Keeping Your Home Safe During Home Showings

Showings may be one of the toughest parts of selling your West Knoxville home. Sure, they can be a bit of an inconvenience. But, there’s also that little part of you that worries about strangers walking through your home.

Still, if you want to sell your home, you’re going to have to deal with showings. It’s just part of the overall process. In this post, we’ll offer up some tips about keeping your West Knoxville safe during showings.

Hire A Professional

First and foremost, utilizing a realtor to help sell your West Knoxville home can be one of the easiest ways to protect it. When your home is listed in the MLS, it means that the buyers who come and view it are accompanied by a realtor.

While that doesn’t guarantee safety, it can help. Buyers who are working with a realtor have most likely been vetted. Most likely, in order to be working with a realtor, they’ve gotten pre-approved and proven that they are capable of buying a home.

Listing your home with a realtor also helps vet other potential buyers who want to see your home. Even if that buyer is unrepresented, they can still be vetted by your realtor before seeing the home. This can offer peace of mind and take some of the pressure off of you.

Lock Up Valuables

Be sure to lock of valuables in a safe place prior to showings. Things like checks, laptops, jewelry, prescription drugs, or other valuable items should be stored in a safe place. If you don’t want to risk losing these items, be sure to keep them in a safe place to ensure their safety.

While a vast majority of buyers are good people, you still don’t want to risk losing any important items. The only way to protect them is to keep them in a safe place. If you have a safe, store those items there. If you don’t, take the items out of your home to ensure their safety.

Avoid Open Houses

Open houses can be a major safety concern since there can be multiple buyers walking around unsupervised. Even with an agent there, it can be hard for them to keep an eye on all parties at once.

During an open house, there are a lot of uncontrolled variables. You have one agent and can have multiple unsupervised buyers. It can be easy for potential buyers to distract the agent while another one looks for items to steal. Unlike showings that are supervised by another agent, these buyers are usually unvetted, so you have no idea who the people are walking around your home. You have very little proof that they’re a legitimate home buyer.

De-Personalize Your Home

De-personalizing your home is good for many reasons. For one, it makes your home easier for a buyer to picture themselves living in. Beyond making your home more sellable, it can also be helpful to de-clutter your home for safety reasons.

In addition to removing pictures, it can be useful to remove visible calendars or other items that provide information about your personal life. Pictures and calendars can provide strangers with useful information about who you are and where you will be.

For safety reasons, it can be best to make sure these items are not readily available.

Bottom Line: Safety Is Always Important

As with many things in our lives, safety isn’t always our biggest concern. When it comes to selling your home, it may not even be something you consider. As with all safety-related things, you’re preparing for the worst-case scenario, but hoping for the best.

Instances where items are stolen from sellers’ homes, are far and few between, but it is still something that can happen. This is why it’s still important to take the necessary precautions.

Are you thinking about selling your West Knoxville home this year? Please let us know if there is any way that Knoxville Home Team can assist you. Rick can be reached at 865-696-9002 or via email at [email protected]. Kati can be reached by phone at 865-696-1888 or at [email protected].