Though the pandemic didn’t end up having a negative impact on luxury home sales pricing and volume in 2020, it certainly changed the way brokers handled business.
From limiting in-person house viewings to investing in tech tools, brokers had to adjust operations after they were allowed to resume business, following a short pause prompted by the shelter-in-place mandate first issued last March.
“It really forced a lot of people to step up their technology game and look at how they handle business,” said Rob Smith, a broker with Compass that recently closed on a $25 million sale that speaks to this trend.
“We closed the deal via FaceTime, which was a first for me,” Smith said.
December Deals
The $25 million sale of Newport Coast’s 8 Midsummer was the priciest reported local home sale to occur in December.
Smith had the listing for the 13,430-square-foot home that was built in 2020. The six-bedroom, 11-bathroom home is on an ocean view lot in Crystal Cove.
Jordan Cohen of Re/Max One represented the buyer; the buyer and seller were undisclosed.
The deal closed on Dec. 22; in the last week of the year, four other homes sold in Orange County above $8 million for a cumulative sales volume of nearly $46 million, according to brokerage data.
Tech Tools
As buyers and sellers continue to remain wary of touring and showing homes, virtual tours became less of a perk and more of a necessity.
For Compass, not much of a shift was required when it came to technology tools, with the New York-based brokerage rolling out a series of tools for agents like custom virtual staging effects, Facebook Live buyer events and location-based mobile ads.
“We were already doing a lot of these strategies prior to the pandemic as technology is a huge part of our brand,” Smith said.
This is the case for much of the high-end brokers in Orange County, who rely on high-resolution images and videos to capture online interest.
One technology tool is often referenced by luxury brokers as a must during the pandemic: a Matterport camera, which enables 3D videos and photography for interactive experiences.
“I bought a Matterport camera, which enables 3D videos and photography. I now do my weekly open houses virtually,” Lee Ann Canaday, of Canaday Group & Re/Max Fine Homes, told the Business Journal last year.
Study
Matterport tapped Redfin in September to gauge just how preferences have shifted since the onset of the pandemic, polling 2,000 U.S. homebuyers and sellers in the study.
“Sixty-nine percent of home sellers who did not think that 3D tours were a necessity before the COVID-19 pandemic, now feel that they are,” Matterport said in a statement.
“In fact, Redfin surveyed homebuyers earlier this summer and found that nearly half of them said they had made an offer on a home sight unseen,” said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather.
Sight Unseen
Sight-unseen sales, once a one-off story, now appear to be more of the norm.
“I had seen other brokers selling homes sight unseen, which I thought was rare until I did just that,” said Smith, who has closed $750 million in transactions in coastal Orange County.
While brokers argue these types of deals aren’t likely to become the norm, they were bolstered during the pandemic as traveling became more of a risk while demand for less urban areas outside of larger metro cities boomed.
“Throughout the pandemic, sellers did not want to show their homes and many pulled listings. At the same time, we saw an influx of buyers fleeing big cities to areas like Orange County that seemed safer and healthier,” Smith said. “Demand outstripped supply, leading to higher pricing.”
