The Fight Against Crime: Notes From the Front : Kidnaping Stirs Concern for Realtors

The kidnaping of Paula Harrington last month has reminded local real estate agents how vulnerable they really are.

Meeting strangers and accompanying them alone to empty homes is part of doing business in their highly competitive profession, but that is how Harrington was abducted.

And refusing to go out alone with clients, or asking them for identification, might make the difference between winning a big sale and sending the client fleeing across the street to another real estate company.

Trust and the appearance of trust are vital tools of their trade, leaving brokers little room to maneuver.

“When a person comes in and you ask for a (driver’s) license, that is an aggressive act, and they will tend to want to go elsewhere,” said Alice McCain, president of the San Fernando Valley Assn. of Realtors. “So unless everyone says we need to take better care, and ask for a license and take other precautions, it may not work.”

But as violence and the perception of violence have increased over the years, real estate brokers--like so many others--have become increasingly cautious.

“Ten years ago or so, it wasn’t unusual for people to call and say, ‘I want to see the house I am parked across the street from, so come over and show it to me,’ ” McCain said. “Now, I don’t know many agents who are willing to do that.”

Harrington, 26, was abducted by a man after she showed him several homes in the Val Verde area near Santa Clarita on June 29. She was found a few days later tied up in a motel room in Arizona after having been raped.

But many agents are loathe to talk about the problem, fearing that they will give crooks ideas. Women agents, they say, are particularly vulnerable.

But Karyn Foley, a real estate broker who is also mayor of Calabasas, said one way to combat crime against agents is to let the public know that agents will no longer put themselves at risk for the sake of selling a house.

“Everybody is afraid to address the issue,” she said. “It’s just a powder keg waiting to explode, and we’ve been lucky up to now. . . . (But) the good old days are gone.”

Foley, an agent for 17 years, said she has long had a policy of taking precautions: photocopying clients’ drivers licenses; not advertising listings as “vacant”; not dealing much with strangers and going with another agent when showing property.

Occasionally, she takes more unique approaches. Sometimes she will show up for an appointment with her big--but mostly harmless, she says--Great Dane, other times she resorts to more desperate measures.

“Sometimes, if I’m waiting at a place for a client, I’ll just kind of sit there with the hammer in my hand that I pounded the ‘For Sale’ sign in with,” she said. “I haven’t had to use it yet.”

Foley doesn’t much like the idea of open houses, a traditional selling tactic used by real estate firms when the public tours houses for sale.

The problem, says Foley, is that often agents are in otherwise empty houses with strangers who might be more interested in harming an agent than in buying a home. Not only are open houses dangerous, she says, they are also ineffective. In nearly two decades as an agent, Foley said, she has sold only two houses that way.

“All the wrong people come for all the wrong reasons,” Foley said. “Whether it’s to be nosy, or because they have nothing else to do. Very few of them come to buy a house.”

Last week, as a reminder to realtors to exercise caution, the San Fernando Valley Assn. of Realtors reprinted a page-long list of “safety reminders” in its newsletter.

Among the tips: “Upon entering (a house), check all rooms and determine escape routes; when prospects arrive, jot down license plate numbers and descriptions of vehicles and people; always insist that the prospective buyer(s) go first, then follow; keep your keys in hand for use as a weapon as well as quick access to the vehicle.”

Selling homes has changed.