SOUTH SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – Once you have placed the ‘For Sale’ sign in the front yard, you may have just placed an invitation for squatters and burglars. Local realtors are fed up with the crime targeted at their properties, and they are once again adopting an old tactic – they are hiring landlords.
Samantha Tov sees the desperate and ugly in the real estate industry. The listing agent at Portfolio Real Estate is seeing an increase in people breaking into homes she is trying to sell.
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“It shocked me that we were broken into twice, three times, and then we hired a housekeeper,” Tov told CBS13. “Newer devices will be stolen. They will remove the doors and go through the garage. ‘
Tov gets so frustrated by chasing out stickers and filing police reports of burglaries. She hires people to live in the empty houses on the market. Homeowners stop people from breaking in.
“Housemates are usually a single person who does not really have a home, and they live in a backpack and they will have a temporary hammock,” Tov said.
Broker Jonathan Lee says it kept him busy.
‘It’s hard for buyers, right? “They see the house and want to make sure the neighborhood is good, make sure the house is in good condition, and if they see the stuff, they can get scared,” Lee said.
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In a market that is already hot with rugby programs, he now has to deal with burglaries in between.
‘The frustration we experience is that we have to hire homeowners. It’s therefore a fairly long service, because escrow usually takes about 20 to 30 days, ‘Lee said.
It costs everything, from the expensive locks they break, which cost $ 120 dollars each to all the damage and now the cost of hiring a housekeeper.
‘We have to pay the sellers for it, and it’s not just the tenant. We give food and water to them. In the morning we give them breakfast and lunch, ”said Tov.
This can be a great concert. Homeowners earn about $ 75 a day. They go from house to house with only a backpack and do not have to pay rent.
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This is a last-ditch effort by brokers to ward off crime.