As I’m sure many of you have heard a REALTOR in Arkansas, Beverly Carter, was killed while showing a home. This was a vacant home and the potential buyer asked the agent to meet at the house directly. We are all eager to connect with a buyer or seller and sometimes we are all guilty of taking risks that are not necessary.
To avoid taking unnecessary risks, we should be asking certain questions of a buyer/seller before we just drop everything and meet the person. At a minimum, you should be getting the person’s ID and how they are financing the property. If they do have a prequal from a lender, have you followed up by talking with the loan officer? Does the ID look like the person you are meeting? If they are “all cash” did they show you proof of funds? More important than anything else is what I like to refer to as “red flags.” How did they find you to contact? If internally something doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t. Something that we do everyday can be very dangerous, so please take the steps to be as safe as possible.
The story on the Beverly Carter is below:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/us/real-estate-risks/index.html
