As real estate agents, making appointments with strangers and then go alone to meet them in empty houses is a part of a daily routine.
According to a CNBC report, about 38 percent of real estate agents and brokers surveyed say they fear for their personal safety. Among female agents, the share is closer to half, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Among the most worrisome situations are open houses, vacant or model home showings, properties that were unlocked or unsecured, and properties in remote areas. Concern in the industry is rising, as seven agents have been murdered between 2011 and 2015, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Now, a new problem raises its head: drug addicts. A growing opioid crisis has put some real estate agents, especially those who represent higher-end properties, in the crosshairs. Addicts are posing as potential homebuyers and booking house tours in order to get access to medicine cabinets.
That is where Forewarn comes in. It is a subsidiary of Cogint and is offering an app that will perform instant background checks on potential clients, akin to a police report.
According to the company, it can instantly analyze billions of data points, using just a client’s name and/or phone number and mines Cogint’s data, using proprietary algorithms. James Reilly, CEO of Forewarn, said Cogint already provides similar information to law enforcement, government and insurance carriers.
“When you’re talking about potentially opening up access to a home, to an environment where prescription drugs may lie, a medicine cabinet of a house that is listed for sale, with doing no vetting or checking of an individual, I think we’re feeding into that crisis by creating these channels of easy access to drugs.”
Reilly said the company can rely on its parent company as a significant source of data.
“Cogint is able to leverage much deeper and much more accurate data … to get a better profile of an individual. That’s the same massive data repository that Forewarn leverages to get information to a real estate agent.”
Moreover, Forewarn is only offering its service to licensed real estate agents and real estate companies. The information can be retrieved online or on an app with costs starting at $4 per month for larger companies and $20 per month for individual agents.
