The fatal shooting of a 27-year-old real estate agent during an Iowa open house in 2011 shook her industry, which responded with a slate of measures aimed at keeping others in the profession safe.
But in interviews with NBC News after an arrest last week in the long-dormant case, some in the industry said the barrage of threats and risks persist and not enough has been done to protect agents.
Gavin Blair, CEO of the Iowa Association of Realtors, described Ashley Okland’s killing as a “worst case scenario” that pushed the industry to confront the sometimes dangerous reality of real estate work with a “safety pledge” of best practices.
What emerged in the years after Okland’s death is a job that, in some ways, might be unrecognizable to past generations of agents. Many now carry guns or other means of self-protection, according to a survey released two years ago by the nation’s largest real estate trade organization, the National Association of Realtors.
In interviews, some agents said they screen would-be clients with a background check service before they ever speak. Some require identification for showings ahead of time and refuse to park in driveways to prevent being boxed in by a possible assailant. Such measures are included in the pledge.
Beth Andress, who with her husband, Rob Andress, teaches violence prevention and self-defense to real estate professionals in Canada and the U.S., described the potential dangers agents face as urgent and said certain safety measures should be required by law, and not merely recommended.
“We need to really understand that real estate is one of the only professions where you meet strangers alone in private, enclosed spaces, with no standardized screening process,” Beth Andress said. “The entire industry has normalized that risk, so many people don’t even recognize that risk anymore.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the National Association of Realtors said the organization “is committed to the welfare and safety of its members, with a sustained focus on providing resources, education, and research to support real estate professionals in the field. We strongly encourage state and local associations, brokerages, and members to keep safety top of mind every day of the year.”
Making a deal or staying safe
Data included in the association’s 2024 survey — its most recent — shows that nearly a quarter of the 1,423 respondents experienced a situation that made them fear for their personal safety or the safety of their personal information. That number was unchanged from the year before, the survey shows.
Nearly half of the respondents said their brokerage either did not have safety procedures in place or they weren’t aware of such protocols. Forty percent said they’d met a new or prospective client alone at a secluded location. Nearly half said they’d shown a vacant property in an area with poor or no cell coverage in the last year.
The association spokesperson said the data shows progress from previous years, “underscoring the importance of continued education and tools that support agent safety in real-world conditions.”
To Katy Caldwell, a longtime agent in Louisiana and co-host of the real estate podcast “Hustle Humbly,” the data shows something else.
“There’s no drastic change to the behavior of agents, because it’s such a cutthroat industry,” she said. “The vast majority of agents are barely making a living wage. You really don’t want to turn away potential business.”
But since those safety recommendations are not required, she said, agents may forgo them, fearing lost business from possible clients who aren’t used to providing identification before a showing, for example. Or those possible clients may just walk away if the process isn’t what they’re used to, she said.
Other agents described the push for safety and the need to make a deal as a sometimes complicated balancing act.
Alex Harper, an agent in Texas, has a safety checklist that is robust. She often carries a gun, she said, and she uses an app to run background checks on any phone numbers she doesn’t recognize. If she’s meeting a man for a showing, she said, she’ll have someone tag along. She never parks in driveways, she said, and any time she walks into a vacant home alone, she locks the door behind her.
“We’re given the safety pledge of, hey, do your best to be safe,” she said. “But at the same time, we have a fiduciary duty to our clients to sell their property. The phrasing and the verbiage and the way that these listing agreements read is like, you’re going to do your utmost best to sell this property, and that means if someone calls you, you’re going to show it.”
The unpredictable nature of the job can easily tweak the best laid plans, said Chelsea Pearson, an agent in North Carolina who has her own safety checklist that includes carrying multiple “items” for protection during showings.
“You could be out showing a home, and you only have plans to show that one home, but then the client decides they want to see another home,” she said. “And so it just gets added to your day and it’s difficult to be able to plan it out.”
Another factor that could be pushing agents — especially younger ones — to make deals at the expense of safety is the commission-based structure of the business, Harper said. Because agents are independent contractors, she added, they may have less support than employees.
Kristi Gonzales, a longtime agent in Texas, said that her brokerage, which Harper works for, is strong on safety issues — a reality that is far different than when she started in the industry nearly two decades ago. Back then, she said, there was no emphasis on safety.
It wasn’t until Okland’s killing, Gonzales said, that she began to take the issue seriously.
“We don’t realize how vulnerable we are on a day-to-day basis just to do our jobs,” she said.
The Iowa killing that rocked the industry
Okland worked for Iowa Realty, the state’s largest real estate company, when she was killed on April 8, 2011. At the time, she was working an open house in a West Des Moines townhouse development.
Authorities have released few details about her death, including a possible motive.
The woman charged in her murder, Kristin Ramsey, began working for a title and escrow company owned by Iowa Realty in the months after Okland’s death, Iowa Realty said last week. Ramsey, 53, has been held in a Dallas County, Iowa, jail since March 17, with bail set at $2 million.
“Along with everyone in our community, we are understandably stunned,” Iowa Realty said in a statement after Ramsey’s arrest.
In a filing last week, Ramsey’s attorneys said that she had no criminal record and a “seamless” employment history since her graduation from community college. She “adamantly” maintains her innocence, the filing states.
Harper, one of the Texas agents, said she was a senior in high school when Okland was killed and already knew she wanted to be a real estate agent. Now 31, she said that in her 13 years on the job, she’s had more than 30 uncomfortable experiences.
Among them, she said, was a series of calls from a man who would spoof different phone numbers and begin by asking real estate questions. Those conversations devolved into vulgar comments, she said.
The calls began at 4 a.m. from a number that spoofed her office phone, Harper said, and they didn’t end until months later, after she used an app that revealed the man’s real phone number and her husband confronted him.
Assaults, kidnappings, murder plots
In the Realtors’ association survey, less than 4% of the respondents identified themselves as crime victims — a category that includes identity theft, robbery, assault and unidentified crimes. Media reports from across the United States last year showed allegations of agents being sexually assaulted, kidnapped and physically assaulted at open houses, showings and in a vacant home.
In Texas, a man was charged after allegedly sticking his camera up the skirt of an agent during a showing. In Minnesota, a man was sentenced to life in prison for plotting the murder of a real estate agent in part by luring her to a bogus showing.
Beth Andress said she and her husband have met hundreds of real estate professionals who are crime victims. The most common complaint was sexual harassment and assault, she said, and the majority of the victims did not report their allegations to their brokerages or authorities, often because they felt they wouldn’t be taken seriously or out of fear that they’d develop a reputation for reporting “sexual advances.”
To her, the key to preventing most of these situations is stronger workplace safety rules. Among the measures that should be required, they said, is safety education and standardized safety protocols across brokerages, she said. Agents should also have to request identification ahead of meetings and they should be trained on how to verify it, she said.
“Right now, that decision is left up to the individual agent, and it’s inconsistent across the industry,” she said. “Some agents ask for ID, some don’t, and that inconsistency risks lives. This isn’t about making things complicated — it’s about creating a baseline where there’s accountability before the meeting ever happens.”