John Jayne- 2 things real estate agents must do to be safe

Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. Realtor safety--is it a real thing? Is it something that you need to be concerned about? That's today's topic. I'm passionate about this topic because I happen to have a lot of real estate agents that are very good friends and I don't know that the world that we live in is getting to be any safer. And so for today's topic I brought on an individual who has a very storied background in self defense. He's a former marine, a former police officer, a current private investigator and a security consultant. I'm excited to have him on the show. I met him a few weeks ago, and I was very impressed with him as I actually heard his presentation on Realtor self-defense that you're going to be hearing more about and are actually going to be receiving an invitation to attend. But in the meantime, I want you to be safe until you have a chance to attend that. So I want to welcome to today's episode, John Jayne. John, thanks for being on the show.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Yeah, so let's get into this. John is this hype? Are people blowing out of proportion the threats that real estate agents are facing?

Absolutely not. No way. It's a, it's very real. It's very current and it's growing.

Okay. Tell me some evidence behind this. What makes you say that? Is this your gut feel or is there some data to back that up?

No, there's a lot of data out there. It's sometimes hard to access, but what I've found is the National Association of Realtors puts out a report every year on safety and statistics on attacks. A big surge lately, which isn't really my forte has been electronic data security. There's been a lot of identity theft, which has increased over the years. Forgeries, fraud, stuff like that whereas my expertise is in the physical security and those numbers are growing as well. When I first got into this topic, I started going through it.

Let's talk about what some of those numbers are. I know there's 1.2 million real estate agents in the nation today. Is that number right?

Correct. Roughly.

Okay. Talk to me about how many of those on a percentage basis or actual number basis have felt some sort of threat.

So, of those polled, 38% reported being threatened or had felt unsafe during a showing of a home or an open house,

Thirty-eight percent!! So over one in three real estate agents at some point have felt a potential real threat.

Correct. And that could range anything from just the hair on the back of their neck standing up, to an actual attack happening.

Now I know we've heard of situations, actual homicides, terrible tragic stories--a handful of those we've heard about. I know that as you start digging into this to see if this really was a real area of need you uncovered, and not that I want to go into necessarily the gory details, but you found more than what you expected to find, didn't you?

Way more than I expected to find. What really got me started in this area was I was hired to do some consulting for an apartment complex. They had one of their leasing agents attacked showing an apartment. So I kind of started delving into the statistics and some case studies. And then obviously, I know a lot of Realtors as well, and I started looking into this aspect of it. And the number of stories, the new stories, just if you Google real attack on Realtors, it's unbelievable how often this happens and how extreme the attacks are.

Jeez. Okay--so it's real. I know having stayed close to a forum here that's a pretty popular one, Masters in Real Estate that it's not just in other parts of the country, right? There's stuff happening right here in Portland, Oregon. I know my audience extends beyond that and I'm sure that people outside of Portland can validate that as well, that it's happening all around us. I would say in part because of the rise of access to pornography and other things as I'm sure things other than just that it's increasing the number of predators out there. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely. One case that I became familiar with while putting this presentation together, it really unfolded as if it were some sort of a kind of a pornographic fantasy where a real estate agent was showing a home, they made it up to the master bedroom and he attempted to seduce her from the bed as if he had watched this maybe in a video of some sort. And luckily that case didn't turn out to be the case that I used as an example of success. She had been trained, she had practiced and thought through tactics and mindset stuff to where she knew exactly what to do in that situation and made it out safely. But it could've been, it could've been much worse.

So that we don't end on the downside, right, we're here to talk about how to prevent this. So let's give them two points, John. Let's, give them two key points. And obviously you have an entire training that they're going to be invited to in the very near future that will give them a much more kind of robust set of tools to defend themselves, but what are two things? If you had to choose two things to help people really feel safe or safer, what would they be?

Well, it's hard to pick two out of so many that could be helpful. But the first thing that I would tell people is if it doesn't feel right, it's probably not right. Trust your instincts. Trust that little spot in your stomach. That something isn't right here and back out of the appointment, reschedule it. Safety first. And if it turns out that we've overshot the mark and it wasn't a big deal, we can always reschedule and everything will be fine, but you know, we've been given instincts for a reason and we just need to trust that instinct.

If you feel that something is not right--don't ignore it. You're saying don't ignore that. Okay, good.

Yeah. I think the most common thing that can happen is, "Oh, you know what? I'm probably just being paranoid." The moment we tell ourselves that, we're setting ourselves up to be a potential victim.

As you dug into some of these more horrific stories where stuff unfolded, was there a pretty complete consensus of those where bad stuff did happen that they thought ahead of time, "This maybe isn't such a good situation" where instincts were warning them and they didn't listen to them?

Well, unfortunately the most extreme cases of what I looked into where with somebody being deceased. We weren't able to get their feedback, but of the ones where it might've just been an assault where it ended up in a stolen purse or maybe a sexual assault, largely there was the feeling of "Something doesn't feel right."

Yeah, pay attention to those. I love it. Great tip, John. Alright, what would be the second point? Let's say that they find themselves in a bad situation. Either they didn't get the instincts or they didn't listen to them and they find themselves in a predicament, in a precarious situation. What do they do?

Yeah--Get out of the house!! Inside that house once you enter the home with the person that you're showing the house to or the client or whatever, or the bad guy, that door closes and it's like in the ultimate fighting championship when the octagon door closes. I mean it's a free for all in there. If something happens to go sideways, head out into the street and get out in public view and make a scene, yell, scream, get somebody's attention. The longer we're in that house, the more vulnerable we are to an attack.

Throw a chair through the window or, I mean extreme, right?. Getting out of the house, cause a scene. Okay.

Cause a scene. Get out of the house is the most important thing. To follow up on that, it could be hours before the next Realtor comes along or the homeowner returns. I mean, you could be captive in there for hours.

Yeah, yeah--sobering tips John, but necessary ones to protect th...