he rised the monthly rent because "he forgot to do so before"