Well, there is no doubt this corona virus has affected every single person in this country, no matter how wealthy or poor or young or old, everyone is suffering in some way. I knew this would begin to affect the real estate world, and I have seen more buyers this year back out on my listings than ever in my real estate career. In fact, I haven’t seen this many buyers back out before in my 10 years of real estate. Ugh! It’s amazing to hear everyone’s stories about how this has affected them. The last buyer that backed out did it days before we were supposed to close. My sellers were already packing up their home! The buyers lived in Washington D.C. and they worked for the US Department of Health and they wanted to quit their job and move here, but they were then working on Covid-19 so that no longer was able to happen. Another buyer was in the travel industry and very commission based and they were unsure of when they would get paid again, so they wanted to keep their money for now and wait to buy a home when the economy was more stable.

On the flip side, in this crazy Austin market, I have been trying to get buyer’s under contract as backup offers on listings that won’t be able to close with their current buyer due to the type of loan they were trying to get. So we have come in behind them and we are trying to win the deal. I have also gone to homebuilders seeing if any of their deals have fallen through with their contracts on homes that a buyer of mine has been interested in. I have basically told all my buyers “Hey, if you saw something that you liked, now is the time to buy because the masses are not out there and this would be your time to get in there without having to compete with multiple offers.”

I also got a listing under contract with the buyer not even coming to see the home in person until after we have closed! They are in Colorado and they don’t want to risk getting on a flight to come here to see it so we sent them a video walkthrough of the home so they could see it that way, along with the virtual tour of photos and the floor plan. They paid full price and we have sent them as much info as we can on it to help them feel comfortable.

That being said, I am still seeing some multiple offers on some properties right now. On one we are hoping that cash will win over other offers even though we may be offering lower than the other offer, but we are hopefully a more stable choice in these uncertain times. But to some, cash is not much more stable since it could be coming from the stock market and who knows what will happen from one day to the next.

All in all, we have all learned a thing or two about ourselves with our new norm of staying at home. I am definitely cooking more, playing more games with my kids, getting outside to run more, reading more, and thinking about my friends more. I will never take for granted the freedoms we had and will forever be grateful for being able to go somewhere and sit down and have a meal at a restaurant again.

So, go grab an ice cold Corona, and watch your Netflix for now. Real estate will go on and it will bounce back once this is all done. Austin is a very healthy market and more homes will come on the market once this over (I have 3 or 4 homes I am waiting to list once this is done). If you want a chance on a home in a neighborhood you could never seem to get, then now is the time to go and get ‘em!