A Close Call…

Real estate safety is my passion.

It’s why I wrote the book Not Today, Predator: What You Don’t Know Can Kill You.

It’s why I founded NSCORE, the National Safety Council of Real Estate.

And it’s why I’m always on the lookout for potentially dangerous situations. But sometimes, they find me.

Last week, I was contacted via email by a potential seller to list their home. When I called the contact on the local Illinois number provided in the email, the person didn’t answer. I hung up without leaving a message. However, I immediately received a call back from a different phone number—a New York phone number. It was the seller.

He had provided the address of the home he wished to list, which was local, so the New York number didn’t align. Already sensing a red flag, I decided to put a safety strategy into play by rescheduling our call on my terms. I said, “Now is not an ideal time for me to get some information from you; is there a better time I can call you back today?” When he indicated that noon would be fine, I asked, “And what number do you want me to call you back on?”

He said, “What do you mean?” and sounded confused.

I said, “When you sent me the email earlier, you provided me with a different number than you are calling me on now.”

So he recited the original phone number and said, “From now on, we’ll talk on that phone number. This one is my work phone.”

Of course, now I was wondering how he has a New York phone number if he lives in Illinois, so I asked him again for the address of the house (which I did already have from his email, and which I had already looked up). He proceeded to give me the address again, but he was speaking very slowly and sounded as if he was reading it from somewhere. If you live in a place, that’s not how you give your address. Another red flag.

So I ended the call and started digging. I found so many red flags, I may as well have been at a NASCAR race.

The New York number wasn’t registered to a company.

While he was listed as a co-owner of the property in question, a search showed it to be a vacant home on a dead-end street by a heavily wooded area.

This person was a registered sex offender, had twenty-one current cases of child pornography, indecency, grooming, two felony cases pending involving financial institutions, several liens on his home and three cases of domestic violence. And that was just in local records.

I found fourteen more in the neigboring county records. I really did not need to go any further.

I immediately called my (male) broker and explained that I wasn’t going to work with this guy and why. So my broker gave him a call at the predetermined time on the number given, but the seller didn’t answer, so my (again, male) broker left a voice message.

In just a minute or so, long enough for the seller to have listened to the voice message, my broker received a text back said he was not interested in selling and that the initial inquiry with me was fraudulent.

False.

That guy was so interested in talking to me (a female agent) about selling his home! He just wasn’t expecting a male to contact him.

I immediately notified my association and asked them to put a warning notice out to all agents about this guy.

What’s the takeaway here?

It’s that even someone who (literally!) wrote the book on Real Estate Safety can become a potential target. It was up to me to fail that possible predator’s tests, and I’m fortunate to be knowledgable enough to recognize a potentially dangerous situation early-on.

Who knows how this might have played out, but my gut tells me it would not have been good. And one of NSCORE’s number-one recommendations is to always, ALWAYS, trust your gut.

If you haven’t read Not Today, Predator, I invite you to pick up a copy today so you can be well-prepared for this type of situation if it lands in your lap. And if you’d like me to come do a workshop with your group, just contact me here, and I’d be happy to have a conversation!