Catching up

Summary

The past four weeks, May 11th - June 5th, I finished spring semester, completed a business writing class, and sold two homes. Adding to the stress was the overwhelming tension on our media on the civil rights and racial subjects. Not to mention, the riots, vandalism and terrorism happening in our own town! I don't want to get into the details, but I just want to say that I never thought that would really effect me because.... I'm not black? However it has effected me in some unfortunate ways. Just for the record, I do support Black Lives Matter. Just not George Floyd, rioting and killing and all that.

Four Weeks:

Timeline

March 6 - PA recorded its first 2 cases of coronavirus, Tom Wolf signed a Disaster Declaration. Lol

March 19 - Tom Wolf orders all "non-essential" businesses to shut down. 

• No showings, inspections, appraisals, notaries or any in-person contact at all. 

March 27 - Wolf issues "stay at home" order, plus a curfew. 

April 3 - Wolf calls for face masks all the time. 

April 9 - All schools must close. 

May 19 - The real estate industry opened back up.

• Limited showings and attendance, no attending inspections, no settlement agent closing day.

Background

Since I started real estate in April/May of last year, I've been printing the residential sales activity stats each month for Lancaster County. Since the office is shut down, I haven't had a printer to use. I've since loaded a flash drive of the pdfs for each year 2017-2019 and each month of 2020 have a flash drive with all of the data.

Here's an example of the data I'm talking about. I actually used this for my semester project for business writing over Summer 1.

Compared to the 2019 data for the same period March - April, 2020 has some significantly smaller values among the active, pending and closed listing quantities. Brokers and agents alike are scrambling to serve their clients virtually, but consumers are hesitant. Real estate photography is becoming more and more advanced to enhance the online viewing experience. The industry is doing everything possible to compensate for, or provide a substitute for, the inability to show homes in person. 

See table below: