Everybody will have a different opinion, but as far as I'm concerned, the realtor who showed the house is responsible for making sure everything is closed and locked up before they leave.

This is why I insisted my realtor be there for every showing. That and the fact that most realtors are showing a house blind and have no clue what the special features are.

I'm sorry if I don't understand, but your realtor wasn't there for a showing that you say you insisted she be at?

My realtor wasn't at the showing. I don't insist my realtor attend showings. Buyers around here don't like it when the seller's realtor is at showings. The buyer's realtor failed to lock the balcony door.

Sorry, I thought you responded that you insisted your realtor be there, but it was someone else.

I hope your house stays safe during the process of selling.

You have homeowner's insurance for a reason. You can have all the signs you want, but trying to affix ''responsibility'' to anyone for damage isn't going to stick without actual proof. It would also leave a bad taste in the real estate community to make accusations.

Put an auto closer on your exterior doors if this really bothers you.

Wow, that really is telling about the real estate community. Are you saying the the OP would be blackballed if she held the responsible party responsible?

So basically, they can get away with causing damage through neglect (or otherwise), because homeowners should be in fear of a negative reaction?

How utterly unprofessional.

Perhaps I'm inferring incorrectly. I hope that I am.

Accusations without actual proof always leave a bad taste. And could be considered libel. Actual proof is visually seeing who did what. Video evidence. Then you quietly talk with the responsible party.

The agent who last showed the property would be responsible. Our lockboxes record when, who and at what time each person unlocks the box to gt a key. No guesswork here.

Sophie Wheeler

Accusations without actual proof always leave a bad taste. And could be considered libel. Actual proof is visually seeing who did what. Video evidence. Then you quietly talk with the responsible party.

******

I guess I'm just not understanding why a professional, entrusted with what is probably a person's most cherished possession, would not take responsibility for their carelessness.

If in fact the realtor knows they left a house unsecured, I find it appalling that they would come back with "prove it".

If they are responsible, they should own up to it, not rock back on their heels with threats of libel and slander, for goodness sake.

I guess my good opinion of realtors is a bit high. What your describing is plain shady.

(a) Prove that someone opened the door and left it unlatched - and who it was (prospective buyer, realtor etc....)

(b) Prove that you had not been the one to have opened that door and didn't get it completely latched/locked etc when you closed it

Good luck trying to prove either.

As an agent showing a house, I am ultimately responsible for making sure the house is secure. That means checking all doors, even if I didn't go out that one. Just in case another agent showed it earlier and left it unlocked, I am not going to risk being blamed.

elpaso1

As an agent showing a house, I am ultimately responsible for making sure the house is secure. That means checking all doors, even if I didn't go out that one. Just in case another agent showed it earlier and left it unlocked, I am not going to risk being blamed.

******

It is an enormous responsibility, and I appreciate your fastidious approach ;-)

"Have realtors become so lazy and nonchalant they don't bother to make sure the home is secure when they leave? And then get defensive when something happens? "

I can ensure you that most do not act this way and do treat people's home with due respect.

Since we cant control for everything, even though we try, our listing agreements have a statement that we are not responsible for the acts of other people.

My concern here would be that someone would tip over the rail & crash onto the patio or into the pool.

If it were my house I would put a lock on that balcony door;

people can look outside from the bedroom.

If someone were injured, you'd be on their attorney's list of people to sue.

sorry.

How hard is it to make a walk through the house after the showing to ensure all doors are closed and locked?

Sandy-

Apparently it is beyond the competence of some realtors. When our house was being shown, we found on different occasions: doors left unlocked, a window left open, a filthy sink that someone had washed their hands in and not cleaned up, a faucet left running, and prescription drugs stolen from the medicine cabinet. I think some realtors let potential buyers wander without always being chaperoned, and then don't feel a need to do a quick walk-through to check that the house is left in the same condition as when they entered.

I don't know if this applies, but there is a certain type of door handle - expensive, upscale fancy door handle - that I've found difficult for the uninitiated to figure out. One of our listings had these and I had to actually type out instructions how to latch and lock the doors and tape it up on the glass. If nothing else, you can put up a sign that reminds agents to double-check the door.

I've gone so far in my lockup check that I inadvertently locked the owner out of her house - I had locked the door to the garage and it turned out that's how she got into her house without a key to the front door. By the time I got a call from the listing agent, I was already 45 minutes away heading out of town. And I knew there was no sliding door or window unlocked either! I think they got the poor woman and her toddlers back into her house before dark.

Kudzu9 - shame on your listing agent for not properly warning you to remove all valuables - including Rx drugs - and small electronics now - anything that might have your passwords on it (tablets!!!) and don't have a list of your passwords "hidden" under your keyboard - even now you need to lock up financial records

c9pilot-
Good tips...thanks. How unfortunate that we need to remember to protect ourselves in so many ways when selling a house.

When we had our house for sale "someone" broke the handle of the french doors off one of the bedrooms and just left it like that with no word to our realtor (or us) that it was broken so we went several days before we realized that the handle was hanging there, door unlocked and totally unsecured, and the real kicker was when they wrote up an offer on the house they included that we fix the handle in their offer. LOL

@mydreamhomeideas

How did you respond to their offer?

Well, I guess it was your fault for not leaving written instructions on how to unlock it and they had no choice except to break it to see whether the door worked!

Is there a separate disclosure document for things that get broken by others while the house is being viewed? :-).

tcufrog - we fixed the door handle/lock the minute we found it broke so we just made mention of the fact that it wasn't broken before their showing but was after but it was fixed now so not to worry. We did sell to those people. It was pretty stressful but worked out fine in the end.

kudzu9, I don't know of a separate document;

what I was referring to is a paragraph in the listing agreement.

If something gets broken, I would hope the person who broke it would apologize & offer to pay for it, but:

1) I wouldn't count on it &

2) how the heck does someone *break* a door knob/handle??? My first thought would be that it had something wrong with it already.

About those "lazy Realtors" who don't keep up with home viewers:

Sometimes it can't be done.

Sometimes one spouse goes one direction ("ah! a garage!), other spouse goes another ("where's bathroom?") , & kids go another.

& sometimes a couple will say they have a lender letter when actually they don't.

Years ago, a couple in the Dallas area looked at houses & stole valuables from several.

They were evidently very convincing, articulate, asking the right questions (schools, since they had a gifted child etc), & they had several stories, so that once the one about the guy who worked for Yahoo got around, they were saying they were engineers or government employees, the child became an elderly mother, the reason for moving was job relocation rather than whatever it was at the last house.

They'd spend a *long time* at each house, since the longer they stay, the more the comfortable the Realtor or homeowner feels with them & the better the opportunity to escape from the sight of the Realtor or homeowner.

They took cash & jewelry & small valuables, & after a successful theft, they'd change Realtors so that they were long gone by the time the theft was discovered.

When items were missed & police were called & showing agent handed over the contact info, it turned out that the car was a rental, the name was a fake, & the phone # was a throwaway.

This was several years back, & I hope it doesn't happen to anyone else, but *you have to be careful*.

When you put your house on the market, you know strangers will be inside the house (& even your kids or the neighbor's kids can take advantage of the situation & steal drugs or weapons & blame the Realtor).

You need to lock valuables away out of sight or get them out of the house.

Lock up your prescriptions & weapons or keep them in your purse or your car.

Lock jewelry out of sight.

Don't put cash or wedding rings in that saucer on the bathroom counter where you usually put them.

Don't leave your mail (bills, bank statements, things with account numbers) on the countertop or desk top.

When you return home after a showing, check doors & windows;

thieves sometimes wander through the house unlocking windows so they can come back later.

We do try to pre-qualify, & we do try to keep up with everybody, but bad things can happen, & it's better to be cautious/pro-active than to argue after the fact about how someone else should have protected you.

ps:

I just remembered a seller from about a hundred years ago who put a hidden nanny cam in his house;

he lived about 2 blocks from me, & after every showing, he'd call me to see the tape.

Some of the episodes were funny ("see that guy, Sylvia? His wife thinks they're going to buy a house, but they're not; he's just looking at houses to get her off his back"), but it was really a great idea.

If I put my house on the market, I might try a hidden nanny cam.

sylvia-

Please don't take me seriously...I was being ironic. :-)

I'd agree that the door knob was probably pretty close to breaking, so it wasn't really the viewers fault that it happened to break when they touched it. They should have mentioned it, but maybe they suspected that you already knew about it and just set it back in place so that it looked unbroken until they actually tried to use it.

So requesting that it gets fixed properly doesn't seem that strange to me.

Sylvia, be careful about the hidden nanny cam. There are a lot of issues about secretly filming someone. Even though it's your house, you invited them in. You can't film someone when they have an valid reason to believe that they have privacy.

Sure ... maybe nobody will ever discover that you are doing it. But that doesn't make it right.

I would post a notice-lots of signs-that tell people that I am using security cameras.

In this day and age, it can be argued that if you are inside any building other than your own, you could be on camera.

Some of the posters here seem to be missing the distinction between accountability and responsibility. Regardless of who was "accountable" for failing to properly secure your property after the showing (the individual who left the door open), the realtor is ultimately responsible as the party entrusted to show your home. There's no need for covert nanny cam operations to identify the culprit beyond a reasonable doubt. You secured your house before leaving. It was unsecured when you returned. More care should be taken by those showing your home to potential buyers not only to protect your home, but to protect themselves against potential repercussions of their carelessness as well.

kudzu,

oh.

never mind.

Your post was very enjoyable, sylvia.

girouxgh, the nanny cam was for catching thieves, not for spying on agents and whether or not they locked doors.

The nanny cam was for spying. Period.

I don't know of any technology that only records if someone is stealing as opposed just walking around the room and looking at things.

The guy Sylvia mentioned would watch all of the footage and listen to the conversations and then invite others over to laugh at the people. That is not ethical and may be illegal especially since it involves a business transaction.

He could very well have heard couples discussing how they just had to have the house no matter what. That information could help him a lot when it came to the negotiation.

He wasn't just looking at the footage if he noticed that something was stolen.

I always tell my buyer clients to be circumspect when we're in someone's house, because there may be a nanny/security cam.

& I have to disagree about sellers looking at footage "if he noticed that something was stolen".

We have so much stuff in our houses that we might not "notice" something, say a piece of family jewelry, was missing until we went to get it 3 months later to wear it to a party.

One thing I've suggested to sellers is flash cards or notes, both to call attention to details & to caution people. Write things on the cards & tape the cards to the microwave or back door or whatever.

"Bosco is a friendly dog. Do not let him out of the yard."

"Tile man is coming to fix tile on Monday."

"Please look at garage; it's fully fitted out as a bar (but there's no alcohol out there!"

"Please lock/do not lock this door."

"Appliances are less than 1 year old & have ad 5 year warranty from dealer/manufacturer/etc."

"Security cameras in use."

I once damaged a house we were viewing. (It cost us more than $500,000 to repair it.) A portion of the strip of laminate on the kitchen counter's corner was unglued, but you could not tell that visually. I brushed against the corner while entering the kitchen, and the unsecured strip pulled away and 8" snapped off. I was horrified, but our agent said not to worry about it. We had to purchase the house and glue the piece back on.

The scariest part of my tale is that a house in CA, that costs between .5 and 1 million dollars, can have 40 year old laminate countertops--and 40yo everything else, for that matter.

I persomally can not believe how bad the current realtors are. on the last z5 showings, one realtor left the property before her clients did. When i drove up the back prch door wss wide open as well as the door to the inside was wide open. The potential buyers wetr there by themselves and could have been walking out with things. Later i discovered the house keys were left in a door and the lockbox left wide open. The 2nd realtor drove right over my railroad ties knocking then down and didn’t bother to inform me or offer to have them picked up. The 3rd sbd 4th realtord left a gate open in the indoor arena so the horses could hsve posdibly gottek out. Today the realtor opened a binch of windoes and left without botheting yo close yhe windowd. Anybody could have easily pushed in the screen and gotten into the house. Are these people just negligent?