I don't know if this is a common thing, or may be it's just a pure coincidence that I came across a few times just in the last two months.

When I schedule with a listing agent to see a home, and most times it's either a short sale or REO, especially a REO, the home is vacant and you have a lock box with a four digit combination code.

Now once in a while I will be at the property on time and the agent's running late, and I would get a call from them saying "go on ahead, the code is xxxx and I'll be there in 10 minutes". I double check with them to make sure it's OK and then I go in to have a look see.

I would say out of may be two dozen homes I saw in the last two months, about six homes I was given a code to enter by myself because they were running late, and three of the homes are from the same realtor - different offices, different agents though...

The curious thing, they all have the same combination code. Three agents of the same firm in different offices, same code.

Is this typical? They just decided to adopt a single code so no one has to remember it's always that code?