You decide you need to move and you put your home on the market. In the best efforts to sell you current home, you list it with an agent plus run ads and plan open houses. While this is a positive on the selling side, it could be disasterous on the personal safety side.

Baltimore, Maryland REALTOR® Ariana Loucas offers some valuable tips about keeping you and your belongings safe when strangers come to your home.

“Don’t forget these safety tips when allowing people to tour your house:

1. Make sure to put all valuables away, in a secure place. Leaving rings and jewelry out on a jewelry tree or in an accessible box makes it easy for people to grab a handful of your items and keep walking.

2. Make certain all your mail, papers, and checkbooks are out of sight. This helps prevent identity theft.

3. If you have a garage door opener, especially for detached garage access, always leave it hidden within the home and not just on the counter. If you want to provide access to that area, leave special instructions for agents showing the home.

4. Always make certain you leave instructions that all doors and windows must be locked prior to leaving. Often you don’t know who is touring your home, and they could be casing the home, unlocking a window to return later to walk away with that new TV they saw.

5. Open Houses are often held. In this case, be careful of those people coming towards the end, or with other groups. Sometimes one could be the distraction with questions, and the others are calmly walking the home to unlock the perfect window to return when the home is empty or late night…”

Click here to read more of Ariana Loucas’ blog.

Realtors: Sign up for your own free Featured Blog on Realtor.com.