I thought I was going to have to break in…
February 2, 2008 by Monika McGillicuddy
Filed under General R.E. Information, REALTOR Safety
This is a true story.
A listing was being shown by a co-broke. This was an un-accompanied showing…meaning No Listing Agent was present. As the co-broke was finishing the showing, a man pulled up and said “Thank God, I locked myself out of the house and I did not know how I was going to get back in. Boy am I glad I caught you… I thought I was going to have to break in!”
What would you do in this case? This house has a for sale sign on it and agents are coming and going. There is a visual tour on line, so a good thief can easily case the place and know what the inside is like. A good thief can also have a full crew with a moving van ready and the house would have been cleaned out in minutes! This day and age the neighbors would have thought nothing of a seeing a moving van.
The Co-broke….She let him in and left.
wow! I would have never thought about that, but it most be because there are not many lockbox showings here. I would tell him “Oh you wouldn’t have waited long because your agent said she’d be here in 5 minutes” – I would not have verified him for fear of him mugging me. But I would have called the agent from the car.
Out of curiosity – what would be the proper protocol?
In this case, he was not the owner of the property and the issue is still on going.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty…
I would tell him that since I was not the LA that I could not let anyone in without calling the LA and asking permission. Would he mind waiting a moment while I made the call?
If he gave me a hard time…I would probably run real fast and call the police.
It simply never occured to the agent that he could be other than what he said he was. She let him in and didn’t call the LA.
I don’t know what I would have done. I work in a very safe place and this happened in my market…so now I’m much more aware.
Monika – when I commented on your other post about this, I didn’ realize he was not the owner of that property. I don’t remember reading that part. That’s scary….
I still think, if that had been me instead of the other agent, I would likely have done just as she did as it would never occur to me that he would be anyone other than who he said. Certainly, having read both your posts on this, I will hopefully do something differently if something like that should ever happen to me.
We do very few unaccompanied showings here, so it probably never will, but who knows…. Thanks for making me think about this.
This is interesting because we have mostly unaccompanied showings as you call them. Today I am showing six homes and no listing agent will b present. I’ve had homeowners come home while I was there but they always have keys. I think I would do what you suggested, call the listing agent or ask for ID (as long as Im not the only one there) – when I do showings I always have tax records with me that show the owner name so a driver’s lic would verify? If I was previewing it I’d just lock it up and say sorry you have to use your keys? Thanks for bringing up a good topic I would have never thought about Moni
Ann…Thanks I saw your comment. yes, it was not the home owner who the agent let in. Sadly. What a mess the whole thing is.
Carole…Unaccompanied showings make it easier for this to happen. Unlike you, I don’t often have the tax records with me when I show and our MLS allows us the keep the sellers name off the listing. So really all I would know about the owners name is “owner of record” . This turned into a real mess.
OMG, can’t believe the agent let someone in without confirming it was OK. We also have “unaccompanied” showings, but like Carole, I’ve usually got the Auditor’s printout of the owner.
Elaine,
Up here we usually don’t have that available at the time of showings. Is that provided by the listing agents prior to the showing? Or do you have to go get at it at the Town Hall?
Moni, we can pull up co auditior records on line, plus, here in NE Ohio, our MLS has a system called REALIST which is tied into it and when you are on a MLS listing on line you can click for tax record. Makes it easy
Some of our towns are on-line but most are not so for us we would need to visit the town hall to get the assessment card or tax card as we call it. Not very practical to do for a showing. Sometimes the LA will include it in the listing package but more times than not there is no listing package available.