Many home sellers are forgetting to hide their prescription drugs prior to an open house, warn real estate professionals.
Besides staging, decluttering, and stowing away jewelry or valuables, home sellers are overlooking the need to tuck prescription drugs away from medicine cabinets and drawers, they say. A recent article at realtor.com® warns of the dangers and calls out specific medications like Oxycontin, attention deficit disorder medications like Concerta and Adderall, depression and anxiety medications like Zoloft and Xanax, and sleep aids like Ambien for being targets of open house vandals. Some over-the-counter cough suppressants or heartburn medications also may be at risk of being swiped.
“If you’re getting ready to show your home, walk around the house thinking like a stranger,” realtor.com® notes in the article. “What’s easy to pick up? What might be easy to sell? This is a great guideline for medications, but also for hiding any valuables in your home. Think about wine, perfume bottles, expensive lotions, even your designer tie collection.”
To discard old pill bottles, some real estate professionals are giving their clients Deterra bags and other drug-deactivation systems to safely dispose of them prior to showings. When mixed with warm water, the Deterra bags absorb active ingredients in the pills and make the drugs inactive.
“We’re giving them to agents to give to homeowners when they’re buying or selling homes,” Heidi Kasama, former president of Nevada REALTORS®, told realtor.com®.
Source: “The One Thing Home Sellers Forget to Hide Before an Open House,” realtor.com® (Nov. 5, 2019)
