Understanding a listing

A listing opens with its photographs, then the title, the area and city, the price, and the rows that matter: rooms, guests, amenities, light and water, the gate, the agent, the reviews and the map.

Tap any photograph to open the viewer and go through the set full screen. Everything below is written by the agent and checked before the listing goes live.

• Verified. The agent behind this listing passed identity verification and the listing itself was reviewed before publishing. It is the strongest thing a listing can say about itself here.
• Instant. You can book without waiting for the agent to accept. Without it, the agent has to accept your request first.

Every listing on Vallo was listed on Vallo, by a real person who applied, was verified and was approved. Nothing is imported from an outside feed, nothing is scraped, and no third party fills the catalogue for us.

That is the ground the rest of the trust stands on. The verified badge can mean something because there is a checked person behind every listing: somebody to message, somebody to inspect the property with, and somebody accountable if it is not as described.

If you only want listings that have passed those checks, use the Verified only filter in search.

Power is two separate facts, because one number cannot hold both. Band A with no backup and rarely on with a generator running all day are opposite places, and a single tick box would flatten them into the same claim.

What the grid gives this address. One of: Band A, twenty hours a day or more. Mostly on, light most of the day with gaps. Patchy, on and off through the day. Rarely on, a few hours at best. No grid supply, nothing from the distribution company.

What the agent does about it. No backup, a generator, an inverter, solar, or a generator and inverter together. Where there is a backup, the agent states how many hours a day it actually runs, which is the number that decides whether the place is livable in a bad week.

The row also says whether the unit is on a prepaid meter, which decides whether you can be asked to buy units.

Unanswered is shown as unanswered. An agent who has not said whether there is light does not get silence read as good news. Where the answer is missing, the listing says so and points you at the one control that gets a real answer: message the agent.

One closed list, because four spellings of borehole cannot be filtered on:

• Treated mains. Running water from the mains.
• Borehole. The property has its own.
• Pumped storage. A tank filled and pumped through.
• Tanker delivery. Water is bought in and stored.
• No running water. Water is fetched.

These are genuinely different daily experiences, and everybody here knows which one they are looking at.

Estate name, gate directions, the security post number and any access code are the difference between arriving and standing outside at eleven at night. They are also exactly the details that must never be public.

So they are not on the listing. A published listing is readable by the whole internet, and a gate code stored on it would be a gate code published. They live in their own place with their own rule: the agent can see them, an administrator can see them, and a guest holding a confirmed booking on that listing can see them. Nobody else, ever.

Before you book, the page tells you the estate has a gate and that the details arrive when the booking is confirmed. The moment it is confirmed, the real details appear on the same listing and on your booking. A listing with no gate does not show the block at all.

An annual tenancy is not lodging, so there is no Reserve button on one. The path is message the agent, inspect the property, then pay, and every step stays inside the platform where it can be protected.

The rent market has its own front door at /rent. Never hand over cash at an inspection, and never pay into an account number somebody sends you. Read Trust and safety before you go and look at anything.