As real estate agents and prospective buyers tour homes for sale these days there’s often another set of eyes watching their every move, MarketWatch staffer Andrea Riquier reports.
There are now more security cameras and products like Nest thermostats tracking conversations and actions. The rise of these wired home sellers is raising fresh concerns about privacy, courtesy and legality in a transaction that’s already fraught with emotion and potentially full of pitfalls.
According to agents who spoke with MarketWatch, the heightened technology presents an uncomfortable breach of etiquette and occurs without any real payoff for the deal.
Jill Comfort, a Phoenix-area Realtor, was showing a client a home recently and noticed multiple surveillance cameras recording everything that went on as prospective buyers walked through.
“When we were walking out of the hallway we could see they were following us,” Comfort said. Both agent and client felt “awkward,” she added.
“I can understand where some sellers are leery of strangers walking through their house, but that’s what happens when you put your house on the market,” Comfort said. Her client, she said, was “creeped out.”
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