It was good to catch up with you on Sunday! As promised, here is an update of what is going on in the Real Estate Market.
- Real Estate has been signed off on by the Mayor to be essential - meaning all lines of operation are still in full force! This happened officially Monday evening after the 2pm announcement of a shelter in place.
-CAR (Colorado Association of Realtors) announced today that they support the Mayor, although still want all Realtors to take extreme caution- virtual tours, matterport, 3D online tours, Facetime, video showings etc as much as possible. Not overlapping showings and no Open Houses encouraged.
-CAR also released an official addendum to the contract to be in place for any buyer/seller under contract now or in the near future. It safely extends the contract for both parties should issues arise relating to COVID
-Showings were down by 50% this weekend. The most affected price bracket is the luxury sector, over 1 million. About 25% fewer listings hit the market than last year at this time. Interestingly, Under Contracts stayed fairly steady percentage wise, considering, the general consensus here is that those that need/really want to move, are still moving and the "looky lou's" are taking a backseat right now.
-What is to come? Still a lot of unknown! Things seem to change daily. But the overall buzz today has been since inspectors and appraisers can still go out, homes can still be shown, and Title companies remain open for closings, that market should continue to push on, although not as strongly as a usual Spring Market
-What about interest rates? They are volatile right now. Last week and this Monday was a headache for lenders. Today the Government announced they will be investing in mortgages to help secure the market - the thought behind this is we will see rates drop again, although being an election year, they do typically rise as we get a month or so out from November. The rates dropping in late Spring/Summer might very well push our "Hot Buying Season" to Summer this year.
-What about the economy? Recession? Housing market crash? It's still too soon for these types of questions to be truthfully answered. On the basis of supply and demand, it's hard to imagine Denver taking a massive hit, but then again a lot of our economy in Colorado does reside in Oil, Travel, etc.
Thursday I have a web conference meeting with a mastermind group I joined several weeks ago of the Top Agents in the country. I paid to be a member and they have a lineup of incredibly talented industry leaders giving several talks on COVID, their cities, the economy, Real Estate trends, predictions, etc. I will update you on Friday with the highlights as well as anything else new that has come up before the weekend
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