How corona-virus affects Real Estate sales or how to keep properties selling

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Let's just start with the virus situation.

For now(14th of March 2020) we have only few cases of the virus confirmed in Brisbane.

However there was one case reported on today(14th of March) of the virus found in the person who was in one of Brisbane's night club. In fact that person attended the same nightclub many times from 6th of March to 11th of March Now our government are warning anybody who was there at the same time asking them monitor their health condition.

What makes it even worse is that person is an UQ student and most likely have been in a contact with a lot of his/her co-students and may be even teachers.

We may already have a lot of people caring it around and bringing it to their homes, places of work etc.

They only can see if they are sick within 14 days. What does it mean for us?

It means that we may jump just from few cases to 100 or even 1000 in a matter of 5-10 days, then new cases will start coming like an avalanche.

How is the virus affecting Real Estate market?

Agents in USA are already reporting some decline with people coming to open home inspections. Some have even reported 0 visitors to their open homes.

Yesterday the same news came from agents in Sydney, they are reporting at least 10% decline in visits to open homes.

I have had a chat with one Brisbane agent today and he has confirmed that much less people came today than usual.

Some buyers just decided to be smart and do not want to attend any public gathering and take any risk to get infected. And you know what, they are right.

I have actually been on two open house inspections today with one being an auction and another was a private presale screening with a selling agent.

So people are still coming and properties are being sold but what I have seen on these inspections are worrying.

The guy who run the auction came to a very close contact with two groups of people to discuss something. And I bet that it was not the only one auction today for this guy.

Also selling agents were more than happy to shake any visitor hand.

Just think for a second, a regular real estate agent usually has 3-4 inspections on any Saturday so she/he shakes about 100-200 hands just in one day.

Why they do not realise it is not just an easy way to get infected themselves but it is also an easy way to pass it to their buyers, their vendors and even to their colleagues/families.

That's just absolutely irresponsible but I do not want to blame them. Not everybody takes the situation seriously and can think ahead of what can happen due to their normal(under normal circumstances of course) actions.

Do homeowners run in any risk letting people to inspect their house? They do and it is not that small as they may think.

First remember my story about the agents shaking hands. That property has been sold and the owner and the agent are going to meet at some point. They are for sure will shake hands or at least are going to spend some time together in an agency office.

That's one way to catch it from their own agent but there is another way.

If some of your open house visitors are already sick and they touch something in your home you will run in a quite a big risk to pick the virus for yourself.

I can see some concerns already in my local community that owners who are thinking of selling have doubts if they should do it now.

I can say from a price point you can still catch a good buyer as properties are still selling. However they are for sure do not want to catch the virus and some of them have stopped going to any inspections.

Wingman Media have created two solutions to help keeping properties selling without putting anyone at risk. We are happy to offer it to selling agents and private sellers directly to keep their properties selling. Please use the following link to access them from his article https://www.wingmanmedia.com.au/protect-your-sales