The House Key Went Missing: Check the Lockbox First

So I had a house on the market at the beach and it had just hit the market and the next morning I had a call from the seller and the seller was not happy because the lock box when he left the home in the morning, it was wide open and there was no key in it now.

That's not something you want to hear from a client ever that there's a missing key to their property because that's their security at stake.

So I'm like, okay, well the that agent, there's only one agent that showed it. It had just hit the market. She must have the key. So I call that agent the same, listen. Here's what's happened. You're the only one who showed it. We just hit the market, the key's missing and she's like, Jim, I'm sure I put it back, like I remember I was walking with my client to the car and that I'm so well, all I know is that I just got a call from my client, lock boxes, why don't there's no key in it?

She feels terrible, that other agent, because she assumes that in fact she did forget to put the key back in and by the way, it happens right real. This is a human and after you show a property you're talking with your client and you know it can just happen. You just forget.

She's like, Jim, like the only place it could be is in my brother-in-law's car. That's who the client was but my brother-in-law's car is like an hour and a half away and he took the GO train into Toronto. I have no way to even check the car. I'm like, okay, here's what I'm gonna do.

I immediately had a locksmith do an emergency key change, lock change on the house. It costs $650 and I said, if you find that key, please let me know.

So locksmith got to the house a few hours after this all began. Re-keyed the entire house, all the doors to the house. I go over to make sure that the locksmith had done a good job and that everything was as it should be. I look at the lock box on the front of the house and guess what?

The lock box was locked, the key was in there. It's just that it had one of those flaps on the front that master lock sometimes puts on to the lock boxes and the flap was open and it looked to the seller like it was open and there's no key in it. No, the key was in there. It was secure. I had just been 650 bucks for nothing.

So the moral of the story is, fellow realtors, if a client says the key is missing, don't do what I did. Like, don't just assume they're right, check the lock box. It may save you $650 and a very, very stressful morning. Ha. The glamorous life of a realtor.