There's a change coming.

The local REALTOR associations have negotiated new lockbox agreements with various suppliers.

If you're not familiar with what lockboxes are, it's what a real estate agent puts on your front door to allow other agents access for showing your home when it's for sale. There are a variety of these devices out there and, of course, they're completely incompatible.

For the last few years, all associations have used the same equipment. So, if I was based in Warrenton and had clients who wanted to see a home in Leesburg, there was no problem showing them that house.

All that changes in the next few months. The association I belong to GPAAR (Greater Piedmont Area Association of REALTORS) has chosen one system. The Prince William Area association and the Northern Virginia area will be on the same system. The Dulles Area and Blue Ridge Area associations have gone in a different direction.

It's not that agents won't be able to show homes in both areas. They can buy both sets of equipment and still be able to show anything, anywhere. But in a tough market where every cost is scrutinized, not every agent can or will foot that bill.

And, so, on behalf of my fellow REALTORS, I apologize to you our clients. This is clearly a disservice to all of you. I believe we need to keep out clients in mind as we make decisions and clearly you all were not our primary focus here. In a market where it's already hard enough for the average seller to get a buyer to come and look at their home, we've just added another obstacle.

I'm not pointing fingers at anyone association or at any group of individuals. We all share the blame here and should have found a way to get this right.

So, a big "I'm Sorry" and a promise to my clients that I'll do everything I can do to protect you from this mess!

When I want to show a listing to a buyer, I use a lockbox to enter the house. Typically, in this area (Prince William, Fauquier, Culpeper, Rappahannock and Warren counties) that generally means an electronic lockbox that often looks like this:

To access this box and get the house key out, I use an electronic device that's been updated with a special code within the last 24 hours. It's an extra level of protection for the homeowner in case my "ekey" is stolen. Within 24 hours it's essentially worthless unless you know my passwords in order to get it updated.

The other advantage of this lockbox is that I know who has shown my listings. If something is missing, left unlocked, etc. I likely know who to track down to ask about the problem.

There have always been a few holdouts who still used combination (combo) lockboxes:

These boxes require only an alpha or numeric code in order to open them and access the key. If I know the combination I could, theoretically, give that information to someone else and that's all they'd need to access the keys to your home. It's a less secure method of access. The advantage in some agents' eyes is that if someone from outside our area wants to show the house, there's no problem if they don't use the same lockbox system used in this area.

With the large number of foreclosures in our area, we're seeing a big increase in the use of these combination lockboxes. Most banks will mandate that a combo box be used on their listings. I've had trouble coming up with a good reason for this. The only thing I can think of is that they want bank personnel to be able to access the property if necessary, without a real estate agent present.

I was troubled this week to learn that a local agent had mentioned that if he's unable to show a home when his buyer clients want to see it and he can't find any other agent to cover for him, he'll simply give his clients the combination and let them go in the house on their own.

Hmmmmm! The number of reasons this is a bad idea is very long. The liability to the agent should anything go wrong, is huge. It could be that his clients are good people with the best of intentions but they have trouble getting the keys back into the lockbox. It happens all the time. It is, of course, highly unprofessional and, I'd suggest, unethical. The listing agent should definitely be making a phone call to the agent's broker at the very least, to protest this behavior.

By the way, when the agent was confronted with what a bad idea this was the response was "Everybody does it." I never got that one by my Mom. And, I'm not buying it now!