Over the past several years unauthorized access in to a home has gone from a not so often experienced concern to a situation where many agents are giving lockbox combinations out to just about anyone you can imagine. It is a small percentage of agents overall that are doing this but it is that small number that create issues for all of us. When we sign a listing contract with a seller, be it a bank or an owner we are contracting to allow a cooperative real estate brokerage access as well. That arrangement is between the listing brokerage and a buyer brokerage only. To break this down and make it simple, the contract does not include our buyer clients alone, a home inspector, a contractor, our personal assistants or anyone else for that matter.
Did you know that anyone entering a home other than a REALTOR is considered to be trespassing and in breach of the listing contract? Did you know that you or your office can be held liable if something happens while any of those individuals are in that home while not represented by you or the listing agent?
What would happen if you gave a lockbox combination to someone and around the same time the furnace, A/C unit and all the plumbing was stolen?
What happens if someone you gave the lockbox combination to doesn’t secure the home when leaving and the home gets robbed or worse?
What happens if you give a lockbox combination to your buyer client, they go in the home, fall down the stairs and are seriously injured or even die from injuries?
Under any of these circumstances the authorities could or will get involved. If the authorities get involved, don’t you think they are going to request a record of who was provided access to the home, especially if there is no sign of a break in? Of course there won’t be a record of the unauthorized visitor but they will go down the list and question everyone who was given access to the home. Another logical question will be for them to ask if you gave it to anyone else.
How can you be certain that anyone you give a lockbox combination is not going to give it to someone else they know? There are just too many liabilities involved in passing around a lockbox combination.
There are some simple ways for you and your office to reduce the problem immediately. Some offices already have this policy in place. Speaking for our office, we will only use one method of contact for confirming an appointment and giving out a lockbox code, through your main office phone. If we get transferred to your cell, home office line or your personal desk line through that main office line, we’re ok with that. We will never authorize anyone other than a REALTOR to be in the home. Our office would expect the same treatment when showing one of your listings. The second part of that policy is to never ever give a lockbox combination out to anyone. If an appraiser, inspector, buyer client or anyone else needs access to a home we need to be there to ensure our client’s property is protected.
Our profession is very much under attack. People are looking for all kinds of ways to discredit the usefulness of our profession. We need to do everything we can as representatives of our offices to uphold our professionalism, protect our clients, our offices and ourselves.