How to Avoid Stranger Danger When Selling Your Home!

November 1, 2019

There’s so much to think about when selling your home. It needs to be spic and span, turn on as many lights as possible, declutter…  You’ve heard all these, right?

But have you thought about strangers being in your home? Let’s talk about what you can do to keep your family and your home safe before putting your home up for sale. There are the obvious ones first. 

  • Put away any medicine. Don’t leave it sitting out in plain sight. If you have controlled medications, you might want to put those in a safe or take them with you. 
  • Put away any valuable jewelry. Take it out of the jewelry box. This is an obvious place for a thief to check. 
  • Hide and secure any guns. 
  • Don’t leave any mail out. It could have names or important info on it. 

Take down family pictures. It does help the person visualize themselves and their family in the home better. However, do you really want a stranger to know how many children you have, their ages, or if you’re a single mom? A lot of this can be seen in pictures. 

Turn on outside lights including porch lights at dusk and leave them on until dawn. Sometimes people get the idea that they can just knock on your door to view the home if it’s for sale. Lights on will let you see who is ringing the doorbell. If that person just happens to be checking to see if the for sale home is vacant and easy to rob, the lights are a deterrent. Burglars do not want to stand under a light. 

Lastly, when you do list your home, do not allow anyone to come in without setting up a showing with your agent. This way your agent can track who comes in and out of your own. Ask the realtor to specifically use a Supra lock so that entrance and exit is tracked (not a combo lock). If a realtor or someone claiming to be a realtor shows up and you’re unaware of a showing, tell them no problem, I’ll just lock up and leave, so you can get the key out of the lock box. 

Now that you’ve done what you can to prepare, happy selling! Let’s get this one SOLD! 

Gail Hardy is an affiliate broker with Southland Realtors. Reviews on Gail can be found on Zillow and her business page on Facebook. She always welcomes new clients and can be reached at 865-805-3054 or email gail@southlandrealtors.com!