What a crazy few weeks it has been, we will continue to work through this together and our main concern is staying healthy and well. This means we are adhering to the CDC’s recommendations regarding social distancing and other precautions, for all of our clients this is what it means:
- asking all parties if they have traveled prior to making an appointment
- asking them if they have had any illness or symptoms before meeting with them or showing any homes
- we provide hand sanitizer and wash hands at the time of entering all of our listings
- asking buyers to limit showings to a group of two
- we will have the sellers get lights on and leave them on so this limits touching switches, etc
- no open houses whatsoever at this time
- staff will still be at the office as much as they are comfortable with
- our team meetings and trainings can all be done virtually so the group at the office is limited
- all of our clients can see the virtual tours online at those who request a showing, our agents are happy to do a video prior to a personal showing
- closings will take longer as the lenders were having issues keeping up due to refinances, and now we have a limited number of appraisers wanting to continue to go in and out of homes across the country, along with many offices limiting their staffing at the moment… all of this combined means we will continue to see closing delays and we have a specific addendum ready for these delays.
- most closings can be done digitally at the clients request
We are not sticking our head in the sand, but we are also not creating panic.
Until the government mandates that we have to shut down, we still have clients who are moving to or from our market area for their jobs or various reasons, housing is still a necessity, whether you are buying or renting. Despite all of the uncertainty, real estate as a whole is one of the only areas of the market that has not dropped 30%, and thankfully many crews are still out building the new ones, the government has labeled the construction/home building industry as ESSENTIAL! we had a shortage before this started, and we will have an even larger shortage when this is all said and done. The industry as a whole was much stronger to start with than it was prior to the last downturn, we will come out of this stronger. Interest rates are very good and there are still plenty of buyers looking to purchase!We have seen a slow down and this will likely continue, not only for our industry, but for many. We will continue to support small businesses and this community to the best of our ability! Please reach out to any one of us with questions or concerns or any needs that you might have! There will be opportunity from this, just as with past events which changed our economy.
Interested in buying or selling a home? We would love to help!
Give us a call at 402-563-4663