Recently the state of California began opening up again, thank goodness. What does this mean for the real estate industry? Will it be easier to show and sell homes? Today I dive into how we’ll be showing homes in 2021.
Open Houses – Currently there are no open houses allowed and there have not been since the first SIP took effect in March of 2020. Since this is one of the ways homes have traditionally been sold you might think this measure would hurt sales. In fact we’ve seen the opposite, sales have been very good in California, with prices and demand in some areas increasing dramatically.
Shortly after the dot.com bust I obtained my real estate license and I met a Realtor who never held open houses for his listings but did a lot of sales. Two questions occurred to me at the time (a) what did his sellers think about this approach and (b) didn’t it negatively effect his business? It’s no secret that one way Realtors get new business is through open houses. Our fiduciary duty is always to sell the house we are holding open first, however if someone isn’t interested in that house there’s nothing wrong with trying to attract them as a prospective client. I was never ‘good at open houses’ because I was always myopic in my approach, focused on the house I was selling that day. So, I sold the houses I had open, but I rarely ‘picked up’ clients. It’s also no secret that open houses are a revolving door for neighbors who want to ‘checkout’ their neighbor’s homes to get an idea of what they’ve done and what their own house might be worth.
It seems like main focuses of open house have become to promote the Realtors’ businesses and help neighbors get a grasp of their local market. Neither of these ends meets the needs of the sellers, which is why the Realtor I met didn’t hold open houses, why his clients didn’t object, and why his business didn’t suffer.
Showings by Appointment Only – In 2020 we moved to a model of showing homes only by appointment. This has worked out tremendously well! On all my listings I am instructing Realtors to make sure their clients are pre-approved prior to showing. This does everyone a favor by not wasting anyone’s time. It does happen where prospective buyers are not vetted properly by their agents and end up looking at homes they can’t afford. Lately I’ve been getting so many appointments on my listings, especially through weekends where I’ll get 7-8 showings a day, we don’t have time for buyers who can’t qualify. Ending open houses and moving to appointments only has been a much more efficient way to sell homes.
COVID Rules – There are strict rules that Realtors and their clients must follow in order to show homes. Chief among them, nobody with COVID or having COVID symptoms should be looking at homes. Hand sanitizers need to be applied prior to entry, and masks must be worn at all times. Prospective buyers should even be wearing booties. All surfaces that are touched should be wiped down by the buyer’s Realtor. Windows should be kept open before, during and after showings. While it is definitely a little more sketchy showing an occupied home than a vacant one, to date there have been no reported COVID transmissions from showing homes (to the best of my knowledge). This is a fear that kept me up many nights in 2020. Fortunately everyone seems to be following the rules, we’ve been selling homes and the market has continued to go up!