How will shelter-in-place affect marketing homes?

A: Given the shelterinplace orders, open houses in San Francisco, including broker opens, have been canceled. In the Bay Area where open houses have become an integral part of selling a home, Realtors and sellers need to find alternative ways to expose properties to potential buyers.

Buyers and agents will have the continued ability to view online listings in the MLS and with the multitude of apps available. Beyond that, marketing of homes will be somewhat restricted.

In the current circumstances, showings will be limited but still possible. What is uncertain, is whether buying or selling a home is considered an essential business under the local governmental orders. The situation is still evolving by the hour and what we believe today, may not be feasible tomorrow. Similarly, a roadblock today may be removed within a day.

Currently there is uncertainty on obtaining appraisals. A huge backlog on refinances with ultralow rates will create delays. Most title companies are operating with minimal staff, but they are using mobile notaries for signings and most cities are doing erecordings.

While there are challenges, with the flexibility and the willingness of buyers and sellers to cooperate and to be understanding of the constraints, we are still able to buy and sell properties.

A: After a relatively normal open house activity last weekend, the question of open houses safety became an issue for the San Francisco real estate community. The shelterinplace ordinance in effect since Tuesday clarifies the situation. Under these circumstances, an open house would be a violation of the ordinance and public health safety.

Private showings are not considered necessary activities either. As much as we would like to do our job and help real estate buyers and sellers, we have to think at their safety and ours as well, while doing our part to help curbing the viral spread.

Luckily, we have technology is at rescue:

If you have a listing on the market already, start conducting live open houses or live streamed appointments. Videos and 3D renderings help too.

If you were planning to put a property on the market soon, you might want to wait after April 7.

Hold or temporarily withdraw it for few weeks.

Be safe.

A: San Francisco Association of Realtors has suspended broker tours and has strongly recommended that no open houses are to be held for three weeks. We are following that edict and I expect most real estate professionals will as well.

SFAR has offered realtors the option to put listings on hold on MLS so as to not have them accrue “days on market.” This is helpful to sellers and we hope Zillow and Redfin will offer similar options. SFAR is also allowing agents to temporarily add in links to virtual tours under Open House Comments in the MLS, which is helpful as well.

We are promoting video and virtual tours of our listings as much as possible and I think this experience will compel agents towards using more digital tools — if they weren’t already — to market listings, since it’s so useful to have in a time like this.