For Sale By Owner Safety

Rory, very good points.  I especially like to point out that many people wandering into open houses are not qualified to buy that home.

Nice post Rory...I've used a similar tactic myself and it worked also.

Great post!  Let us know if he list with you. :-)

As part of my Presentation, I keep old News Paper Articles and have them laminated.  One piece I have talks about FSBO and how dangerous it can be having strangers in your home.  Since this information comes from a 3rd party it has even more strength when I speak on this subject.

Kathy Hyatt, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Thanks Rory - I will be sure to include the safety issue and speak about qualified buyers in my fisbo presentation.

I've always said the same thing. You are letting strangers in your home to do whatever they want. We would NEVER let this happen at anytime but selling a house, people open the door wide!

I am an ex-realtor that sold homes in this area for 15 years and now operates a FSBO company in Durham Region, Ontario. We are on the east side of Toronto. I would like to make a comment or two about your post.

During my career I was amazed by the lack of security in the real estate business. Agents holding open houses would allow lookers to walk through the home without confirming who they were. Rory, you state that they could be staking out the home for a future burglary. And that could happen. I know some agents would have a piece of paper for potential buyers to add their name and phone number. But is this enough? And did they get the correct name and phone number? Should agents be asking for photo identification?

The Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) is the largest board in Canada and has over 26,000 members. On 2 occasions during my career (1988-2003) they tried to introduce an electronic lock box system. This was a small device that each agent would carry and could be inserted into the lock box. Once a month they had to call a number and were given a new pass code. When they entered a property, their information plus date and time was recorded. This was great for listing agents as they had a record of everyone entering the property. The cost of the lock boxes was no more that the mechanical type.

The cost of this service would cost each agent $100 a year. On both occasions the agents refused to use it. I loved it. I did not have to remember a code or try to find the piece of paper I wrote it on. My arguement was that it was much more secure than the old system. The mechanical boxes came from the manufacturer set at 'SET'. This was a prompt for the agent to reset the code. A lot were not. I remember others came set at 'SPI'. A lot were never changed. Some agents would use their initials. Any crook knowing this could possibly get into the house by trying 'SET', then 'SPI' or look at the sign on the lawn.

If you walked into a real estate office, you could hear a secretary calling a buyer agents office to confirm a showing. They would say "and the lock box code for 123 Main Street is 'BOB'". Anyone within earshot now knew how to get into the house. Then the agent showing the property would write the code on a piece of paper which was in most cases a copy of the listing. I used these senarios as an arguement to keep the electronic system.

Now maybe the system has changed. Since I have not been in the business for 5 years, maybe a secure system has been implemented. I loved the electronic system and was very disappointed when it did not fly on the 2 occassions. I found it saved a lot of time. An office confirming a showing only had to say 'use your electronic passkey'. Using the mechanical system, I was given the wrong code many times.

I have heard it said, whether it is accurate or not, that 2% of the agents make 98% of the money. If so, or the numbers are close, you can see that the majority of agents decided not to provide proper security to their clients.

Time for a little story. Every Wednesday there was a meeting for agents. We would meet at a local hall at 9am to hear about new listings from the past week. The listing agent would then hold an open house for agents for the next hour or two. At one meeting was an ex-realtor. She had been in the business for a number of years but recently left. But no one knew. At the meeting, some agents would provide a lock box code rather than have the house open. A short time later her name was in paper where she was charged with theft. Again, another situation where security had gone wrong.

Based on what I saw when in the real estate business, agents need to practice what they preach about security.

Have a good day and sell, sell, sell.