Inman | Veronika Bondarenko
When giving her presentations to teams of real estate agents, safety expert Tracey Hawkins noticed an alarming pattern: when she clicks on the slide that touches upon attacks and keeping oneself safe, one or two male agents will usually get up and leave the room.
“I go to a screen where I have seven names of real estate agents who have been killed or hurt in the line of duty and, from 2017 to 2019, they were almost all men,” Hawkins told Inman. “But when I look around the room, I see almost exclusively women. The guys who got up and left when they heard the topic are the ones who most need to be there.”
While the statistics do show that female or female-presenting agents are at a higher risk of on-the-job attacks, in recent months a spate of male agents has been targeted as well. In July, a male agent was opening a lockbox when an 18-year-old approached him at gunpoint and demanded his cash and keys. Earlier this month, 66-year-old home inspector Michael Alderson was killed in a shooting that also left two agents wounded while, in the same month, a tenant in Kentucky fatally shot an agent and his wife after they had come to collect money for their investment property.
