Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
A new survey of more than 450 professional real estate agents conducted by Moby, the personal safety application developer, showed that 34% of them feel unsafe on the job "sometimes".
The majority of those who had felt unsafe at one time or another were female real estate agents, with 42% saying they had felt unsafe "occasionally", while only 18% of male real estate agents felt the same way.
42% of female real estate professionals reported feeling unsafe. Image courtesy of MH Values
Viewing vacant properties was listed as the biggest safety concern of most professionals, followed by hosting open houses, then viewing foreclosures, short sales and REOs. Initial meetings with new clients and private showings of properties were also rated high on the dangers list as well.
The survey also gave some interesting results about the precautions that real estate professionals take in order to stay safe. The most common method is through keeping other people informed of where they are going, for example through sharing itineraries with colleagues (73.3% of respondents do this), repeatedly calling in with friends or coworkers (42.8%), and lastly, taking a colleague, friend or family member along with them to appointments (26.9%).
More than 20% of realtors like to carry Mace or Pepper Spray. Image courtesy of CPS Deals
Having clients come to the office first of all to photocopy their ID was also a popular safety precaution, with more than 20% of respondents saying they do this regularly. However, the survey also showed that 13% of care-free real estate professionals took no safety precautions at all while out on the job.
Moby also asked realtors about which safety devices they carried around with them, with the most common being a mobile phone, used by 95.5% of all respondents. 20% of realtors said that they liked to carry a can of pepper spray or mace with them to meetings, while 7.5% go the whole hog and arm themselves with a firearm.
