Sellers, Lock Your Doors; Buyers, Please Stop Trespassing
I can't tell you how many times this comes up. It boggles my mind!!
And, it brings to mind a story I read in the newspaper a few years ago where a woman and her daughter cut through (trespassed) a man's yard and caught sight of him naked while he was making coffee in his own kitchen. The woman brought charges against the man for indecent exposure. I thought "OMG, what's the world coming to, isn't there an expectation for privacy in one's own home?"
Just because there's a For Sale sign and a sentrilock or supra box on a house doesn't mean that you, as a Realtor, has the right to enter the home without an appointment. The house is someone's home and you MUST make an appointment to enter, if you do not, you are trespassing and are subject to the laws of the land. With the advent of Centralized Showing Service and Showing Time it's often very easy to make an appointment or get permission to enter a home that is listed for sale.
When showing a home please remember to turn off the lights and lock all the doors when you leave too. I have had to go out to my listings and read the lockbox to find out who didn't lock the doors and also who didn't put the key back the last time they showed. It's just a courtesy.
Sellers, Lock Your Doors; Buyers Please Stop Trespassing. I know I have written about this before, but it bears repeating.
I received a phone call the other day from a Seller who told me that there were people in her back yard. This particular Seller had 2 small children who had been playing in the yard earlier. She had a right to be concerned and also had a right to call the police. The couple left while we were on the phone.
Another phone call that came from a male Seller on a Sunday morning went something like this:
“Suzie, this may be too much information for you but I don’t sleep with much on. I got up this morning and walked into my kitchen to make some coffee. I was standing at the sink putting water in the coffee pot when a man put his face up to the window to try to see inside. He was as surprised as I was!”
And yet another call came from an agent who was frantically trying to get an appointment for some out of town buyers who called her from the dock of an occupied lake front property. The owners were inside watching television.
Past buyer clients have said to me, “we don’t need to see that house, we went by one day and the back door was unlocked, so we took a look around. We wouldn’t have gone in if someone lived there.” The problem is, you don’t know. The other problem is, it’s trespassing. And yet another issue is, even if it is a bank owned home, you don’t know if someone else is in there who shouldn’t be and may be more desperate than you for a place to live! It’s wrong, it’s dangerous and it’s illegal. Stop it!
If you don’t own the property, you have no right to be on the property. It doesn’t matter that there are signs in the windows, or you don’t want to bother the listing agent or your buyer’s agent. It’s not yours. We learned that in kindergarten. We don’t get to stop applying it because we are talking about houses instead of crayons.
A word of caution to Sellers – lock your doors, but Buyers, please stop trespassing.
Suzie Townley
KWR Diamond Partners, Inc
913-208-2873
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