I spent a career in law enforcement before I ever held a real estate license. You can retire from that work, but you cannot retire the eyes. Walk me through any house in Traverse City and I will tell you where the spare key lives, which window does not latch, and how fast a stranger could learn your family's weekly routine without opening a single drawer.
That habit turned out to be the most useful thing I brought to my second act. Because an open house, when you stop and think about it, is a strange ritual. You spend years locking your doors, and then one Sunday you throw them open and invite strangers to wander through while you are somewhere else entirely.
I am a fan of the open house. Buyers need to stand in a home before they will fall for it. But you should prepare for one the way I prepare my sellers, because the National Association of Realtors surveyed its members in 2024 and one agent in twenty reported a client having property stolen during an open house. That number should be zero. At my listings, it is.
Start with the medicine cabinet, because that is where the wrong kind of visitor starts. There are people who tour open houses in pairs for a living. One keeps the agent busy with thoughtful questions about the furnace while the other visits your bathroom. They are not there for your towels. Prescription medications, especially painkillers and anything for anxiety or attention, have street value, and the bottles disappear in seconds. Moving them to a different cabinet does not count. Put them in a bag and take them with you for the afternoon.
Now the kitchen counter. A pile of mail is a biography. Your full name, your bank, your insurance company, sometimes an account number, all stacked neatly next to the coffee maker. Into a drawer that locks, or into the car with the medications. Same goes for the family command center. Leave the framed photos up, they make a house feel loved. Take down the whiteboard that says hockey is Tuesdays at six and Grandma has the kids on Thursdays. Nobody touring your home needs your schedule.
Then everything that works like a key without looking like one. The bowl by the door with the spare set. The garage remote clipped to the visor of the car in the driveway. A remote is a key. Jewelry, watches, laptops, and tablets go out of sight and preferably out of the house. If you own firearms, they are already locked in a safe, and if they are not, this is the week to fix that.
Here is the one almost nobody thinks about. When the open house ends, walk your home and check every window latch and every door, including the slider to the deck and the basement windows behind the shrubs. A patient thief takes nothing on Sunday. He unlocks a window on Sunday and comes back Thursday. Thirty seconds of checking closes that door, literally.
One more subject, since I get asked constantly: cameras. In one national survey, almost a third of sellers admitted to using hidden cameras during showings. I understand the temptation, and video security inside your own home is generally within your rights as the owner in Michigan. Audio is a different animal. Michigan's eavesdropping law treats recording a private conversation you are not part of as a felony, and two buyers whispering with their agent in your kitchen is exactly that kind of conversation. So if you have cameras, tell your agent so we can disclose them properly, and turn the microphones off. And when you are the buyer touring someone else's home, assume you are on camera the whole time. Save your negotiation strategy for the sidewalk.
None of this takes more than an afternoon, and none of it should scare you off from selling. Thousands of open houses happen in Northern Michigan every year without a single incident, and preparation is a big part of why. A well run open house is still one of the best tools we have for finding the person who will love your home next.
People sometimes ask what a cop is doing in real estate. As far as I can tell, it is the same job I have always had. You show up, you pay attention, and you protect people during the biggest moments of their lives. The open house just has better cookies.
