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As top Calgary real estate agents, I recently had a good friend who wants to sell his house but has legitimate concerns with the Coronavirus, and the homeowner really wants to sell the property to move on with his family’s personal goals.  He is asking me what the solution is to this problem how to do this safely?

It’s clear that they are a lot of buyers in the market right now and sellers are not excited to put their home on the market  Therefore only serious sellers will put their home on the market.  The low-interest rate is a major incentive for buyers and is fueling those that have a strong desire to buy.

Our last two sold listings sold quickly and one with multiple offers.  Therefore we need to look at logical solutions for both sellers and buyers to keep everyone safe, yet meet the need to buy and sell a home.

A unique problem is how do we sell the house when everyone is legitimately freaked out about potential exposure to the coronavirus when traditionally an open house with lots of people and multiple unnecessary showings is welcomed is how we would do it.

What can a real estate agent do to help solve this new problem and protect all involved? 

After doing research with the Canadian Public Health Services  for accurate information CLICK HERE for the updates, and then watching this TEDX Talk to learn more from a Global Health expert’s understanding CLICK HERE to watch.

Then talking to many very successful real estate agents about solutions, reading what the REAL ESTATE COUNCIL OF ALBERTA recommended, thinking long and hard about the way that we do business today in real estate and what the future holds it became clearer to me what we can do to help out.

If you want to review what is being recommended in general to businesses today, here is Canada Public Health recommendation.

Let’s start with a couple of the reasons why the traditional way of buying and selling a home today is probably not in the sellers or the buyer’s best interest with the concerns of the coronavirus.

Buying a home:

Number one problem buyers and the typical buyer agents are NOT thorough enough in their reserach phase buyer consultations:

• Exactly what they would be willing to buy
• The lifestyle desires & priorities
• Their criteria for features
• The deal-breakers
• Purchasing power and remodel budget
• Property types, models, lot size, and all options
• Pros and cons of different neighbourhoods and communities

Professional buyers agents do this level of buyer consultation upfront saving everyone time and helping their buyers reduce the need to drive to and walk through lots and lots of homes to self discover what they want.

To protect our buyers and sellers, we can spend more time in a Buyer Consultation.

Solution: buyers and buyers agents need to have a thorough buying consultation and go as deep as humanly possible in a safe office environment, at home with a laptop or a safe environment in which you can really explore every nuance of what you want in the house and new community.

• Conference calls (I have a great conference line to use)
• Zoom video conference (I have an account to use)
• Safely meet at your house
• If appropriate safely meet at our office in a conference room that I would sanitize in advance

 A top buyers agent should be able to help a buyer NOT have to go see lots of properties to learn.

Second: professional buyers agents can:

• Go safely preview the property for you
• You can request a video live virtual tour
• Set up safe private showings coordinated with the listing agents
• Have deep discussions with the listing agents about the pros and cons of the property to determine whether or not that property is something that the buyer should see saving everybody a lot of time.

Ultimately keeping people safe from lots of unnecessary exposure is the protocol for buyers and sellers who have to do something now.

For home buyers, this is truly when the value of a great professional real estate agent can make the difference in not only saving time, gas – drive time, provide unique hyper-local expertise and simply protect their clients.

Schedule your buyer consultation by texting Patrick at 403-589-0004.

Selling your house:

You want to sell your home but don’t want a big open house, lots of showings, you just want only the most serious buyers to come over.  As top listing agents, we can ask the buyer or the buyer’s agent to really think clearly about the pros and cons, the deal-breakers and everything about the property in advance of going physically.

Naturally, we can tell every buyer and buyers agent that the sellers have strong concerns about the CoronaVirus so please use your best judgement on who comes to the property.  And we will reserve the right to refuse access to the property with anyone that is suspicious of showing signs of illness.

We all can use our best judgement instead of sending the whole family maybe just send their Realtor or one family member.  This eliminates “lookie-loo buyers” allowing the listing agent to protect their selling clients from lots of exposure to random people in their home.

In today’s crazy market, the workload falls really on the listing agent’s ability to communicate effectively with buyers and buyers agents. We need buyers agents to get more specific about what their buyers want and qualifications so that we can eliminate excess showings and looking at a property that aren’t really what they want.

The new home seller marketing plan:

For home sellers, we are adding NEW items for buyers online research:

• Live Video Tours, Virtual Tours, Matterport 3d presentations
• Community/neighbourhood explainer videos
• Property explainer videos
• Build website pages that host more details than the MLS

We have to give the buyers all of the best information, traditionally we would try to make the property as pretty as possible to get more buyers to come to visit the house.  Now we need to give them as much as possible so the right ones only make the decision to come.  In this environment, this strategy does not compromise the seller’s high sales price.

For home sellers, we will be qualifying all the buyer showing requests in advanced, screening the professionalism of the buyers’ agents with their buyers to mitigate any excess showings and find the best possible buyer and sell them the home.  Keeping everyone safe!  Yet still, achieve the goal.

Now more than ever the professionalism of the real estate agents is critical!  People will “have to buyer & sell” regardless of severe global challenges.

Contact Bryon Howard to book a consultation phone call to start.

Text at: 403-589-0004 “buyer or seller consultation”