That “For-Sale-By-Owner” Sign may be an Invi­ta­tion to Com­plete Strangers.

If you con­sider sell­ing your home on your own, envi­sion this sce­nario: A friendly, well-spoken stranger wants to see your home. You invite her in. She com­pli­ments you on your home and asks to take some pho­tos so her hus­band, away on busi­ness, can see the pic­tures online. You are flat­tered and have no objec­tions. In fact, the prospec­tive buyer has just taken pic­tures of some your most valu­able pos­ses­sions. If you have a secu­rity sys­tem, she may have taken a pic­ture of the motion detec­tors and the secu­rity key pad in prepa­ra­tion for another, per­haps less well-intentioned visit.

Safety is always on the mind of a real estate pro­fes­sional. Alerts are posted on the Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice mem­ber web­site which reports sus­pi­cious activites. Thanks to these alerts, sev­eral sus­pects have been iden­ti­fied by police before more dam­age was done.

For Sale By Owner Sell­ers (FSBO) may be ignor­ing safety risks.

The FSBO seller likely lacks for­mal train­ing in per­sonal safety and is not expe­ri­enced in deal­ing with com­plete strangers. Seem­ingly inno­cent ques­tions by a “poten­tial buyer” may be designed to find out who is at home and when the home may stand empty. The con­tents of the home can be at risk and, worse, so can be loved-ones, includ­ing children.

What’s the best pro­tec­tion for the FSBO? First, don’t be “home alone” when the stranger comes call­ing. If that’s not pos­si­ble let some­one else know when you will be show­ing your home. Have the vis­i­tor sign a guest book and ask to see iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Equally impor­tant: don’t adver­tise the home as “vacant.” Other safety pre­cau­tions include remov­ing pre­scrip­tion drugs and valu­ables, such as jew­elry. Elim­i­nate evi­dence of per­sonal con­tacts, such as which school your chil­dren are attend­ing. Remove those pho­tos and notes from the refrig­er­a­tor door! Visit the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors web­site for more infor­ma­tion on safety for home sellers.

Safety is KEY

Licensed real estate agents and their clients ben­e­fit from the secu­rity sys­tem man­aged by the North­west Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice. The sys­tem records every entry and iden­ti­fies all agents who have entered a prop­erty. A crit­i­cal ele­ment of the sys­tem is the daily update of the agent’s access code on a GE Supra Dis­playKEY™ or sim­i­lar device which opens the lock­box via infrared sig­nal. If not updated, the code that allowed entrance into a home yes­ter­day will not work today. The lock­box, located near the entrance of a home, can be pro­grammed by the list­ing agent to suit the home owner’s schedule.

Every time the lock­box is unlocked and the house key(s) become avail­able the safety sys­tem records the agent’s iden­tity and time of entry. The list­ing agent can access the infor­ma­tion to con­firm this infor­ma­tion not only for safety rea­sons but to gain valu­able mar­ket­ing infor­ma­tion which allows imme­di­ate feed-back from all agents that have vis­ited the home for pre­view or with their clients.

The North­west Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice (NWMLS) Takes Safety Seriously.

The key­box safety sys­tem pro­tects real estate agents, home sell­ers and buy­ers. Through their list­ing agent sell­ers will know exactly who’s been to their home and when.

A $5,000 Fine

The NWMLS takes safety seri­ous. Using another agent’s Supra Dis­playKEY™ or Supra eKEY™ key to gain entry to a prop­erty is a vio­la­tion that car­ries a $5,000.00 fine.