It appears that the wave of homebuyer optimism that buoyed up the housing market heading into March may be starting to recede in the face of the coronavirus.
Open houses throughout the Greater Boston region were slow this weekend, said Greater Boston Real Estate Board CEO Greg Vasil.
“Sellers are very, very apprehensive about opening their homes to crowds coming in,” he said, referencing a survey his group conducted of its members. “Buyers are apprehensive about being in large groups. Open houses were very different – people just weren’t out.”
It was a marked contrast with the weekend before where potential buyers flooded open houses. Just a few days after, however, Gov. Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency over the coronavirus, steadily ramping up restrictions on public gatherings and raising awareness of the issue.
The situation wasn’t universal, however: Realtors in Boston’s northwest and southwest suburbs reported bustling foot traffic at their open houses, possibly helped along by record-low mortgage interest rates.
Berkshire Hathaway Commonwealth Real Estate Realtor Meg Steere said an open house she held in Watertown was “just packed” both Saturday and Sunday.
“To be honest, I was kind of amazed,” she said. “Between when we had made that decision on Monday [to show the house] and the weekend, things had changed so much.”
Hanover-based Momentum Realty Broker-Owner Shawn Moloney said he was representing clients who put bids in on three different houses over the weekend, in each of which he expected to be competing against multiple offers.
“The reality is that the market is still strong. The demand is there,” he said.
Both Steere and Moloney said agents appeared to be universally taking precautions this weekend to limit the spread of COVID-19, from hand-washing stations and hand sanitizer to deep cleans of properties after the open houses were over.
Agents may soon be forced to move to in-person showings, Steere said, whether due to buyer or seller preference or Baker’s emergency ban on gatherings of more than 25 people. Nationally, brokerages like Redfin and Keller Wiliams announced yesterday they were suspending open houses, but still conducting in-person tours. In an email to customers, Redfin also offered video chat tours, a method Moloney said his brokerage had gained experience in while representing out-of-state buyers.
As the coronavirus crisis continues to unfold, agents, sellers and buyers are facing new challenges, however, from difficulty in securing inspections of a home’s carbon monoxide and smoke detectors to difficulties closing transactions in-person or filing transactions electronically in two of the state’s most active registries of deeds, Suffolk and Middlesex South.
