As more and more Chinese people are purchasing overseas properties, an increasing number of opportunistic realtors are swindling them in the process. Recently, a woman surnamed Yang bought a house in Houston, Texas through a U.S. property agent. She went through with the transaction, only to discover that the property she owned was worth less than $20,000, though she bought it for $53,000.

Yang purchased a 95.41-square-meter condo in a community called Oakwood Gardens in June 2013. After several years, she was agitated to discover that Premier Capital Limited, the agency that represented Oakwood Gardens, had been hiding the truth from Yang and other - mainly Chinese - property owners in the community.

Yang invested in the condo in the hope that money earned from renting it out could go toward other investments. She also wanted to save it as a place to spend the holidays after her retirement. Yang did successfully rent it out, also through the agency, and rent payments arrived regularly for the first two years. However, the payments stopped coming in July 2015. At that time, Yang also received notice that if she didn’t pay a property management fee of $7,300 before Nov. 1, 2016, the property would be legally foreclosed.

Yang's friend, surnamed Shen, had also bought properties from this agency, so Yang asked Shen to visit her house in May. Shen found that the most of the community's tenants are either convicts or low-income earners. Shen also learned from the local property management company that only 20 percent of the condos in the community were cleared for rental, but the agency sold 74 percent of them in a clear violation of the regulation.

Eventually, Yang’s house was appraised at about $10,000. Considering the big gap between how much Yang actually paid and the market price, there is little question of the source of Yang's two years of rent checks. And almost without question, the extra money was pocketed by Premier Capital Limited.