Photo is unrelated to the article. [Getty Images Bank]
Photo is unrelated to the article. [Getty Images Bank]

An incident in which an unknown real estate agent used a door code to enter a tenant's home without permission — while the tenant was asleep and undressed — has gone viral online, reigniting debate over the risks of so-called co-brokering, a practice in which multiple agents share a property's access codes.

The account surfaced Monday on the social media platform Threads, drawing wide attention to agents who enter properties to show them without the resident's prior consent.

The victim, identified only as A, said an agent she had never given her door code to opened the front door and walked in with a prospective buyer while she was sleeping at home without clothes on. "I had not discussed it in advance, and I had never even given that agent my password," she wrote.

A said she had listed her home for sale ahead of a planned move. She had previously shared the door code with one agent after receiving a showing request while she was traveling. The problem came later, when a different agent — one she had never given the code to — entered without warning or prior consent. That agent reportedly said another agent had passed along the code, and that after sending A a text message and receiving no reply, the agent had assumed the unit was empty.

A shared screenshots of apology text messages she received from both agents and said she was weighing whether to let the matter go or file a complaint for residential trespass.

In one message, an agent wrote: "If it's all right with you, may I come by this evening to apologize in person? I will make sure this never happens again." The other wrote: "I am so, so sorry. I truly don't know how to begin to apologize."

The post drew a flood of similar accounts from other users. One commenter wrote that they had been lucky enough to change their door code before going to sleep, only to be woken by a security alarm when an agent they had never contacted tried to open the door anyway — and that when confronted, the agent said they had tried because there was no reply, and when told that was no excuse, shot back, "Then when am I supposed to show the place?" Another user recalled moving into a newly built unit as its first resident and placing a move-in sticker at the entrance, only to step out of the shower and find two women letting themselves in with a master key.

There are documented cases of licensed agents being punished for sharing clients' door codes with other brokers.

In April 2024, a real estate agent in her 50s in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, was indicted on charges of providing another agent with the lobby and front-door codes of a rental property she had been entrusted with, and was fined 500,000 won ($361).

In June last year, a man who had come to view a Seoul home memorized the door code by watching the agent enter it, then returned alone 20 minutes later, broke in, and stole cash, valuables and a credit card before fleeing — and was later arrested by police.


jshan@heraldcorp.com