REALTOR® Safety is More Than Just Us
Guest blogger Emmary “Emmy” Simpson, serves on the Professional & Business Development Committee
Every September, we start seeing more and more social media posts about how to safely show homes – it is REALTOR® Safety Month after all. But your plans should include buyer and seller safety as well.
Your plans needs to evolve and grow. They need to encompass everything from that first meeting, to how you progress through the transaction, to your love of bragging on social media. Safety isn’t something to only be used in the beginning of a deal, it needs to continue through to the end.
In the safety class I teach, we spend time on common sense areas – asking new buyers to meet us at the office, asking for ID, how we show homes and how we do open houses, but I also go over keeping clients safe.
For sellers, these things include:
- Never opening a door to anyone that doesn’t have an appointment
- Utilizing the “Call Before Showing code” on lockboxes, and
- Placing a “Not For Rent” sign in the front window due to all of the online scams we’ve seen
For buyers, it’s talking about:
- Wire scams
- Social media posts — this actually applies to everyone!
- Questioning weird emails by calling a REALTOR®
- And never, ever just knocking on a door with a sign in the yard
Beyond common sense safety tips, REALTORS® need to:
- Establish relationships with other agents and ask them to tag along on a first-time appointment
- Stop by open houses (on that rare weekend you don’t have a client) just to ‘check in’ with the host
- Be mindful of social media posts about clients — whether on personal, group or business pages
There is a lot of “noise” in the world today that can distract you from keeping safety at the top of your day-to-day checklist. We see stories all over the Internet about dangerous situations that REALTORS® find themselves in. We can, and must do better.
Stay Safe out there!
Find more REALTOR® Safety information at www.agentsafetyalert.com and use
the National Association of REALTORS® Homeowner Safety & Security Toolkit.
After 20 years in radio broadcasting, Emmary “Emmy” Simpson hung up her headphones and pursued her real estate license. She and husband Kent make up the Simpson Team at Long Realty in Tucson.