Open House Security Tip

If you or your Realtor is considering holding an open house, here’s a security tip to keep your children safe.

Before I go into it do understand that an open house is really for your Realtor’s benefit and not yours. Realtors do this to obtain names of potential clients and a minuscule amount of houses are sold this way. (See, and you thought I only knew self-defense).

If you, or anyone you know, is trying to sell their home, and they’re going to have a parade of strangers walking through, let them know this tip.

Keep Your Kids Out Of It

If they have kids, remove any reference to them from the house. A case I’m aware of involves a paedophile who got a slew of information from inside a home. He was able to glean the age of the child, their hobbies, names, and parents’ names, etc.

Put yourself in the child’s shoes a few weeks later. Someone rolls up in a car, knows their name, talks to them about their hobbies, describes their house and their bedroom, uses the parents’ names, and then says they sent him to pick them up. How many kids do you know, yours included, that wouldn’t fall for this?

It’s a pain, to be sure, but you’re going to have to pack all their stuff anyway once the house is sold. Why not do it in advance of potential buyers walking through to avoid any trouble?

Self-protection is all about avoidance after all, and not closing the gate after the horse has bolted.