10 New UPDATES: How Coronavirus Affected Real Estate and How to Overcome It
The world took a big hit in early March when the COVID hit us by surprise. All the normal things we did everyday from looking at tons of property to communicating with buyers and sellers just went out the window.
You see, everything came to a halt just like a car running out of gas in the middle of the intersection. People were just dumbfounded on what to do and how to handle this pandemic. I knew something was wrong when all my free real estate marketing newsletter readers started to decrease. When this happens, I knew the world we once knew was going to be a little different.
I wanted to know how this new Coronavirus real estate market will start to affect business locally and across the world. The COVID-19 was here to stay, so how can we move forward in the world and real estate and still overcome the pandemic.
For those reasons, I asked ten great real estate minds from sorts of backgrounds on how this is affecting their business and what we can do to overcome it. The content I received on this post is just remarkable, and for my readers, I’m confident you will find some value to pass on to your business and well.
Let’s Go.
10 Expert Coronavirus Real Estate Blueprints
As an agent licensed in the States of Ohio and Kentucky, I would have never imagined something like a virus could cause the shutdown of large parts of the country. Generally, during a time frame (spring season) when my website traffic should be going up, instead of March 2020, my website traffic dropped off more than 60%.
I had five deals in the pipeline that were delayed in closing also as a result. Of those five deals, three of them closed at a later date than initially scheduled, and two (same owner and same buyer for both properties) ended up falling apart.
I work with quite a few real estate investors and clients who want to buy and sell homes for their own needs. Those who were actively searching at the time of the initial virus surge slowed down their plans to purchase properties. Now though, as the economies are opening up here in mid to late May, I am getting calls and emails from clients ready to start exploring the real estate market again, which is a good sign.
While my website traffic is slowly starting to tick back up again, I think it may be a while before everything is back to normal yet. I will continue to post blog articles once weekly on my website as well as share information across my social media profiles.
I am considering adding more video content to my website and social media channels to reach out to real estate consumers in a different format. Regardless of the economic impact and whether the economy is excellent or not, people will want to buy and sell real estate since people need somewhere to live. By keeping up my usual blogging and social media sharing, I will continue to reach out to those people.
Paul Sian of Cincinnati, Ohio, works with home buyers, sellers, and investors in the Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, and Northern Kentucky area.
To get some opinions on the real estate market, I reached out to Bill Gassett of RE/MAX Executive Realty in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Bill runs Maximum Real Estate Exposure, which is a well known real estate blog. Here is what Bill told me.
“Antonio, thanks for the opportunity to share my expertise with your readers. I appreciate it.
When the pandemic first hit, there was no doubt that my business was impacted in a fairly dramatic fashion. Not only were my listings sitting with little activity, but I was also not getting as many calls from potential sellers in the Metrowest Massachusetts area.
That all changed in the last couple of weeks. The market right now is red hot. It feels almost like a typical spring market like the last few years. Numerous homes are receiving multiple bids and selling for over asking price.
Are things different? They sure are! There are no open houses, buyers and their agents are required to wear masks, and showings are spread out.
People keep asking me my opinion of where I see things headed both long and short term. I expect the next couple of months to be healthy but am more fearful of the end of the summer and into the fall. We still have an inventory shortage right now, but at some point, that could change.
If more sellers put their homes on the market, will we have enough buyers to sustain the market? There are 40 million people out of work. It would be unrealistic to think that some of those folks wouldn’t have been purchasing a home. The question is how many and will their jobs come back at some point.”
In the past week, our website traffic to WebinarNinja, our webinar software, has grown over 400%, and our new users have tripled.
Given the situation with COVID-19, many of our new users are now rushing to find a solution to replace their in-person training and workshops with live video webinars. Many businesses were running regular live events, training programs, and workshops that took place in large venues or offices and now need to move them online.
We, as webinar software, always knew that this is where the future is heading, but the future just came early for all of us. As former educators, we saw this coming.
For online business owners, webinars are not a new thing. Most of our users before COVID-19 ran webinar workshops to grow their audience and offered their paid training and services with webinars. One of our users and supporters, John Lee Dumas from EOFIRE.COM, made over $2,000,000 in sales in 2019 with the use of webinars.
Another user of WebinarNinja is The Merry Maker Sisters, who offer yoga, pilates, and mediation courses online and use webinars to promote and sell their courses.
We have users from all industries: financial advisors, real estate agents, health and fitness experts, HR managers, life coaches, copywriters, artists, technicians…I can go on and on.
Webinars and online courses allow people to learn from anywhere from any device. It gives access to information and training for a fraction of the cost of attending a live event. And that is not even accounting for travel costs. It also allows for the trainers and event organizers to run these events at a fraction of the cost of doing it live. It also mitigates the risks involved with doing live events.
I have a few resources to help people with their first webinar or online training.
– A free 7 part video course: https://webinarninja.com/webinar-course/
– Full detailed guide: https://webinarninja.com/how-to-run-a-webinar/
Feel free to use any content there or share the links.
Our take and recommendation are to plan as if the current COVID-19 situation will continue for the next 18 months. It’s always better to prepare for the worst-case scenario if things improve, great! You don’t lose anything for planning.
Optimism can be a weakness in entrepreneurship if it affects your planning and preparation. Always plan for the worse and hope for the best.
In light of current market conditions, we wanted to share the way we are doing business and, really, the way we have been set up to do business for over a decade. The Dawn Thomas Team has created all new best practices to continue to serve our clients with a level of service that they have come to expect from us.
Once restrictions ease, we will continue to utilize the technologies and systems that have been in place to keep you informed and to serve you better. If any of the “virtual” terms or practices below are foreign to you, please let us know. We would be happy to explain to them or show you examples.
- Create Virtual 3D Tours for all of our property owners.
- Create Video Tours for all of our property owners.
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Home2Market provides property websites and online marketing services for real estate agents, so when fewer homes are listed, our business suffers proportionally. Typically, the spring is a hectic time of year for us, however this year, we have seen a sharp decline in the number of properties listed on our site.
It’s our understanding that many agents will need to host their open houses virtually, so we’re changing our service to enable them to display their virtual open house meeting information on their property websites. Agents will be able to cut and paste their virtual meeting link into their property website so that buyers can click on that link and quickly add the virtual meeting to their calendar.
To help out agents that are feeling the economic strain from this pandemic, we are temporarily offering our property websites for free until the business starts to normalize. To take advantage of this program, agents can order services as usual and enter the following coupon code during checkout: COVID19.
It is still too early to know how this will affect our industry as a whole and our business on a local level. Initially, it seemed to be business as usual minus taking extra precautions and not being able to do open houses. Then the initial shelter-in-place put our state on pause for about three days. Once real estate professionals were deemed essential, we worked on pivoting our business model.
We know two things about our local real estate market; 1 is that people still need to move two that the way we do real estate will be different. Aside from no longer holding open houses, showing homes one person at a time while maintaining social distancing and carrying a COVID-19 showing kit including mask, nitrile gloves, hand sanitizer, and disinfecting wipes. We provide a full suite of Virtual Real Estate Services.
We have a Zoom account so that we can meet with clients virtually for buyer presentations, listing presentations, and general consulting. We use authenticity so that clients can sign all legal documents from the safety of their homes. We offer a Matterport 3D virtual tour for every listing so that clients can tour the home virtually if they choose.
We offer virtual staging services with our professional HD photography so that we can create that Wow first impression without putting our clients in harm’s way. We also provide virtual video production and create a video of our clients listing without having to send anyone to the home and giving potential clients more opportunity to decide on a home.
While things are not the same as they were, and may never be, we are still performing our real estate services. We have just pushed as much toward virtual as possible. We are trying to limit having to leave the house or be in contact with others.
For the past 20 years, there has been a strong demand for mobile home buyers and mobile home sellers in all markets. There is going to be a lot of pain, suffering, and hurt in the next few months, maybe longer. There already is. We’re already beginning to see mobile home sellers needing to sell directly for reasons due to COVID. It is our job as mobile home investors to educate the sellers on their options and try to help the seller if possible.
The difference between 2020 versus 2010 (when it comes to mobile home investing) is that single-family home prices are still relatively high, pushing mobile home prices higher as well. Additionally, there is more interest in mobile homes from investors these days. These factors equal more cash buyers today versus years ago.
For the active mobile home investor, this means that while there will be a wave of mobile home sellers needing to sell for a variety of reasons, each diligent mobile home buyer should still react quickly and not wait around if the deal is right. Close the home and move on to the next one.
Website –
Thus, a global epidemic will have a tremendous long-term impact. Here in Indonesia, my government seems slow in responding.
As business people, we will undoubtedly try to survive in any condition.
I am a blogger who writes anything that I find interesting, useful to many people, and profitable for my small business.
I’m not in the real estate business. I was in the printing business, as for my writing about real estate related only to the design of its sales website.
Thank you for contacting and anything at home, stay healthy and take care of your family.
Do your best; keep your distance, exercise regularly, and consume vitamins. Stay positive thinking so that your immune is maintained.
Business can be rebuilt, but there is no formula for rising from the dead.
As it had happened ten years ago, this plague will end soon. And a world with all the hustle and bustle of its business will get better.
Strengthening digital communication
With Paris in full lock-down, we’ve had to suspend any in-person showings and open houses for the time being. Although there’s nothing like physically stepping foot on a property to seal the deal, almost all of our clients’ first-time property “viewings” are virtual ones, taking place online.
We will thus be fully exploiting our digital capacities, from online ad space and photos and videos to 3D virtual tours, to continue promoting properties despite the situation.
Continued on the ground service
We also pride ourselves on our thorough understanding of the city and the unique makeup of each of its different neighborhoods. We’ve sold properties before sight-unseen, with our clients visiting their property for the first time after furnishing and decoration. This deep-rooted experience, combined with our Paris real estate market expertise and our network of first-rate financial, legal, design, and management resources, will allow us to continue offering unbiased and forward-looking information during this uncertain time.
Market perspectives
A lot of people have been asking how the market is faring during the lock-down, especially from a supply standpoint. As of now, new property listings have decreased as sellers hesitate, while most current listings remain on the market. We’ve seen very little withdrawal. Many final sales transactions that were expected to take place in March and April have been postponed.
According to MeilleursAgents, the months of March and April alone have accounted for 20% of annual sales during the last five years. As a result of the shut down due to Covid-19 this spring, the city is not expected to reach its record one million sales mark, as it has succeeded in doing for the past two years.
Although the current situation has temporarily slowed the market in the short-term, Paris is unique in that its demand will continue to turn in the long-run, regardless of economic, social, and financial circumstances. There will always be people looking to buy, rent, or sell in the city, especially considering its offerings of cultural and historic sites, luxury brands and boutiques, universities, and tech and investment firms, which have considerably softened any economic blows the city has incurred in the past.
We can expect the market to pick back up again after the virus runs its course in a few months, with an influx of listings and the renewal of visits and sales activity once the quarantine has been lifted. According to MeilleursAgents, the epidemic will be contained in time for summer, and the real estate market should back in full swing come September.
In this context, mortgage demand may surge after the crisis. We advise potential buyers to take advantage of this time at home to prepare their dossier and to take virtual tours of properties online.
The local industries are benefiting from the COVID 19, as they have been contracted to manufacture various goods needed to combat the pandemic. If the manufacturing momentum continues and our dependency on imported products reduces, we will see a rise in demand for industrial properties.
This is likely to lead to an increase in the demand for luxury properties as there will be many more wealthy people. Currently, the real estate business has almost come to a standstill as the investors hold tightly to their money and the land offices where the conveyance takes place are closed.
Conclusion
Informally the COVID-19 may be here to stay for a while, so we must adjust in any form we can. The ideas shared above is a starting point for all of us who are still trying to make moves in real estate. If this is your passion, then you must keep going and find new ways to grow your business and always be that person everyone needs to turn to for buying and selling properties.
Being a guy who’s been doing this for 20 years now, I’ll be the first to tell you that real estate is not the same as it was those many years ago. So many things have changed from how to do lease options to buying subject-to and more.
The game continues to change, and opticals are thrown our way day after day, but this one maybe be the biggest hurdle because of the magnitude of the impact. Here at REMH, I’m willing to do the hard work on providing the content on the heart to keep you in front of the completion.
As a reader here, I’m using you guys who are not subscribed to the totally 100% free real estate marketing newsletter course is to check it out now. My goal here is just to provide any update from good or bad out their in the world that’s worth sharing.
Speaking of Sharing
I’m a big believer in sharing what I know to help others stay in front of the completion. So please take a moment to share this page with family, friends, and like-minded people who may benefit from this content. The social media links are located at the beginning of this content to the top of this page.
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Tags: Coronavirus, Coronavirus Real Estate