News

This is forwarded from a FAAR Broker in the King George area.

Please read the following, and feel free to pass it on to the greater FAAR membership, however you feel it should be presented. I know these sort of incidents do happen, and are broadcast by the association. I trust you will share it as you feel appropriate. Feel free to edit and shorten as necessary.

We had an incident at our office yesterday that I feel we should share with our fellow Realtors. At 4 pm yesterday afternoon, we had a walk-in inquiring about homes for sale in the area. The female agent on duty happened to be solo in the office at the time, a rarer thing during our open business hours. Our facility is in a shopping complex of like business units. At that time of day, there’s people milling about, getting their pizzas at Domino’s, dropping their kids off at The Dance Studio, the Veterinarians, etc. Most businesses are fully open and there’s plenty of parking lot traffic. The following occurred in broad daylight:

The ‘prospect’ asked questions about properties, described what he and his wife were looking for, took a business card, and initiated arrangements to see houses this weekend, and generally behaved as one would expect a prospect to. This was all at our front reception desk, which as you know is immediately within our all glass front. He asked if he could use our restroom, which he did, returned to the front desk, asked for some lender cards, which our agent retrieved from some racks we have just around the corner. He followed her there, which she felt a little uncomfortable with, but they went back to the front desk and he left. Presumably the whole guise of being a buyer was intended to give him opportunity to scope out the office and see if she was alone.

About a minute later he came back in and was acting very odd, nervous, and she knew something was up. He made some comment about he and his wife were ‘swingers’ and maybe she would like to join them, and that we wanted to show our her something. She said “no, I don’t want to see anything, go away” (she thought it might be a gun, thank goodness it wasn’t at least), then he exposed himself. As they were standing near the front door, our agent shoved him literally right out the front door (which was simply her reflex under stress), and he left running down the street. Fortunately, he never touched her in any way and she wasn’t injured.

Our agent immediately called 911. The Sheriff’s Department sent over a Deputy who took a report.

Description of the perpetrator: Black male approximately 5′ 7″, bald, stalky with muscular build about 30-35 yrs old. He was wearing black polyester sport shorts, grey or light green T-shirt.

We are so thankful that it wasn’t more serious, but this incident should also serve to remind all of us who work in this profession that we cannot let our guards down, and should be diligent in ensuring our own safety. There are many resources for doing so, and I encourage everyone to take some time to look into how you can protect yourself from being a victim.