How To Sell Your House During The Coronavirus Pandemic?

Selling your home amidst the Coronavirus pandemic is a challenge. If you need to sell a property during the pandemic there are several challenges that you might face. In this article I’ll show you how to sell your house during the CoronaVirus ( COVID-19 ) pandemic, and how to overcome the challenges.

Marketing and Health and Safety are the biggest challenges that you might face when selling your home during CoronaVirus pandemic Lockdown. There are solutions for each one though.

How to overcome Safety Challenges while selling your home during CoronaVirus Pandemic?

We’ll go through the Health and Safety solutions first then we’ll review the marketing solutions. When you sell a home during CoronaVirus pandemic, it can be either vacant, or tenanted or owner occupied. For each one you need to make sure you have the right approach when selling a house during the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Prepare your home for the showings:

If you want to sell your home during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s very important to set the stage ready before you accept any showings. What does that mean? It means that the showing of your house should not increase the risk of the COVID19’s exposure to visitors and the residents.

For Owner Occupied House or Condos:

1. You need to start by putting signs that show the precautionary messages. For example look at the sign below. It asks 3 simple questions, such as have you travelled in the past 14 days to any affected area. Do you have any cough or fever? Should you need any of the templates, feel free to contact us.
2. Have Hand Sanitizers and Wipes ready and in reach of the visitors.
3. Before and after each visit, sanitize areas that might have been exposed, such as Door Knobs, Handles, etc.
4. Leave Home if possible during the showings to make sure you’re practicing Physical Distancing.
5. Leave Single Use Gloves and Masks, at the door so visitors can use them before entering your house.
6. Leave Signs on the Fridge and or Cabinet handles or other areas, indicating “ Please do not open / touch “ “ Practice Physical Distancing “ “ Practice Health Guidelines introduced by Govt’ of Canada / Ontario Etc. “. For templates you can contact us.

If your house is vacant you still need to take precautionary measures. Such as putting a sign that indicates minimum the below:

1. Have Hand Sanitizers and Wipes ready and in reach of the visitors.
2. If possible before and after each visit, sanitize areas that might have been exposed, such as Door Knobs, Handles, etc.
3. Leave Single Use Gloves and Masks, at the door so visitors can use them before entering your house.
4. Leave Signs, indicating “ Please do not open / touch “ “ Practice Physical Distancing “ “ Practice Health Guidelines introduced by Govt’ of Canada / Ontario Etc. “. For templates you can contact us.

If your real estate property is tenanted, it’s way different from being vacant and or owner occupied.

In the past few weeks we had to terminate a Tenanted condo listing, and postpone the listing of another house by a month till the tenant vacantes another house. Simply because the tenants decided not to cooperate with the owners/sellers. During the pandemic, the eviction process is halted, and that makes it harder for landlords to evict the tenants. For more information on how to deal with Tenants during the pandemic, such as if they stop paying the rent, you can contact us.

However, it’s our humane duty to not to force tenants in this pandemic. If they say they have pre existing health problems which makes them vulnerable to CoronaVirus, you need to consider their situation and work with them.

Landlord and Tenant rules and acts are different from Province to Province. Thus make sure you check with your local Landlord and Tenant board before proceeding in that regard.

For a full list of precautionary measures to take and follow, you need to view Health Canada’s Guideline.

2. Ask your real estate agent to ask for the buyers Realtors to pre screen them:

Yesterday I booked an appointment with my bank to go through some financials. My bank’s advisor who knows me personally called me back shortly and asked me about what exactly I needed to do and we got it done over the phone without me going down to the bank. They have protocols in place to pre-screen them and assess if someone’s needs can be fulfilled without physically entering the bank, they get those done.

So the same applies to you. Your realtor can ask the other realtor pertinent questions and answer questions if there are any.

This will help to reduce the number of unnecessary showings. Of Course all showings are necessary somehow, but some can be skipped. For example if the buyer’s agent tells you client that they must have such and such in property. Or the buyers are qualified up to $800K, yet you want $850 for your property, so this is not gonna work at all.

Or your real estate agent can ask the buyers REALTOR that whether the buyers or their real estate broker have been on a trip to any affected area, or are they symptomatic or not. All these can be done before the showings. So ask your real estate agent to make sure the pre-screening is done before the showings if you live in the house.

3. Allow the showings to the potential buyers after the buyers show interest in property by exploring virtual marketing materials

I’ll explain this more in the Home Marketing Solution during the COVID-19 section down below. But as a general guideline, ask your Realtor to make sure the potential buyers have seen all the marketing materials before requesting a showing. Which means your home purchasers have gone through the Virtual tours and showings and are really interested to see the property in person.

4. Harder measures can be taken into place if you’re still concerned about your health ( Conditional Purchase):

If you are so not sure about letting people in for showings, there are other measures that can be taken into consideration. However these measures might impact the marketing of your property, so I highly recommend to consult with a professional realtor or solicitor before doing any of the measures.

That being said, one thing that some buyers or sellers might agree on, is to put a condition on visiting the property before firming up the deal. It means that after the buyer shows interest in the property via going through virtual marketing material your real estate agent asks them to send an offer conditional on visiting the property.

That way the buyer and you agree on the main terms, such as Closing date ( completion date) and Price , etc. Then the buyer will have the opportunity to visit the house. But remember that this strategy is TOO extreme and might deter some buyers from your house. However if someone in your household has pre existing health conditions you might need to go to the extremes to protect them. One of the risks that can arise from this sale strategy is less exposure, and accordingly, it’s impact on the sold price.

Read more: Listing Strategy in Toronto Real Estate Market

How to overcome Marketing Challenges when selling your home during the CoronaVirus pandemic?

Marketing your house or condo to sell during the COVID 19 pandemic is another challenge. You need to make sure to limit the physical interactions as much as possible in order to practice physical distancing. Here I’ve listed the solutions on how to sell your home during the Coronavirus. If you hire one of Toronto’s Best Real Estate Agents, they for sure can take care of it. A great Realtor would always find ways to market and sell their client’s house during tough times.

By taking a look at the major cities you can see the trend of what’s going on in the real estate market in Canada regardless of the location. The newest report of the latest changes in Toronto’s real estate market and the latest COVID 19 Effects on Torontor’s real estate Market . The market went slow since the second half of March, but there are still deals happening. Means that those who need to buy are still buying and those who need to sell are still selling.

My point is that if you are a seller, don’t be worried, there are still buyers ( way less) in the market. Good news for you is that there are less sellers in the market too. In my latest report you can see that although the sales have dropped, the number of new listings has dropped as well. Means that some sellers are on the sidelines now. So means less competition for you. If you need more details on how the real estate market works in turmoil, feel free to contact us and we’ll explain it to you.

Read More : How Much Does It Cost To Sell a House in Toronto?

1. Price according to the market, PLEASE!!

Some sellers might think to price their house high, to leave room if the buyers want to negotiate. In this market, the quick answer to this is “ Wrong “. Don’t price a home high, cus you’ll lose a chunk of exposure. If you hire the right real estate agent, your Realtor should be explaining the strategies to you and help you to adopt the best one!

This is how you’ll lose exposure: When you list a home way higher than the market value, you might deter potential buyers in the first place!

For example, your home is worth $700,000, and you list it for $750K, yet there are some buyers whose mortgage broker advised them with a purchase power of $710K. They are a perfect fit for your home and can be potential buyers, however they will never see your listing at the first place because their cut off limit is $710K. On the other hand, your home is worth $700K yet you list it at $750K. What will happen is that those buyers in the area who are looking for properties in the range of $750K to $800K, come to visit your property. In this case your house is up to compete with other houses in the area which are slightly more renovated, or in a better shape, or have one or two extra rooms, etc!

For more details on the pricing strategy for your home view Sell a Home Fast article!

2. Stage your house

Staging is very important, because it has the first impressions on the potential buyers. But I do understand that during the pandemic, staging a home that is occupied by the owner is hard. Staging a home that is occupied by a tenant is almost impossible during the pandemic!

For that reason, if your house or condo is vacant, stage it before listing it for sale ( if your home is worth less than $500K, I don’t recommend staging). If you can not stage your home before selling it for any reason, there are alternative ways you can consider. One of the is Virtual Staging. There are some companies that do that, I don’t want to review their work in this article though. Ask your Realtor for more info regarding that.

3. Use Virtual Tours

Good news is that there are several technologies that help with that. Depending on your property, your real estate agent should advise what technology is the most relevant one. You can have a Bird house 3D model, or you can have 360 Tours with Floor plans, or a simple virtual tour, or even a video virtual tour.

I, as a Toronto Realtor and Broker who’ve worked in competitive markets for years, mostly combine two of the above, depending on my seller’s property and my marketing strategy. But you still can go with one.

The good thing about virtual tours is that they help the buyers to make sure they really want a house or not. If they are interested, they’ll come and visit in person, if not, they move on, and you have one less physical showing.

4. Use Digital Signature to do the Contracts

WHen it comes to contracts, the paper is out of the picture. Ontario Real Estate Association and CREA have adapted and accepted Digital signatures since 2015. Various technologies can be used, from Docusign to Authentisign, Authentisign is a Canadian company which has been serving the real estate industry for a very long time. I’ve used both and both work well. I personally choose to go with Authentisign technology as I’m more comfortable with their integration with the contract platforms that I use.

For buyers and sellers doesn’t matter which Digital Signature technology is being used as long as it’s being administered by their Realtors and Brokers. The buyer and seller would only see the signature part and no need to deal with the back end. So don’t worry about the technology and or provider.

Read More:  Best Home Improvements For Resale (2020)

Conclusion:

Selling your home during the pandemic is challenging, but we have solutions for it. The two main things that you need to focus on are described in this article, Safety and Health, and also Marketing. For health, there are guidelines that you need to consider and protocols to follow. For marketing there are ways to market your property without the need of physical interactions. Deals can still be done using virtual tours, digital contracts, and digital real estate services.

There might be other challenges that I didn’t put here because every house is unique, but a Top Toronto Real Estate Agent can help you to overcome those challenges and find solutions to sell your house.