Question for Female Investors

[Nadine Delille]

Good afternoon my fellow female investors,

I am new to investing and at the point where I am ready to reach out to homeowners that are selling their homes. As a female investor that will most likely go to visit homeowners alone, what suggestions do you have or strategies do you have when going to meet with sellers at their homes? I ask more so in a form of protection and if anyone has had any bad experiences with visiting sellers? 

[Chris Mason]

FWIW @Nadine Delille,

Some background stuff that sometimes goes on, that most homebuyers have no idea is going on.

Realtor I work with gets me in on the loop when she is showing houses after nightfall. She texts me right before she meets the client letting me know how long it should take and the property address. 15 minutes after her ETA if she hasn't texted again, I call her. 

Some real estate agents also will not show houses (after nightfall, or at all, or maybe in certain neighborhoods, etc) to someone that isn't preapproved, and they will just text a fellow agent "showing John Smith 123 Main St, preapproved with Sally Joe at ABC lending." Ya know what comes implicit with a preapproval letter? A 3rd party knowing that person's name, dob, ssn, where they live (not just what they say, but also their address according to tax returns, photo ID, paystubs, bank statements, etc), what their contact info is, who their spouse is if married, what other associates they might have as revealed  by joint bank accounts, what AKA names appear on their credit report, what OTHER addresses might show up on said credit report (often family members), car loan numbers that can be used to identify model/make/license plate of car to look out for, and so on. This is all very private information and we treat it as such and have all sorts of information security stuff in place, but if the police come a-knocking because a real estate professional (one of our own) went missing, there's signs of struggle in the kitchen of the house she was showing, and Homebuyer Fred is suddenly nowhere to be found, you bet your butt we're going to do what we can to help (after checking with the compliance department, of course).

Most of that might not apply exactly to what you are doing,  but there should be some nuggets you can pull out and adapt.