Home sellers are hopping on a growing trend of spying on potential buyers through surveillance cameras. USA TODAY
Home buyer, beware! The seller may be watching. And listening.
A growing number of home sellers are using security cameras and microphones to spy on potential buyers as they tour their houses or condos. They then may use what they hear or see as leverage in price negotiations.
The trend has been fueled by the spread over the past five years of inexpensive Wi-Fi enabled cameras and mics that homeowners can buy and set up themselves for home security. Motion sensors notify them by text or email that a visitor is in their house, and they can then observe a prospective buyer on a computer, laptop or smartphone through the Internet. Alternatively, they can view a recording later.
“Recording devices are cheaper and more readily available,” says Leslie Walker, deputy general counsel of the National Association of Realtors.
Last October, a retired civil service worker bought a three-bedroom house in Richmond Hill, Ga., for about $250,000, says Andi DeFelice, who represented the buyer as a broker at Exclusive Buyer’s Realty. After the retiree moved in, his next-door neighbor told him the seller “’knew he had a buyer the minute you walked through,’” DeFelice recounted.
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Pretend the seller is home
He was right. When DeFelice and her client toured the home, they both gushed that it was perfect for his need for an isolated workshop to tinker with computers and TVs. The property came with a detached small building with a kitchen, bathroom, living area and two-car garage.
DeFelice believes the intelligence the seller had didn’t affect the bargaining. The retiree paid $15,000 less than the asking price. But “it’s not a comfortable feeling to know that you’re being recorded,” says DeFelice, whose agency represents buyers only and who heads the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents. “I was annoyed because my client was annoyed.”
Now, she says, she routinely tells potential buyers to curb their enthusiasm while they’re in the house. “Before we walk in the door, I say, ‘Pretend the seller is home’ or ‘Pretend somebody is listening.’ Because you never know.
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70% would snoop on buyers
In a survey conducted by Harris Poll for NerdWallet this month, 15% of Americans who have ever sold a home said they’ve use surveillance cameras to monitor potential home buyers. And 67% say they would use such cameras if they were selling a home that already had them.
“In a competitive housing market, everything is fair game,” says Holden Lewis, a housing analyst for NerdWallet, a personal finance website.
About 9.4 million U.S. homes, or 7.4% of the total, are equipped with Wi-Fi enabled cameras and mics, says Brad Russell, research director for Parks Associates, a consumer technology research firm. As many as 11 million or so have similar but more limited set-ups trained on the doorstep or outside the house, or embedded in a light fixture, Russell says. That means up to 13% of homes have at least one Wi-Fi camera and mic. The cameras often are visible but can be hidden in stuffed animals, like a “nanny cam,” or concealed in bookshelves. This Web-enabled do-it-yourself home surveillance market didn’t even exist five years ago, Russell says.
By 2022, as many as 50 million homes are projected to have at least one Wi-Fi camera, Parks forecasts. An average camera and mic costs $122, Russell says.
Spying may be illegal
Yet snooping home sellers may be breaking the law.
Surveillance laws vary by state. Video monitoring is generally prohibited in places where someone has “a reasonable expectation of privacy,” according to a summary of state laws compiled by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Such privacy zones likely would not include other people’s homes. In many states, however, eavesdropping or recording audio requires the consent of at least one person being recorded, and some require the sign-off of all the parties.
In other words, audio recording likely would be legal in many states if the home seller is accompanying the buyer. But not in the more common scenario in which the only ones monitored are the house hunter and his or her broker, both unsuspecting.
Sellers “need to disclose it, put a sign up or turn it off,” says Lou Nimkoff, a broker at Brio Real Estate in Winter Park, Fla., and president of the Orlando Regional Realtors Association.
NAR recommends that listing brokers ask home sellers if they’re using surveillance equipment, Walker says. If so, they should tell the buyer’s agent or include a notice in the home listing that all brokers can see, she says. Some regional Realtors’ groups now require home sellers to inform their brokers of any surveillance equipment as part of standard broker contracts, Walker says.
Shhh! Don’t say you like the house!
Gea Elika, a New York City broker, estimates that up to a third of the condominiums he shows have surveillance equipment because most of them cost at least several million dollars. A few years ago, a client saw a camera move as she toured a condo.
“She kind of wanted to get out of there,” says Elika, principal broker at Elika Associates. “She thought it was creepy” and didn’t buy the unit.
Victoria Henderson, a broker at Buyer’s Edge in Bethesda, Md., says she noticed a green light flash on a camera as she showed a young couple a four-bedroom house in Ellicott City about a week ago. She immediately told them, “Don’t say anything like, ‘I love this house.’ ” Now, she says, she also steers clear of criticizing features of a home while in it for fear of offending the owners.
Many home sellers and their brokers have a different perspective. A couple of years ago, sellers in Atlanta used a nanny cam to record what prospective buyers said because they wanted to know what they didn’t like about the house, says their agent, Jen Engel of Keller Knapp. The house had been languishing on the market.
“In my opinion, if you’re not comfortable with (home surveillance), that’s your problem and not mine,” says Engel, who has security cameras in her own house and believes buyers should always assume they’re being recorded. “It’s my house, and I can do it if I want to.”
Kristen’s comments: I, 100%, Vehemently DISAGREE WITH JEN ENGEL, above.
In North and South Carolina, video taping IS legal- but Audio taping is NOT Legal- this law varies per state.
To use security cameras to video tape people as they walk through your home is understandable- you want to make sure strangers are not going through your valuables (although with a licensed and bonded Realtor at their side, that is highly unlikely- in fact, I have never witnessed this in my 27 years of practicing real estate). Open Houses are another story, however, as sellers are vulnerable when they open their doors to everybody and their brother; ie, people that they do not know. Stories have been reported of vandals using Open Houses to steal seller’s valuables, or to ‘case the house’ to come back for a break in later (although this is, thankfully, a rare occurrence). I always tell my Agents to have at least one other person (another Agent or a trusted friend or spouse) to go with them when they hold Open Houses, so when the Agent is downstairs with one prospective buyer, someone else can be upstairs with the rest of the horde touring through the home, as one Agent cannot be in two places at once. This is also important for the Agent’s safety, so they don’t get trapped in a room (that’s a whole other post, folks)!
So, why is Audio taping illegal? Let’s think about this for a minute. Is it really fair and ethical to snoop and eavesdrop on what is supposed to be a client / Broker privileged conversation, with the express intention of gaining the upper hand in the negotiation of your home? Here again, one should go by the ‘Golden Rule”- think back to the times when you were looking at homes, and all of the comments you, or you and your wife or husband, made, while walking through. Whether negative, “Oh my gosh, that wallpaper! That carpet! Disgusting! What century is this couple living in”? Or, if you are super excited because, after what seems like hundreds of homes, you finally found THE one- “I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THIS HOUSE! Do you think that they will throw in the ‘fridge? How much do you think we should offer for it? Do you think we have to go full price to get it, or can we ask for closing costs”?
To try to gain an unfair advantage is, to me, unethical. If you wouldn’t want that done to you, then you shouldn’t be doing it to others. And ask yourself, is your moral compass so weak that you can’t discern the difference between saving a few bucks and screwing the person that in good faith, is bringing you a home sale? Really, folks, this is a no-brainer.
I had this happen about a year and a half ago, when my buyers and I were walking through a home- it was when those baby eaglets were born and nesting, I remember that very clearly, because there was an open laptop left running, smack dab in the middle of the living room. I thought that was very odd, that the sellers hadn’t been advised to put away their valuables prior to showings (which they knew well in advance about, as I try to schedule my appointment at least a day in advance, if possible, for consideration to the sellers, who have to make arrangements to leave the home for showings). Of course, the buyers were all giddy, and we talked about potential offer scenarios, discussed asking the seller to leave certain items like the kitchen table “it’s so perfect here! We would like them to leave it. We really, really love this table, and it fits so perfectly. We won’t want to kill the deal over it, so if they don’t want to leave it, it’s no big deal, but we want to ask for this and the garage shelving, anyway”.
I go back to the office, and pull the comps, flood maps, tax records, past deeds and title, etc.- all of the due diligence stuff that we Brokers do, to make sure that our offer is sound and there are no ‘red flags’ upon discovery, that would disqualify this house (major road coming behind or nearby the house, home was built in a flood plain and would require expensive flood insurance, etc.). We schedule a return appointment to walk through a second time (a second showing is always a good sign of a potential incoming offer).
Two days later, there is a sign in the window, stating that “This home is under video and audio surveillance”. Ah so THAT is what the laptop and “baby eaglets” was all about. GRRRREAT, we find this out now, after we’ve already been surveilled! How do you think that made the buyers (and me!) feel? I was so angry at the sellers trying to ‘dupe’ my unsuspecting buyers, if I could have found them another home that they liked equally well, I would have! I called the other Broker and explained the situation, and his response was, “it’s their home. They can do whatever they want”. Ummm, NO, they can’t. I explained that they were within their rights to video tape, but the law in North Carolina was clear, that it is illegal to audio tape people without their consent, and it was his responsibility to be clear to these sellers going forward about the laws. His response? “Not gonna’ happen”. I made sure to include that in my feedback to the sellers, to be sure, but the damage was already done. We ended up closing on that home, but the process was onerous, with very difficult sellers, and a lazy, indifferent Agent. Once the buyers moved in, the entire street came over to “thank them” for buying the home. All of the other homeowners on the street rally hated these people, and were hopping about with joy to see them pack and move. They even told the buyers that ‘they were praying that nothing happened to make the deal fall through”, so “The Nasties” would be out of their neighborhood, for good. All I could say to my buyers was that, “Karma is a b*tch”!
What do y’all think about audio and video surveillance? Weigh in, below!
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Kristen Haynes, Broker In Charge, GC, CMRS 
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