The odds favor the criminal.
Via Circa:
The potential for violence has real estate agents across the country taking up arms as they head into houses they’ve never seen alongside people they’ve never met. High-profile cases in recent months have motivated some to carry a gun on the job. But not every state makes it easy for agents to protect themselves.
Scott Smith works as a real estate agent in Baltimore. He’s in and out of properties every day, never knowing what he could encounter. He protects himself thanks to a concealed carry permit he received legally.
Smith, who has also worked as a firearms instructor, says he’s never used the gun he legally carries when he’s conducting business. But he trains regularly so he’s prepared, knowing fellow real estate agents who have been assaulted or robbed in the course of just doing their jobs. Smith has had his own scare.
“I was completely taken off guard,” he explained. “There was a person hiding in the house. Actually they were hiding in the shower. I had no clue they were there, and that was obviously pretty scary.”
Real estate, by its very nature, is an industry that comes with some risk. Real estate agents regularly visit homes with floor plans they’ve never seen. They often meet strangers at the homes they’re trying to sell. A 2018 report from the National Association of Realtors showed 33 percent of those surveyed experienced a situation that made them fear for their safety. The survey reported 5 percent of respondents claimed they’d been the victim of crime at work.
John Smaby is a Minnesota Realtor who grew up in real estate thanks to a Realtor father. He’s been in the industry for decades and was recently installed as the new president of the NAR.
Smaby told Circa, “The real estate business is really an individual business, so we many times meet people in places that could put ourselves in peril. We can’t do it blind.”
The organization that represents more than 1.3 million members knows that safety has to be a top priority in real estate. In the past few years, the NAR has stepped up education and training efforts to better protect and prepare agents across the country. It also began conducting the member safety survey in 2017 to get a sense of what Realtors are experiencing and how they’re protecting themselves.
The latest NAR survey shows some Realtors are taking matters into their own hands. It found one of the most popular forms of self protection for those surveyed was a gun, with one in six agents admitting they carry.
High-profile cases have been a motivator for some to take action. In 2015, there was a series of armed robberies targeting real estate agents in vacant houses in St. Petersburg, Fla. In December, a Maryland man working alone at a model home was murdered near Annapolis in what police called an apparent robbery attempt. And a real estate agent was gunned down last month in Utah while evicting a tenant.
But no case spurred more action than the chilling abduction and killing of an Arkansas agent whose case made national news in 2014. Beverly Carter’s case sounds like a made-for-TV movie with the details come to life. The vivacious blonde whose smile radiated from her real estate picture was kidnapped by a couple that deliberately targeted the 50-year-old because, they later explained, she looked rich and worked alone.