When we launched our JustOffered | Open House tablet app this February we certainly didn’t anticipate that one of the very first challenges we’d face in our campaign was the development of the COVID-19 outbreak. As our management team carefully considers the implications every day for the safety of our team, and to keep operations flowing as smoothly as possible, it set this little teleworker thinking about how COVID-19 affects our customer base. Safe and secure from germs in my home office, my head started reeling at what impact the spread of any illness could not only have on my team in the office, but also on our users: real estate professionals. Your entire business is based on contact from driving buyers around to showing homes, shaking hands and hosting open houses.
Watching the whole country of Italy be quarantined is certainly eye opening to a reality we may soon face here in the United States. A recent article in Forbes indicates that there is already pushback from sellers in the United States resistant to allowing anyone into their homes, even going so far as to request health and travel screenings before permitting a showing to be scheduled.
Although the global response can feel alarming, the directive we most often hear in the United States is to work towards prevention. For every challenge there is a solution and some tricks we’ve seen that have been used to circumvent contact, specifically in the real estate realm, are:
- Exercise frequent hand-washing – that goes for everyone!
- Provide hand sanitizer (if you can find it!) stations upon home entry
- Encourage buyers driving themselves separately
- Suggest “elbow bumps” instead of hand shaking
- Create 3D Virtual Tours
- Keep disinfectant wipes handy in the car and house
- If you must host that open house, use the free JustOffered | Open House tablet app, or any digital sign-in sheet, instead of traditional pen & paper…tablet screens are much more wipe-able than pen and paper!
We provide this list as practical solutions to help prevent the spread of germs. This list is not intended to contradict measures taken in your area nor counteract exposure to COVID-19. Stay posted, along with us, by following guidelines as issued by the Center for Disease Prevention and Control and your local government. For more information you can visit: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html.