For Your Clients: Lockboxes and Their Role in the Real Estate Process

Selling a home can be a time-consuming process, but as any real estate professional can attest, making sure the space can be seen at all times—and ensuring agents have a way to enter—are two crucial ingredients that can ultimately go a long way toward helping the home sell faster. And one way to achieve this is by installing a lockbox.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a lockbox is a small metal box that’s fastened to the front door (or another secure part of the home). Housed inside the lockbox is another box that contains the key to the home. A code is required to get the key, providing a safe and secure way for real estate agents to enter the home and show it off to prospective buyers.

In fact, real estate professionals will tell you that installing a lockbox will not only result in more views by qualified buyers, they can also play a major role in speeding up the selling process. After all, your house isn’t just being shown by the agent you listed with. Instead, it’s available to real estate agents from all over. And, in the end, if they don’t have an easy way to show your house to their clients when you and/or your agent aren’t available, you’re more than likely going to miss out on showings.

While lockboxes are designed to allow access to your home 24/7—depending on the lockbox hours you and your agent set—making the process easier for everyone involved, it’s important to keep in mind that you ultimately have control over when someone can and can’t see your home.

If you’re still not sold on the lockbox idea, keep in mind that by not utilizing this technology, you’re making it so that both you and your agent need to be available when someone comes to see the house.

It’s also important that sellers not overlook lockboxes simply because they used them in the past and had a less than stellar experience. Today’s lockboxes are much more technically advanced than they used to be. Unlike the lockboxes of a decade ago, lockboxes today have a tiny microprocessor inside in order to record the time, date and which agent showed your home. Taking this one step further, the lockbox then notifies your listing agent so that they can quickly get to work on your behalf.

Remember that there’s nothing to fear about an uninvited guest breaking into the box and stealing your key. Not only does a lockbox require an electronic key to open it, but the only way to get a key is to become a member of the local MLS. Each key has a unique identifier and agents are forbidden to let other agents use theirs.

Reprinted with permission from RISMedia. ©2015. All rights reserved.