Searching for a new approach
The real estate industry is turning to virtual tools as brokerages curtail operations and sellers and buyers hole up in isolation
On the lookout for an alternative to his rented home since the birth of his fouryear-old son, Dave Webb is no stranger to open houses. But on a March 14 stroll through Cabbagetown, a sign fronting 58 Rose Ave. caught his eye for a different reason.
Having just been informed that the COVID-19 pandemic was shuttering his workplace until at least April 6, the Toronto District School Board teacher says he was surprised to see an open house in full swing.
“We were thinking about going in, but then we saw the agent wipe down the front door handle and it put us off,” Webb recalls. “Instead, we went home and checked out the virtual tour.”
Webb is far from alone in doing things differently when it comes to real- estate these days. Across the GTA , COVID-19 is changing the way homes of all descriptions are being sought, bought and sold.
These changes are being shaped by brokerages, industry groups and government policy. After Re/ Max and Royal Lepage urged their members not to conduct open houses, in- person showings or face-to-face meetings, the Real Estate Council of Ontario and the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board recommended that brokerages and salespeople refrain from these activities “unless they are absolutely necessary,” as TRREB puts it.
We’re at a critical phase with this pandemic and we all have to do our part to be successful in confronting this challenge in order to protect the health and safety of realtors, their clients and the general public. — TRREB PRESIDENT MICHAEL COLLINS
To discourage open houses, both organizations have hidden listings advertising such details on their websites and have stopped enforcing rules that require listed properties to be available for showings and inspections.
“We’re at a critical phase with this pandemic and we all have to do our part to be successful in confronting this challenge in order to protect the health and safety of realtors, their clients and the general public,” says TRREB president Michael Collins.
That real- estate services made the Government of Ontario’s March 24 list of essential workplaces permitted to operate during the pandemic is a sign of the industry’s towering stature. At press time, properties in the GTA continued to receive multiple offers and higher- than- asking prices owing in part to historically low mortgage rates.
Even still, with most real estate offices closed to the public and the majority of agents working from home, services are only being provided to clients who “have to buy because shelter is a necessity,” says Tom Storey of Royal Lepage Signature Realty in Toronto. “Anyone who is just kicking tires, and doesn’t need to buy or sell, is being guided away from the market.”
Once that pool of people buying or selling with urgency dries up, agents expect a drastic downtown in sales volume. At the beginning of what would typically be a busy spring house- hunting season, “everything is on pause,” says Storey. “The sales and planning conversations we were having a month and a half ago would never happen now. I submitted a mailer to Canada Post a month ago, and I know it’s out there. My stomach hurts just thinking about how that looks. We’ve put a stop to all of that.”
The same goes for condos launches and openings. “All the major launches we had planned through the end of April are indefinitely delayed,” says Elliott Taube, president and broker of record for International Home Marketing Group Realty, adding that the brokerage has shifted to conducting virtual meetings, both internally and with prospective buyers, regarding properties slated to launch in May and beyond.
However, since neither RECO nor TRREB have the authority to enforce their COVID-19 recommendations, some GTA walkthroughs are going ahead in the thick of the pandemic. In the Roncesvalles neighbourhood, Ryan App recently listed his four- bedroom home with Re/ Max’s Johnson Team. “Six weeks ago we were confident going into the sale,” App says. “We thought there would be multiple offers and we would do very well. Now it seems likely that fewer people will come to see the place. It’s stressful, for sure.”
This stress has nothing to do with personal health concerns, App adds. His family is away for the duration of the showings and his agent, he says, is “doing a great job of building in strategies such as providing hand sanitizer and wiping things down.” These are two of the precautionary best practices recently released by TRREB. As well as adhering to Health Canada’s self- isolation and social- distancing guidelines, the list also includes discouraging property viewers from touching anything in the houses they visit, limiting the number of people in a property at any one time and keeping a digital list — no shared pens on offer anymore — of everyone who attends the property, including the date and time and their contact information.
RECO and TRREB have been using those services – virtual tours, video conferencing and digital sign-ins – for the past five years, says Storey. “These virtual tours are phenomenal, but we don’t expect people to buy places sight unseen. If we do get offers from people who didn’t visit a property in person, we expect the offers to be conditional on them coming to see the property at a later date.”
International Home Marketing’s Taube agrees that the human touch is still essential. “To give somebody a 28-page agreement to sign on their own without the aid of a representative is a tall order. We may be able to show plans and do virtual tours online, but when it comes down to somebody spending a million dollars on a condo,” using virtual tools on their own, he says, is “untested.”
LAUNCHES WE HAD PLANNED ... ARE INDEFINITELY DELAYED,