Working in a Vacant Listed Home

Why this matters

In an occupied home, one person controls the door, the thermostat, the alarm and the water, and they are standing next to you. In a vacant listed home, those same things are controlled by four or five different people, none of them on site, and the house will be shown to strangers an hour after you leave. If a pipe weeps under the sink you worked on, if the alarm brings the police, if a staging sofa gets a grease mark, the lockbox log shows your entry as the last one before anybody noticed. A vacant listing is not a harder job technically. It is a job where you are the most recent witness to the condition of a house nobody is watching.

This card is the knowledge: who controls what, and what each thing does to your visit. The visit itself, step by step, is in The Vacant Home Access and Exit SOP.

Who controls what

The table is the reason for the rule that runs through this whole card: every one of these is somebody else's decision, so you ask before you change it and you leave it as you found it unless told otherwise in writing.

Lockboxes

Electronic lockboxes are opened through an agent's app or key and log every access: who, when, sometimes how long. Many systems let the listing agent issue a one-time or one-day code to a contractor. That log is the house's diary. If damage turns up next week, it is the first thing the agent checks, and your entry will be in it whether you did anything or not. That is why your own arrival photos matter so much; the log says you were there, and only your photos say what it looked like when you got there.

Combination lockboxes are cheaper and leave no log. Treat the combination as private to the job: do not write it on the work order, do not text it to a second tech without the agent's permission, and do not leave the box open.

Two rules that do not bend. Never copy a key from a lockbox. Never hand the code to anybody else, including the buyer or the buyer's agent who turns up and asks to "take a look while you're here." Entry belongs to the listing agent; let them grant it.

Utilities

A vacant home is in one of three states, and you should know which before you arrive:

• All on, in the seller's name. Typical for a recently vacated home or one being shown in winter. You can work normally, but your test run of a system uses the seller's water and power, so keep it to what the job needs.
• Power on, water and gas off. Common. Water is often off at the main shutoff inside, sometimes at the curb stop at the street, which is the utility's valve. Gas is often off at the meter, and a lock or tag on the meter valve means the utility shut it, and only the utility reopens it.
• Everything off. A long vacancy, a foreclosure, an estate. No light, no heat, no water to test with.

Why it matters for your quote and your visit. If you need water to test a repair and the main is off, someone has to authorize turning it on, and a house that has been dry for months may have a freeze crack nobody has found. If you need gas to test an appliance and the meter is locked, you cannot test it today, and the quote should have said so. Ask on the intake call; the agent often does not know, so ask them to ask the seller.

If the house is winterized

A winterized house has been drained to survive cold without heat: the main shut, supply lines blown out with air, the water heater drained, and antifreeze poured into traps and toilet bowls. There is usually a tag or sticker on the main valve and on fixtures saying not to turn the water on. Those tags often come from a preservation company working for a lender, and some lenders treat de-winterizing without an order as damage to their collateral.

The rule: do not open a winterized system to do your job. If your work needs water, the restoration is a separate job with its own permission and its own sequence. See related: Restoring a Winterized Vacant Home for Inspection.

Alarms and staged furniture

Alarms

Many vacant listings keep the alarm active because vacant homes attract break-ins. Get the disarm code and the verbal passcode the monitoring company asks for. If you trip it, disarm it, call the monitoring company yourself with the passcode before they dispatch, then text the agent. If you cannot disarm it, leave, stay visible outside, and call the agent; do not keep working while an alarm sounds and a police unit is on its way to a "break-in" in progress.

Motion sensors and cameras. Some sellers run indoor cameras. Assume you are recorded, and behave and speak accordingly.

Staged furniture

Staging furniture is usually rented by the seller from a staging company, which means the person who will claim for a scratch is a business you have never met, with photos of the room taken before you arrived. Cover anything near your work with drop cloths, move nothing heavy without asking the agent, and photograph the room before and after. A rug moved to reach an access panel goes back in the same spot, because the agent will notice it moved and wonder what else did.

Showings during your work

The showing service may still book slots while you are there unless the agent blocks your window. Ask for that block on the intake call, and ask again the morning of the job. If buyers come in anyway:

• Make open work safe and visible. A removed panel cover, an open crawlspace hatch or a pulled ceiling tile is a hazard to a stranger walking through. Put the cover back, close the hatch, or stand at it.
• Say nothing about the house's condition. A buyer who asks "is the furnace any good?" is asking you to give advice to someone who is not your customer, about a house you are working on for someone else. The answer is: "I'm working for the seller today, so please ask your agent; they can get you anything I find."

Why so firm: what you say in a showing can reach a negotiation or a disclosure argument. See related: Who Is Your Customer in a Real Estate Deal, and Your Findings and the Seller Disclosure Obligation.

Hazards that come with vacancy

• Somebody may be inside. Knock and announce before entering, even with a code. If you find signs of someone living there, such as bedding, food or a lit space heater, leave, do not confront anyone, and call the agent; call the police if you feel threatened.
• Rodents. Empty houses collect them. The CDC's hantavirus guidance is specific: do not sweep or vacuum droppings, which puts virus-laden dust into the air you breathe; air the space out for at least 30 minutes, wet the droppings with a disinfectant or a bleach solution of 1 part bleach to 10 parts water, let it soak 5 minutes, then wipe up wearing gloves. A crawlspace or attic heavy with droppings is a cleanup job before it is your job.
• Dry traps. A trap that has evaporated lets sewer gas into the house. The smell is the cue; pour water into floor drains and unused fixtures to reseal them, unless the house is winterized and those traps are supposed to hold antifreeze.
• No power. No light means you bring your own, and a dark basement with standing water is one you do not step into: if the panel can be reached from dry floor, a qualified person shuts off the circuits serving that area first; if it cannot, you leave and the agent calls an electrician.

A worked day

A pest control tech is booked for a termite clearance inspection at a vacant listed home for a buyer's lender. The agent issues a one-day lockbox code by text at 8:10 am, and blocks showings from 10 to 12.

10:02. Knocks, announces, enters. Alarm keypad beeps; she disarms with the code from the intake note. Photographs the entry, the living room staging and the kitchen.

10:06. Notices the thermostat reads 52 F with the heat set to 50. Fine for vacancy; she leaves it.

10:20. In the crawlspace, finds droppings at the access. She backs out, airs the crawlspace with the hatch and vents open for 30 minutes while she does the exterior, then wets and wipes the area at the hatch before going in, gloved, and wearing the respirator her shop issues under its written respiratory protection program per 29 CFR 1910.134.

11:15. A buyer couple and their agent walk in; the showing had been booked before the block. She closes the crawlspace hatch, tells them she is working for the seller and to ask their agent anything about the house, and steps outside until they leave at 11:30.

11:55. Done. Hatch closed, rug back over it, alarm re-armed, lockbox closed, code not reused. Texts the agent: work done, droppings at the crawl access noted, a showing came in at 11:15 during the block.

The decision that mattered. The 11:15 showing was the agent's mistake, not hers, but the open hatch would have been her problem if a buyer had stepped in it. Closing it took ten seconds and was the most important thing she did all morning.

How to tell you handled it right

You handled a vacant listing well if, the next time something goes wrong in that house, your own record answers every question without your memory: arrival photos timestamped before you touched anything, a note of the utilities as found, what you changed and who approved it, the alarm state on exit, and a message to the agent sent before you drove away. If any of those is missing, the gap is where the blame will settle.

References

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cleaning up after rodents (hantavirus prevention guidance)
• Your listing agent's lockbox and showing-service access rules
• See related: The Vacant Home Access and Exit SOP
• See related: Restoring a Winterized Vacant Home for Inspection
• See related: Who Is Your Customer in a Real Estate Deal