The booming housing market hasn’t taken much of a hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which came as a surprise to some local realtors. They say it may still be too early to tell.
With thousands of people in the state temporarily laid off from work, and thousands more infected by COVID-19, the housing market has barely budged, local realtors said.
They are still giving showings and closing on homes regularly.
The Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors reported a high in home sales last month. Sales were up 5.8% compared to the same time last year, and the median sales price rose to $209,000, according to its monthly market analysis.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryGreg Leugers, owner and broker of Keller Williams Hometown Realty in Franklin, was surprised by how well business is doing considering hundreds of thousands of people in the state are out of work.
One recent listing had a total of 93 showings, he said.
“It’s crazy,” Leugers said. “That’s telling me that people are still out there, and they are looking to purchase.”
Real estate agencies are considered an essential business under the statewide stay-at-home order. And with the real estate business continuing as it was before the pandemic, local agencies are taking precautions when showing homes.
Most showings are encouraged to be done virtually through pictures and videos. This tours go in-depth in the house, allowing many interested buyers to get a 360 degree view of each room.
But buyers can still request an in-person showing as long as the seller agrees.
“We’re basically taking each client separately and arranging to their needs … because everybody’s in a different situation,” said Tanya Smythe, owner of Smythe and Co. Realty in Greenwood.
In-person showings have changed. Everyone who enters a house wears masks, gloves and shoe covers. The sellers are also instructed to open all doors, cabinets and closets, and turn on all the lights before the real estate agent gets there, so no one else has to touch anything.
“It’s very awkward to show homes all gowned up, so to speak, but we still have clients that are interested in looking,” Greenwood realtor Ron Rose said.
When showings are scheduled had to change as well, Leugers said. He can’t do showings back to back, so scheduling meetings with clients has become difficult.
“Because of this right now, we’re actually seeing people making offers without seeing a home before,” he said.
The practice of closing on houses, in some cases, is also being done virtually.
Mike Jarvis, owner of Jarvis Enterprises and a longtime Johnson County philanthropist, recently sold his home and bought a new one. The process of signing all the paperwork took place inside his car, sitting on the curb outside the title company’s building, he said.
“It flowed better than I thought it would,” he said. “I was able to close a significant transaction and buy another home, all within an hour and a half.”
Jarvis, one of Smythe’s clients, was looking for a home because he wanted to downsize after his wife passed away, he said. He had been trying to sell his home for a year, and was surprised when it sold last month just as the COVID-19 pandemic made its way to the area, he said.
“Life happens, and you know there’s still people who need to change housing for reasons, so we’ve been extremely busy,” Smythe said.
For Rose, though, business has slowed a little, he said. The agency is showing about half the homes they normally would during April, he said. He expects the market pick back up in June or July, if the economy is stable by then.
“We’ll have a pretty hectic market with people who have held off listing their homes,” he said.
Although the market is still doing well, part of that continued success comes from a shortage of inventory, said David Neu, managing broker at RE/MAX in Greenwood.
“We went into this with a shortage of inventory. Even though there’s not as many buyers out, the listings on the market are still getting a lot of showings,” Neu said.
So, in the long term, the housing market may be more impacting as pending closings wrap up this month and fewer people put their houses on the market, he said.
“We are seeing a decrease in the homes that are going on the market, which will affect the closings 30 to 60 days down the road,” Neu said.
Smythe suspects the market may not be feeling the impact of the pandemic yet, and that it will be felt more in the coming months, depending on when stay-at-home orders are lifted and people go back to work.
“The longer it goes on, the more we’re all going to be affected,” she said. “It’s definitely a tipping point.”
Neu expects sales to pick up again in the last quarter of the year, and doesn’t think the impact of the pandemic will be detrimental to the market.
“It’s going to be kind of a thing that business will go down quickly, but it will climb really quickly,” Neu said. “We’ll probably do 12-months worth of business in a nine-month period.”
