We have a wonderful surprise to share with you:
People are still buying real estate!
We admittedly braced ourselves for a complete shutdown of our industry a few weeks ago, seemingly headed for an inability to inspect houses. Our inboxes were flooded with digital companies offering to arrange virtual tours, in order to adapt to the changing climate. Of course we were open to such scenarios, but deep down I knew that realistically, it might be 1% of buyers will buy without a physical inspection, and even then, rarely would they do so without a building inspection – and these cannot be done remotely.
“Home” is one of the most emotive words in the English Language. So often we hear buyers say,
I like the feel of this one
That doesn’t happen on a virtual inspection on your smartphone or laptop.
Anyway, as it has turned out, through the good work of the whole community in following the guidelines of the powers that be, restrictions haven’t reached a level that has prevented inspections, and hence property sales, from occurring.
Open inspections have been temporarily banned, which hasn’t affected us or our clients at Wilsons, because for years we have been endorsing private, one-on-one inspections, as being the best method to inspect anyway, coronavirus aside. You can read more about that HERE; or HERE.
What we have found, is that as we adapt to our “new normal”, while abiding by all social distancing precautions, even though some are putting their real estate plans on hold, many are embracing the idea that life goes on, and this can include their plans of buying and/or selling property.
We only have a small sample size of a little over a month or so worth of sales to go on, but our feeling is that locally, prices have been unaffected by the current pandemic – indeed a couple of our sales this month have involved buyers competing for the property, resulting in excellent results for our sellers.
We have noticed an interesting side effect in the market. Stock levels have dropped faster than buyer demand. In the long term, all markets will revert to fundamentals. However in the short term markets are subject to supply and demand.
Right now the seller competition on market is quite low, representing an opportunity to sell for those that would like to.
I concede, a few weeks ago I was wrestling internally with a moral dilemma around encouraging having staff and clients interacting inside homes across the district, as every second Facebook post or television message was pleading with us to STAY AT HOME! However, in following all social distancing and sanitising precautions, it has become clear that it is safe to do so, and we are comfortable in encouraging the fact that we can absolutely help anyone who, right now, is looking to buy or sell real estate – and as stated there are absolutely people willing to do so in the current climate!
And for those who understandably feel it is still prudent to wait until after the Covid-19 storm passes before selling, we have designed a free service to enable you to gather interested buyers for your property now, without anyone setting foot in your home, and they can be ready to inspect once the storm passes by and things revert back to normal. We’ve called it our RAINBOW LISTING SERVICE, because after every storm, comes the rainbow. You can read more HERE
Here is a selection of properties sold by Wilsons despite the coronavirus pandemic:
Article by Lucas Wilson
