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[00:00:00] Real estate in the era of the Coronavirus. How do we keep buyers and sellers safe? That's coming up next. [00:00:05][5.0] [00:00:09] You're listening to the Bo Knows Real Estate podcast. Tips and advice for home buyers, sellers and owners with award winning Remax agent Bo Kauffmann. [00:00:19][9.9] [00:00:22] Real estate has, at least for now, been deemed an essential service. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One of them is purely economic. There's a ton of spin off business coming as a result from every house or condo sale. Aside from taxes and legal fees and of course, real estate fees, moving costs, people buy furniture. People buy appliances. They fix up their houses when they sell and they fix up their houses after they buy. So there's a multitude of spin off benefits, economic spin off benefits from real estate. [00:00:53][31.4] [00:00:54] But the other one is that we are able to conduct business and keep buyers and sellers safe. Manageable Real Estate Association has put in place a number of safeguards and I'm going to explain those right now. In the past, it used to be able to book a showing for a house just about any time. And even if you're showing overlapped with another buyer, that was that was okay. But that's been changed now. So from here on in, you can only book one buyer at a time. So if your agent if you looking at a house, new agent books a two to three o'clock window, you'll be the only ones in the house because sellers have also been encouraged to leave the house at the time. That may not always be possible, especially if they're elderly. They may not be able to go outside depending on the weather, but in most cases, sellers will be going outside and you'll you and your agent will be the only ones in the house at that time. [00:01:44][50.3] [00:01:45] The next thing is that open houses are pretty much a thing of the past. There's no way to control the crowds sometimes. I remember having open houses in River Heights in February and there was people lined up outside to get into the house because the house was full already. So I don't believe any agents are gonna be having any open houses. It's just it's not worth the risk. Also, the Manitoba Real Estate Association has come out with a form that buyer agents and their clients must sign and fill out, indicating that nobody there who's going into the house. That's the agent or the buyers have traveled in the past 14 days, are showing symptoms or signs of the illness, have not knowingly been in touch with anybody who does have the virus. So like I said, buyer agents and their buyers have to sign these forms, which also make it tougher for buyers to see a house without an agent. Gone are the days of just pulling up in front, calling the listing agent and saying, hey, please slide down here and show me the house. [00:02:41][56.3] [00:02:42] Which is further encouragement for anybody who's looking to buy a house or a condo to hook up with a real estate agent right now and get those forms filled out to assure that you are not carrying the virus and you're safe. And that will give you easier access to the listings these days. [00:02:57][15.8] [00:02:58] In addition to these, I've personally implemented a couple of different procedures that will help protect my clients and myself. Going forward, I will not be driving buyers around in my personal car anymore. That's to protect them and myself. Buyers would have to meet me at the listings. I will also bring to each showing I will bring a bottle of hand sanitizer. We're going to sanitize before we go in and after we come out. And if buyers are showing any signs of illness, we will not be proceeding with the showing. [00:03:27][28.9] [00:03:27] If you're the seller of a house, I would encourage you to put a bottle of hand sanitizer out just in case agents to come in and they don't carry their own. I would put that bottle near the front entrance and along with the...