371: Property Safety: When Your Listing Gets Robbed

It's Realtor Safety Month, and this year we're taking a different angle: property safety.

We've covered personal safety plenty of times before (episodes 317, 216, 161, 112, and 6 & 7 with Carl Carter), but this time Alissa is sharing a story straight from the trenches: the time one of her vacant listings got robbed, mid-listing, appliances and all.

Repeat clients moved out of state and handed off a vacant house with an alarm code buried in a five-month-old text message. The camera system looked impressive, eight angles of surveillance, but it hadn't actually recorded anything in two and a half years. Somewhere between painters, cleaners, and showings, the alarm never got set again, and it was never on Alissa's radar to ask.

Then came the Saturday phone call every agent dreads: a showing agent reporting a kicked-in back door, a stolen oven, a missing washer and dryer, and a fridge the thieves gave up on halfway out the front door. Police, fingerprints, dead-end cameras, and a seller relationship that went from grateful to accusatory in the span of a few days.

This one is a real, honest look at what happens when property safety falls through the cracks, what Alissa changed in her process because of it, and why y'all need a plan for your vacant listings before something goes wrong, not after.

Here's what we cover in this episode:

Why Realtor Safety Month usually focuses on personal safety, and why property safety deserves its own spotlight

What actually got stolen (and what the thieves gave up on)

How Alissa handled calling police, meeting them at the property, and coordinating repairs for out-of-state sellers

How her broker helped negotiate a fair resolution tied to closing

Why you are not your seller's property manager, and how to set that expectation early

The new questions Alissa now asks every seller about alarms, cameras, and monitoring