Tips & How-To's
Realtor's Little Helper Comes with a Word of Warning.
How to Use a Lockbox to Safely Sell Your Home.
By Candy Peak, Realtor-Broker | April,2008
Realtor®’s Little Helper
Comes with a Word of Warning
You see them speckled all over town these days – lockboxes -- dressing front doors and water pipes, like ornaments on a Christmas tree.With increasing numbers of foreclosures and short sales, and more baby boomers moving to other communities, the “Homes for Sale” phenomenon in the Southland has given way to a ferocious inventory of available properties for anxious, would-be homebuyers.And the easier it is to access a property, the greater the prospects of selling at the most competitive price.
Back in the days of Donna Reed and Leave It to Beaver, the lady of the house was almost always home during the day. Doors were often left unlocked and neighbors visited each other’s homes unannounced. Housewives stayed home to clean house, bake pies and raise their children playing on safe, untrafficed streets, the neighborhood teeming with domestic activity that lasted from dawn to dusk.
But starting in the 1970’s, when masses of women joined the workforce, whole neighborhoods were suddenly turned into seemingly daytime “ghost towns.” What was a new adventure to many newly unfettered women became a true challenge for the busy, hard working real estate broker and his or her agents. The real estate professional had to ensure their listings were easily accessible to be viewed by eager prospective buyers when sellers were no longer at home.
It had been most common was to keep sellers’ keys in the listing office to be picked up by a showing agent, then dropped back to the listing office upon completion of a showing. But that was not always an easy task to connect with the listing agent or pick up a key.
But with a growing concern for security and the increasing pressure and complexity of the real estate agent’s business itself and his or her busy schedule there were calls from the real estate community that led to new, more practical inventions and ways of doing business.
One of those fortunate inventions was the lockbox, "the “REALTOR® ’s little helper.”
The lockbox handily solved the problem of showing property that most agents were experiencing. “I remember a time decades ago,” said longtime real estate agent Joe Teranova of Keeler Williams in
, “where we would actually have to hide keys under rocks and stones! The lockbox is so much more efficient like everything else now. It really changed the way we do business today.”
Burbank
“Plus, before you’d have your buyer in the car and drive by a property they suddenly asked to see. Without a lockbox, you’d have to stop showing property, and go call the listing office so you could pick up the key. Or you’d spend a lot of wasted time hunting down the listing broker if no one was in the office. It was often so difficult to connect with the listing agent, that you’d miss the opportunity to show the property to your buyer completely!”
The first lockboxes in the 1970’s were often in the form of a small combination mechanism much like an old gym locker combo device that usually had a dial with a 3-digit code. After turning the dial carefully, right-left-right to hit the mark of each digit, the dial plate could then be released from the box to reveal a house key hidden inside; thus the term “lockbox.” The operative code could be obtained through the listing office or agent by telephone. There were various versions of this type of lockbox, and still are today, often consisting of letters or numbers, again requiring knowledge of the code from the listing agent or broker to obtain the key. There have also been plastic lockboxes, sometimes in the form of “fake rocks,” hidden around the garden with the house key handily tucked inside.
As time progressed, however, larger mechanical more cumbersome boxes appeared; opened with a code unique to each agent and a long silver key called a “lockbox key.” The key could be inserted into the side of the box, in conjunction with the agent’s code. Once the key was in place and the matching code buttons set mechanically, a little drawer would pop open presenting the agent with the necessary house key.
But what remained a problem with the forerunners to the current, modern lockbox was the fact that no historical record was able to be made with the older boxes to note which agents had entered the home at what day and time. Sellers and agent often were “left in the dark,” not knowing who came into their home or when, or even if any showings occurred that day at all.
With society’s need for even more increased security and a desire to know exactly who had shown a property, the real estate community began to feel it would be safer and more helpful to offer a lockbox to their clients that could make a recording of all who entered the property and when. Thanks to new improved electronic technologies, that goal was able to be fulfilled with a new kind of lockbox that was a safer and more reliable tool. The new electronic lockbox helped a buyer’s agent gain easier access to show a property, while the showing agent’s identity was captured in an easily retrievable form.
The lockbox of the 1990’s was and still is today an electronic lockbox that opens with an electronic “key” in various forms. It is commonly used by real estate agents across the country. Manufactured by GE Security, the newer lockbox is called the Supra iBox. Though in its earlier form it was opened by the insertion of a computerized keypad into the lockbox device; it now opens by an infrared mechanism much like Star Trek fans could only dream of years ago.
Although showing homes for sale by appointment with a listing agent, owner or tenant is still very much an option to home-sellers, another more popular option to allow easier and quicker viewings of listings in many neighborhoods is the “Call First, Lockbox” method of access. In this case, the seller or the listing agent’s telephone number is listed in a confidential section of a listing in the Multiple Listing Service.
When a buyer’s agent then calls to request a showing of the seller or the listing agent and there is no answer, the buyer’s agent can then “go direct” to the home with a prospective buyer by using the lockbox attached to the property without any further communication necessary.
Electronic lockboxes are purchased by the listing agent at their local association of REALTORS® and usually ranges around $100 each plus sales tax. They are often hung on front doors or hidden on back gates, gas meters or water pipes. They can be opened anytime or set to open within restricted time frames, thus limiting the hours of exposure to the market. The restricted method helps better respect a seller’s privacy and need for a feeling of increased security at various times of the day or evening. This is of particular benefit to a seller who is day sleeper or those who want to feel increased security at night.
Besides keeping an ongoing, easily retrievable computer record of the agents who entered the property and when, the now networked electronic lockbox also helps the listing agent track all showing activity on a listing to then provide showing feedback to their seller-client for better service. Showing agents can now even register their showing comments electronically for the listing agent’s later retrieval and report to the seller.
In spite of all the benefits of the use of a lockbox in selling a property, a few words of caution are in order. Anytime a stranger enters a home, the owner runs the risk of valuables being stolen or personal papers being rifled through. Therefore, when a home goes up for sale and the seller and their listing agent make the decision to use a lockbox for better convenience, all valuables and sensitive paperwork should be removed by the seller or securely locked up to lessen the chances of stolen items or identity theft. Lockboxes are not security foolproof. Therefore, the constant monitoring of the lockbox by the listing agent under the watchful eye of the seller is always advisable.
It is always important for a seller to speak with their listing agent at the beginning of their listing be sure their agent has assigned a newly placed lockbox to their street address. This is done in the special, confidential section of the Multiple Listing Service or one of the other two industry networks available to the listing agent for this purpose. That one little extra computer data entry step is a must in order to create the electronic record of agent entries so that the seller and listing agent will be able to capture in writing exactly who has shown their property and when.
That said, the new electronic lockbox provides a freedom and opportunity that was only wished for in the early days of real estate and that is seen as one of the most beneficial marketing tools the real estate industry has to offer their clients today.
© 2008 Candy Peak
Candy Peak has been an award-winning REALTOR®, Broker & real estate investor for the past 20 years, selling homes & condos in Burbank, Glendale, and the greater Los Angeles area. Contact Candy: (818) 840-8115, or email candypeak@candypeak.com
