11 Open House Safety Tips From Team Lancaster to Help Prevent Theft
By: Chris Lancaster
Tags: Real Estate, Real Estate Investments, Hawaii

11 Open House Safety Tips From Team Lancaster to Help Prevent Theft

When selling a home, you’re going to want to hold an open house. In fact, you’ll probably hold several of them if you don’t attract a buyer right away. This means your home will be crawling with strangers that will be opening up cabinets and closets and who may even pull open drawers out of curiosity. While it might be in your nature to trust everyone, you’re still making yourself vulnerable to snooping eyes and even potential thieves. Use these 11 tips Team Lancaster has learned by holding hundreds of open house events in order to make sure that nothing gets stolen from your home:

1. Schedule a meeting with Team Lancaster or your current real estate agent about what they do to protect your valuables during an open house event. They should have enough experience to give you solid advice on precautions to take.

2. Make sure none of your valuables are displayed in the photos that you’ve put up online. You don’t want to advertise the fact that you have valuables displayed during your open house, since this is a good way to attract thieves.

3. Team Lancaster provides an extra agent or assistant that we post on your second floor (if you have a second floor). This way, you’ll have somebody to watch out for potential thieves on every floor of your home.

4. Team Lancaster uses an Open House iPad app and requires all visitors to sign in when entering the home. While actual thieves looking for valuables to steal can just sign a fake name, most people that steal things at an open house do so out of impulse; if they’ve signed their name, they’ll be discouraged from doing so since you can just hand the list over to the police if something has been taken.

5. Go through your home and remove anything of value that is displayed out in the open, such as small antique figurines on the fireplace mantel. You can find cheaper items with which to spruce up your decor; you won’t want to tempt anyone into grabbing something of value and shoving it into their pockets, after all.

6. Make sure you don’t leave out any mail, bank statements or bills on your countertops, table surfaces or even in your drawers. You should collect these sensitive documents and store them where no one else can access them, since they contain personal information that could be used to steal your identity.

7. Go through all of your drawers and cabinets — including your medicine cabinets — and remove all valuable items, such as jewelry or even prescription medication. If you have a safe, you should lock these up; if you don’t have a safe, you should consider getting one.

8. Don’t worry too much about bigger valuables, such as your 60-inch HDTV. Nobody is about to try to walk out of your door with something like that without being spotted. It’s the smaller items that can fit in someone’s pocket or purse that you should be wary of.

9. Smaller electronics, such as smartphones, laptops, tablets and more, should be removed and placed in a safe location as well.

10. While nobody is going to steal your desktop computer, make sure you are logged out, and the computer is put to sleep on a screen saver so that nobody can gain access to it.

11. Once your open house has ended, Team Lancaster will walk through the home and make sure that all windows and doors are locked. This will ensure that nobody will return after scoping out your open house to steal anything.

The open house is an important part of finding a buyer for your home. It also can leave you vulnerable to potential thieves, but you shouldn’t be paranoid about it. Instead, use these 11 tips to ensure that your valuables are secure and that you don’t leave yourself open to theft during your open house.

If you are considering selling your home and would liket o speak with a sales specialist at Team Lancaster please call 808–425–7974 or email Chris@teamlancaster.com

For more seller tips please visit http://www.teamlancaster.com/hawaii-home-seller-tips/

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