Bar the Door for Rude Brokers

* Regarding your article of Nov. 9, “High-Tech Key Safes Increase Buyer Traffic, Convenience.� I understand the value of the key safe, but it seems to me that brokers abuse it.

I live in the San Fernando Valley, and am proud of it in spite of all the negative publicity, unjustly I might add, that it gets. My home has been for sale for six months and I have so many horror stories regarding brokers, not buyers. Brokers are rude, insensitive, slovenly and completely irresponsible.

On several occasions I have been home when a broker knocks on the door. Before I have a chance to come to the door they have opened the key safe and entered. I have been caught coming out of the shower, changing clothes, sick in bed, having dinner. Name it and it has happened. The brokers rarely apologize and simply push through, switching on lights and leaving them on as they go out the front door without even shutting it.

I have since taken to double-locking the door when I am home so that the broker has to wait until I answer or the key will not open the door. The incident that prompted this letter happened last night. My husband and I had just arrived home and it was late and dark, so we double-locked the front door and proceeded to change for dinner. I heard a brief knock and in three seconds the key was in the door. Of course it did not open. I had forgotten that the gardeners had been here and that meant that the back gate was still unlocked. In a flash, and ignoring the “Beware of Dog� sign, a woman was standing in my kitchen. She yelled at me that the key wouldn’t work in the front door. I just told her to leave, but asked her what real estate firm she was with. She wouldn’t answer. She is extremely lucky that we don’t keep a gun in our home and that our dog was inside.

What this rude woman has forgotten is that because she used the key safe I have found out what real estate firm she is with and I will do something about her ignorance and rudeness.

This is only one of the incidents I have endured since my home has been on this awful market. My home has been left open, my flowers trimmed, my food eaten, my phone answered. I caught a broker asleep on my sofa with the door wide open, and my own broker invites clients to do business in my home while supposedly conducting an open house.

My conclusion, maybe I should start a school to train brokers on how to be responsible and courteous, if that is possible.

ADRIENNE GLASS

Valley Village