Buying or selling a house is currently getting harder to do.
Since the outbreak of the disease, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has been conducting a series of flash surveys aimed at gauging consumer behavior, revealing that there has been a significant shift in attitudes regarding the novel coronavirus among both buyers and sellers like canceling open houses and requiring buyers to wash their hands or use hand sanitizer.
Data revealed by the NAR reported by Tara Mastroeni at Forbes states that when the survey was first launched on March 9, 81% of the agents surveyed said their sellers had no interest in removing their homes from the market. By March 19, that number dropped to 61%, with 16% of sellers actually taking steps to stop marketing their homes. The majority of sellers aren’t yet removing their homes from the market, they are changing their behavior around showings. On the buyer end of the spectrum, the agents reported a significant decline in buyer interest that occurred in the time between the two surveys. On March 9, only 16% of agents had noticed decreased interest among their buyers. By March 19, that number jumped to 48%. At the time of the initial survey only 17% of agents felt that the virus had negatively impacted buyer attitudes. By the time the second survey was released, it was nearly half, at 46%.
During the first week of March, according to a weekly report put out by Halstead Real Estate, average attendance at open houses in Manhattan and several US cities dropped to their lowest level so far in 2020. Real estate, like many other industries such as sports broadcasting, are shifting and adapting to these uncertain times, some realtors are even turning to 3D home models or virtual tours, but in states under lockdown like California, new listings are hard to get up because realtors, stagers, and photographers can’t commute to work, and it seems to be that many other metropolis across the country are headed for lockdown.
“I have been in business for 40 years, and this looks like a cross between 9/11 and 2008,” Manhattan luxury real estate agent Donna Olshan told the WSJ.
