Ask the REALTOR: Why would my agent ask me to stay quiet while we’re looking at a house?

Ask the REALTOR® is a regular video series in which I answer your most commonly-asked real estate questions, with a new Q&A posting every week. If YOU have a real estate question for me, drop me a note here.

This week’s question: Why would my agent ask me to stay quiet while we’re looking at a house? Here’s the answer in this brief video, and don’t miss the transcript below.

Transcript:

Hi, this Cari McGee with Keller Williams Realty. Welcome to this week’s episode of “Ask the REALTOR.” Every week, I answer questions from buyers and sellers — and pretty much everyone in between — regarding real estate.

This week’s question is, “Cari, my agent asked me to not say too much in the house when we’re looking at the house. Why would they do that?”

Well, here’s the scoop: When you’re out with your agent, every so often there can be homes with kind of what we would like to call “nanny cams” scattered throughout the house or maybe in just one particular location. It is completely legal for any homeowner to go ahead and videotape you without your knowledge or consent. It is not okay for any homeowner to record any conversations, but oftentimes cameras that record video will also record audio and you can find yourself in a little bit of trouble in that case if you say too much about the house.

For example, say, you are in a house that you love and you’re all excited and you’re like, “Oh, my gosh. This is it! This is it!” And then they’ve recorded your video and audio of you doing that, they play that back and they never even have to tell you that they’ve recorded your audio. They just know it. And you make an offer and you try to lowball the offer. They know that they can go ahead and wait for you to offer full price because you loved the house and they know that because they recorded you. Also, they wouldn’t even have to record audio if, in fact, you were in the house jumping up and down because you loved it so much.

So you just wanna make sure that you do kind of play it cool anywhere inside the house, talk about the house and your likes and dislikes when you’re outside of the property with your agent. That way, you can be sure that nobody in the seller’s camp knows more than they should.

Thank you so much. Have a great week. If you have any questions for me regarding real estate, by all means, give me a shout via any one of the methods that are on the next screen. Bye!