A Year of Pandemic Real Estate Life
On March 19, 2020, an Executive Order directed all Californians to stay home except to go to an essential job or to shop for essential needs and nothing has been the same since.
So now, one year and one day later, I just wanted to reflect back on a lot of this while it is still somewhat fresh in my mind.
I don’t think any of us knew what to expect a year ago. There was a lot of confusion about everything including whether or not you should be stocking up on toilet paper. Which now, a year later, seems kind of, well maybe strange, all things considered.
I remember that my initial reaction was “health and family comes first”. But if you know, that’s always my initial reaction. And, although I consider myself relatively healthy for my age, I wasn’t one of those inclined to take any risks. At all.
Even though Real Estate was considered an “essential” business about 10 days after the initial lock down, I wasn’t really inclined to be engaging with clients at that point because it just seemed tasteless to me. With a deadly virus spreading, the stock market collapsing, and listings and escrows being cancelled, it just didn’t seem like the best move to be doing my usual marketing or other endeavors. Or the safest.
Like lots of other folks, I just literally mostly stayed home glued to the news. When I ventured out after a few weeks to drive around the Beach Cities it was literally a ghost town. No cars or people anywhere.
Other than my business grinding to halt, a major change for me was not going to the gym to work out which I had been doing for over 40 years about 5 times a week (which you would never know by looking at me). Even though I have some weights at home, which I have been using, it’s just not the same. In addition to an exercise bike I was using, I also have an elliptical in my garage (courtesy of one of my past clients) that I have been hitting pretty hard.
I hear that now gyms are open again, sort off, but I’m not open to the idea, yet. Maybe in the future.
As I said to many people this last year, since I’ve been working from home for over 15 years, about 50% of my day was exactly the same and the other 50% was just really weird because in my line of work, being out and around people is what we do.
And then came the Zoom calls.
A number of coaches and influencers in the Real Estate world started to host some very helpful and motivational Zoom calls as did the California Association of Realtors. Those were great because it got my mind off of the pandemic at least for a few hours at a time. But after a while I just became Zoomed out. And never really got into Tik Tok. In fact, I got kind of social media app aversion. Maybe it was all the negative political stuff, not sure but my FB and IG screen time went down and I was just never too big on Twitter or LinkedIn.
But my screen time definitely went up on my websites - well until relatively recently when I’ve noticed my posting went down.
In particular I re-launched Socalistings which many of you may recognize as an online brand I use. This is the 4th and by far the best version of that website even though it is still very much a work in progress. If you visit there, you’ll see the similarities to this site.
I also did a lot of work on relaunching my Manhattan Beach website. I’ve lost track of which version I’m on for that one, but also it is probably the 4th since 2007 or so. And of course I’ve been maintaining my Redondo Beach website all along. That one, along with this site was one of the first I migrated to the new platform.
Why so many websites? Well if I was starting today, I probably would only have one. But I’m not starting today and each is somewhat unique and different.
HOW HAS REAL ESTATE CHANGED?
Well no more Open Houses for one thing. And showings are a lot harder than previously because of the scheduling challenges. In fact, between PEAD forms, Showing Time, Glide, Calendy, and everything else, a lot of time is spent just setting things up.
We’ve also, not surprisingly seen a lot of agents on the move. I’m not sure why, but good for them.
We are seeing almost 100% adaptation of electronic signing now extending to banks and escrow companies. Special recording in LA County, now a thing of the past and many of the cities that agents have to interact with have not had office hours. But actually their service may have improved as they started handling more through email.
Text seems to be the coin of the realm these days as opposed to email. Some days I just get “texted” out. Not my favorite form of communication but you wouldn’t know that if you ever texted me.
Each iteration of Real Estate markets has its own driving forces. This one has been the great migration as people have moved out of (and into) CA. Others have just moved around CA like from LA to OC or from the city to the beach. That, plus the low inventory and record low rates (which have gone up recently) as well as the influx of renters who want to own, has created a market unlike anything ever seen before.
My last few listings received 10 or more offers each and sold over the asking price. Often by a lot. And that’s not unusual. I’m not expecting the low inventory environment to change anytime soon. And with record numbers of Buyers in the market, just expect more of the same: multiple offers, bidding wars, waived contingencies, etc. From what I can tell/hope, we’ve been through the worse of the economic downturn and have not seen a crash in the housing market. That’s a good thing.
HOW HAS MY REAL ESTATE BUSINESS BEEN AFFECTED?
For those who don’t know, with my amazing and impeccable timing, on March 1 of 2020 I decided to operate on my own as an Independent Real Estate Broker. That means that instead of operating under a larger Brokerage entity such as Shorewood Realtors, Teles, or Pier to Pier Brokers, I’m my own Broker and sole proprietor of my own business. Pretty cool, right. FYI, you can only do this if you are licensed as a Broker. Most Real Estate Agents are licensed as “Salespeople” and have to work under a Broker. As you may well guess, getting the Broker license requires more tests and knowledge than just being a Salesperson. Also if you are a Broker you can do other things like originate loans (which I don’t do) and have other Agents work for you (not interested - I have enough headaches already).
Initially when the Safer at Home lockdown hit, my attitude was “well if I don’t make any money this year, that’s the way it goes”. I’m past the point in my life of stressing about things I have no control over - like global pandemics.
I was surprised, and maybe I shouldn’t have been, to see that a lot of Agents just kept on with business (almost) as usual as soon as Real Estate was considered essential. Mostly a lot of the top producers who just ignore literally everything that doesn’t put money in their pockets.
But when I noticed that Agents who I had trained were doing deals and making money, I realized I had to jump back in and overcome my fears of being around people and potentially getting sick.
Has my business been affected by the pandemic? No doubt. 2020 was definitely my worst income year in probably over the last 10. In fact, other than one check I received in January pre-pandemic, I didn’t see another deal closed until June which was probably the longest in my working life I ever went between checks. But from June until the end of the year I had 9 closed sales and 2 so far this year. Not quite my usual pace but I feel very fortunate compared to many other small business owners and others who have lost their sources of income.
RED TIDE AND BLUE WAVES
I started to have an inkling that the pandemic might last longer than the experts were saying when the waves at the beach turned blue last Spring. If you are not familiar with what I’m talking about, I’m referring to the bioluminescent effect that the red tide creates at night making the waves turn blue.
It is really quite stunning to see and like thousands of others my wife and I wanted to experience it last May. If you recall, the beaches were still closed then. None the less we headed down to Manhattan Beach and thought that if we went to the end of Rosecrans near the Strand we could view the waves there and hopefully not get in too much trouble.
So imagine my surprise to find that not only had hundreds of others had the same idea, they were on the Strand and the supposedly closed Beaches and many were far from socially distanced. It was kind of like a holiday part scene.
And then a Manhattan Beach police car drove by and did ……. nothing.
At which point it started to occur to me that we were in for a longer haul than I had been expecting because not everyone was taking the public health directives as seriously as others. And then the politics started. And here we are today a year later.
I am fortunate in that a) no one in my family has gotten sick from Covid and, b) I was able to get my 2 vaccine shots as soon as my age group was opened up (because I hit refresh untold times on the scheduling website).
All I can say to others, and I really want to leave politics out of this, is that the shot doesn’t hurt and to the extent that you get side effects (my arm felt like it was broken, lol) they go away pretty quickly.
The shot is free so what’s the worst that can happen? You won’t die or get really sick. That’s not a bad outcome.
The only way out of all of this is to acknowledge we are all in this together and take the proper health and safety precautions - which I have found that almost everyone in Real Estate has been following.
All of which brings to mind the saying:
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign.
No more water, the fire next time.”
Hey folks, we have a chance to beat this thing and get back to the new normal whatever that may be. But if we can’t, the consequences will make the sacrifices of the last year wasted and no one wants that.
Peace Out.