Selling Your Property: Safety Comes First

Do you know how to stay safe when selling a property?
There are many parts of the process to selling a property. Pricing, watching out for fraud, writing the contracts, and more. One that is often sadly overlooked is personal safety. That is safety for you as the owner, property managers, belongings, prospective buyers, and tenants.
The statistics show that the real estate industry isn’t quite as safe as many believe. Homicides and violent assaults are actually far more common causes of real estate worker fatalities than auto accidents. Agents, owners, and property managers are frequently the target of pre-meditated and opportunistic crimes. This often happens at property showings and open houses.
How do you stay safe when showing your properties to prospective buyers and even tenants?

Screen Prospects Carefully
Experienced real estate agents very carefully screen anyone they consider showing properties too. They’ll make sure they are truly qualified, verify their identity, and often request to hold their driver’s license or other ID at the office while showing property. Anyone showing up at an open house should also be required to register. One of the great additions to lockbox technology over the last few years is that it records exactly who shows your property. The association even forbids pin codes for electronic lockboxes from being shared among colleagues and spouses.

Protecting Privacy & Personal Property
Aside from personal safety there is also the protection of ID and valuables in a property. In addition to preventing theft owners need to be alert to the risk of stolen passwords, identities, and other sensitive information. These items and any devices should be locked away during showings.

Buddy System
Agents are repeatedly warned not to show properties alone, rush out to show property on last minute requests, to meet without connecting at the office first, or to go out without others knowing where they are. Always be sure someone else knows where you are, where you are going, and who with. There are now a variety of apps to help real estate professionals with this.
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Tenants & Pets
Tenants need to be alert to showings, and perhaps even coordinated with not to be there. You don’t want any altercations on your property which could lead to injury or lawsuits. The same goes with pets, and unfortunately landlords don’t always know if there are pets in the unit, unless they are on top of inspections, and preview units. Imagine letting a prospective buyer into a unit which has a dangerous animal loose!
Stay safe out there.

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