Every career has its own set of positives and negatives. Some of those negatives are relatively innocuous, like an inconvenient commute or pay that’s not commensurate with the required qualifications. Others are more meaningful. They may include a risk of injury or damaging levels of stress.
One very real risk facing real estate professionals is their exposure to possible criminal activity. While it’s not common, the nature of the business innately calls for agents to put themselves in situations that leave them vulnerable. Although industry organizations can and do take measures to improve real estate agent safety, there is room for further steps to be taken.
With that in mind let’s take a look at the state of agent safety, which concerns agents report, and how they can be successfully mitigated.
Agent Safety Concerns, as Reported by REALTORS®
It’s a management truism that the best way to know what concerns frontline workers have is to ask them. NAR does that regularly, with its annual Member Safety Reports. The 2023 edition of the report, drawn from a survey of NAR members, provides a useful snapshot of those concerns. While not all real estate professionals are NAR members, and not all NAR members participated, the report serves as a useful proxy for the industry as a whole.
Here are just a few key findings of the 2023 report:
- 22 percent of REALTORS® reported that they experienced a situation that made them fear for their safety (or that of their personal information).
- 5 percent reported being victims of a crime.
- 35 percent said that they had met a new or potential client alone at a secluded location.
- 85 percent reported that they had shown a property alone.
- 15 percent reported feeling unsafe while hosting an open house alone.
- 48 percent showed properties in areas with limited or no cellular coverage.
How REALTORS® Have Addressed Safety Concerns
To varying degrees, these concerns have been addressed at all levels—from agents in the field up to and including NAR itself. NAR’s website hosts a number of safety resources for field agents and also offers safety training courses. Regional associations and individual brokerages similarly offer safety training and in many cases have established agent-safety procedures in place.
At the level of the individual agent, many of those who participated in the Member Safety Report have taken steps to improve their personal safety. Common measures include:
- Taking a self-defense class
- Carrying a weapon or other form of deterrence
- Using a smartphone app
- Meeting new clients for the first time in a safe setting
- Taking a safety class
- Establishing a set of personal safety protocols to follow with every client
No single measure in and of itself can guarantee safety. A phone app is of limited use outside of cellular coverage, for example. A weapon or self-defense skills are of limited usefulness if the agent is surprised or ambushed. The greatest level of safety results from stacking multiple levels of personal protections, so that if one fails others can still provide a measure of security and/or traceability.
The Role of Spokeo in Real Estate Agent Safety
It’s likely that most agents and real estate associations are initially introduced to Spokeo for Business as a prospecting tool. That’s fair: it’s an outstanding resource for that purpose, and prospecting drives success in the industry. But the same search prowess that makes Spokeo a potent prospecting tool can also be harnessed to improve agent safety. Let’s look at a few specific use cases.
Verifying the Identity of Potential Clients
Potential new clients may result from face-to-face encounters, phone calls, emails, or even inquiries that hit your DMs. The vast majority of them will be legitimate homeowners or home buyers, but a few may be thieves, scam artists, or predators.
Spokeo for Business provides a uniquely powerful set of tools for scrutinizing whatever contact and personal information you’ve been given. Below, we share just a few use cases for each.
Name
Searching the name the potential client provided you will return a list of matches and close matches. Sifting out those who aren’t the client by reason of age or location can help you narrow down the possibilities. Clicking through each candidate in turn reveals a wealth of information about them, such as potential family members or spouses and public social media profiles. Looking at the publically shared information on those social profiles in turn can reassure you that the person you see online is indeed the person you met, and provides a means of verifying that they are indeed who they claim.
Phone Number
Searching a phone number you were given, or that came up on your call display, provides a second method of determining whether a potential client is legitimate. The results of that search typically provide the names of current and former owners of that number, as well as other numbers, emails, and social media accounts linked to the same person or phone. Discrepancies between what you were told and what you see in your search results often represent a red flag. Spokeo for Business’s search results may also display a phone reputation score, as well as phone metadata like activity status (active, high, inactive), a confidence score on that activity status, and carrier information — all of which can be useful to help determine if the number belongs to a legitimate lead or a potential scammer.
Email Address
Similarly, searching an email address will typically return the name of the person associated with that account, any phone number associated with the account, and any social media accounts or additional email addresses linked to the account’s owner. Names or accounts that don’t coincide with what you were told can be a red flag. So can accounts that have little or no linked information, which may be disposable email addresses set up to deliberately hide the owner’s identity.
Social Media DMs
Verifying a person through their social media account is not necessarily as straightforward as it seems. While a name and photo may seem correct and appropriate, they’re also easy to fake: many social platforms don’t require real names and those that do seldom verify them meaningfully. Spokeo’s social media search capabilities are especially strong, and it’s possible to search with no more than a username.
The billions of data points available to Spokeo can typically trace that username back to the phone or email address that was used to establish the account, and from there to a specific individual. If that individual doesn’t correspond to the information you were given in the DM, or if it proves to be a pseudonym with little or no information connected to it, that is also a sign of potential risk.
Evaluating a Neighborhood’s Safety
Throughout the course of their career, most agents gain an encyclopedic knowledge of the neighborhoods in their selling area, but that knowledge takes time. Also, even frequent brief visits to a given neighborhood won’t always give a full picture of its overall safety.
Using Spokeo for Business to search the property you plan to show can fill in the blanks. Spokeo’s data includes localized crime information drawn from court records and can help agents assess whether additional precautions are necessary when working in the vicinity.
Incorporating Spokeo Results into Your Workflow
The 2023 NAR Member Safety Report recorded that over 70 percent of residential REALTORS® had a set of personal safety protocols in place, and about half reported that their brokerages had a set of agent safety procedures in place.
Incorporating Spokeo searches as one of those procedures can go a long way toward ensuring real estate agent safety. Routinely verifying potential clients, even the most plausible and charming, simply makes good sense. Many agents and brokerages already require potential clients to fill out a questionnaire or show some form of identification.
Spokeo provides the technology to take this precaution to a higher level, potentially unmasking fake or stolen identities and clients who misrepresent themselves for nefarious purposes. If the outcome of a given search provides reason to doubt the client’s identity or motives, agents may need to take additional protective action. At times this may require refusing to engage; or where reasonable doubt exists, the agent may opt to take additional steps such as bringing along a colleague or other companion as a deterrent.
To Learn More, Reach Out
Spokeo for Business is a powerful tool, but unlike many other technology products serving the real estate industry, it’s also an affordable one. Plans can provide a cost-effective search volume for an individual agent or small office all the way up to a regional association, and bodies of all sizes in between.
For a more in-depth exploration of the role Spokeo for Business can play in agent safety, to arrange a demonstration or complimentary hands-on trial, reach out to our team through the contact information found on our Real Estate page.
Disclaimer: Spokeo for Business is not a substitute for your own due diligence, especially if you have concerns about a person’s criminal history.
Sources
The New York Times: Alone in an Empty House, Female Real Estate Agents Face Danger
National Association of REALTORS®: 2023 Member Safety Residential Report
National Association of REALTORS®: REALTOR® Safety Program Resources