By Jennifer Merchant
I can’t believe we are reaching the end of 2020. This year challenged all of us on so many levels. Just two weeks before everything shut down, I landed a job with a credit union that exclusively services the healthcare industry. Things never slowed down for me. Learning my new role at the credit union and continuing to provide the best service to my real estate clients left almost no quality time for much else. Seeing the memes and the social media posts about how bored people were and hearing about all the time they had now to work on home projects and do fun activities with their kids added to my mom guilt!
I’m a pretty positive person and one thing I’ve learned is that everything is temporary. The good, and the bad. If you hang in there during the bad times, the good times WILL come. I believe you grow through what you go through and there is always, always something to be grateful for. My children have gone from eLearning to in person learning and back to eLearning this school year and thankfully all of us have stayed healthy.
The real estate world changed during this time – for the better. Adding virtual meetings to the process proved to be an effective way to meet someone for the first time to talk about their priorities for selling or buying a home and seeing if I was the right realtor for them. Hosting virtual open houses and home tours turned out to be very successful methods for showing homes. Many of the title companies implemented efficient remote closings.
Unlike the economic crisis of 2008, the current recession was not caused by the housing industry. Home prices have not decreased since March, and are not expected to, and homes are still selling and deals are still happening.
I don’t think things will ever go back to exactly how they were. We have evolved, like humans do, and I am excited about the future. Despite all the negativity in the news and on social media, I can sense that people are really looking forward to the holidays even more this year, because of what we’ve all been through. In fact, I have friends that put their Christmas tree up before Halloween this year! I waited a week!
