COVID Conundrum!

Opinion

12 minute read

June 15, 2020

Have I ever mentioned that I’m:

a) Obsessive-compulsive
b) Really, really into statistics

Oh – and I also like rhetorical questions…

One day, we’re all going to write books, proverbial or otherwise, about our experiences during the great COVID-crisis of 2020.  But today, just about three months into this, I find a lot of us can’t help but talk about what we’ve already gone through, and how we’ve evolved.

As my brokerage prepares to re-open next week, I think back to the very beginning of the COVID-crisis when I was the only person in the building.  Yes, I was in the office every morning, like clockwork, save for March 19th and 20th when the whole world stood still.

Being the only person in the building was lonely, but it was safe, and that was the only way in which my wife agreed to allow me to do it.

A member of our family has a pre-existing condition that, combined with COVID, would spell trouble.  We have lived the last three months doing everything we can to ensure we remain healthy, to help a vulnerable member of our family.  Moving forward, I can almost guarantee that we will be the last in society to truly “open up.”

Years from now, I will recall some dark days in late-March, sitting in my office, working through three hours of work in what would have otherwise been a ten-hour day, and feeling completely lost.  I’ve doing nothing but work for sixteen years, and that last week of March was a barren wasteland of real estate activity.

Some believe that variety is the spice of life, but I thrive on routine.  I keep hundreds of spreadsheets of sports statistics, and part of my morning ritual is to fill in those sheets as I drink my coffee, and prepare for my day.  When COVID came along and wiped out everything except for news stories about the virus, I suddenly found myself without my regular workload, but also without my hobbies as well.

So I started tracking COVID cases in MS Excel, and while this might seem morbid, I tracked cases and deaths for all provinces, and a multitude of countries.  Charts, graphs, acceleration rates, and rates of decline.  Every stat I could think of, I kept it.

Like I said: routine keeps me sane.  Rituals are a part of my life.

While I don’t profess to know the biology behind COVID, nor do I possess any knowledge on the medical side of things, I’ve been tracking the data for months.  When testing rates went up, I wanted to know how cases went up in relation to testing.  It was fascinating.

I’ll never forget March 16th, 2020 – the date of my last “offer night,” pre-COVID.  I had a dozen offers on a small Regent Park condo, and the next day, the world changed forever.  March 17th, 2020 – that’s “Day Zero” as far as I’m concerned in the COVID pandemic as we know it.

There were 13 cases of COVID in Ontario that day.

There were 25 on March 18th.  And then 43 on March 19th.

And by March 25th, cases finally broke through 100.

In my mind, I always thought I’d feel “safe” when cases dropped back below 100 again.

Peaking at 640 cases on April 24th, we’ve come a long, long way.  And it was great to see cases drop below 200 for the first time since March 28th, with a modest 182 on Friday, June 12th.

Here’s a chart from my files:

 

So how has the real estate market changed since the pandemic began on March 17th?

Well, I’ve been writing about it three times per week since then, so you know things went down, then up.  And back-and-forth.

I’ve talked about how “offer nights” died, then morphed into “soft holdbacks,” and now are trending back to “offer nights” again.

I’ve examined inventory levels, sales, and several ratios.

But how does the business of real estate look?

A client drilled me with questions on the weekend, and as it usually happens, I figured this would make for a great blog post.  These are his questions, which were asked more so in passing, but my answers are obviously thorough here…

 

Are agents working full time?

It really depends on the agent.

You hear this a lot from me, but with 55,000 licensed agents in Toronto, most don’t work to begin with.  So throw in a pandemic, and you can imagine how many agents are left with nothing to do.

Agents are going to start leaving the business, if they haven’t already.  Our brokerage has already lost 3-4 agents that I know of, and while some are older who figured now is the time to finally, and permanently retire, we’re going to see some bottom-run agents decide that taking that “day job” as a “full-time job” is a smart move.

It’s been a while since I’ve looked at the total cost of keeping a real estate license, but I think with the TREB dues, RECO registration, RECO insurance, and whatever else we pay for, it’s probably about $4,000 per year.  Any of the agents reading this – feel free to let me know if you have a better figure.

For agents that had a weak finish to 2019, started 2020 slowly (ie. zero transactions) and then found themselves sitting at home with nothing to do for three full months, the time to finally cut the cord on a failed experiment called “my real estate career” is just around the corner.

Now, aside from those agents, which, for some reason, I felt the need to start this answer with, then yes, agents are working full-time.  Most of the true, top agents never stopped working.  And even though I mused that I was sitting at my desk, drinking coffee with nothing to do for one lonely week, I don’t know that anybody out there can say that they didn’t have a few days with f-all to do.

It would be a mistake for any decent, full-time agent to be sitting on the sidelines right now.  As you’ll read in later questions/answers, there are loads of precautions being taken during property viewings, and while every person may make up his or her own mind about personal safety, I think that a buyer agent with an active client needs to show that client properties, otherwise that buyer needs to look elsewhere.

Are brokerages open?

Very few, if any, are truly open for business as usual.

Our brokerage was “closed” to agents from about March 19th onward, and every one of the full-time staff were working from home, save for one person who had to man the front desk.  By early-April, we had one front desk staff in per day, and one accounting person in the building next door who was on site to print cheques and handle some of the roles that couldn’t be done remotely, but the rest of accounting, deal secretaries, marketing, et al were still at home.

Last week, we had two front-desk staff in, one accounting, but marketing was still working from home.  I was one of only three agents who were on site even though the office is “closed.”  Real estate is full of preferential treatment, so that’s how it goes.

A friend told me that her brokerage was closed and that ownership changed the locks back in March!  That’s real commitment to keeping agents away, and making them stay away.

I’m sure there are brokerages that never closed.  Maybe they’re the type that think the “scamdemic” isn’t real, or maybe ownership is just evil and needs revenue to stay alive, and has no problem putting agents and support staff at risk.  But for the most part, all reputable brokerages closed, and some are beginning to re-open.

Our brokerage spent last week installing plexiglass at the front desk to ensure there’s zero contact between the two staff members and anybody coming into reception, whether that means agents or people dropping/picking up from front desk.  Only agents with private offices are going to be allowed back, for the time being, and this makes perfect sense to me.

I would expect to see other brokerages follow suit.

What is the activity like in your typical brokerage?

As I said, most brokerages are “closed” to all but a hand full of skeleton staff.

But deliveries need to be made – keys being dropped off or picked up, deposit cheques, office supplies, etc.  So every brokerage, even at the depths of the pandemic, had to have somebody present.  It was impossible to simply padlock the doors and close up shop.  While many brokerages starting requesting deposits by wire transfer, not every deposit was done in this way, and many of the lower-end brokerages don’t have that feature.  Post-dated cheques for rentals, keys, and “FOR SALE” signs, just by way of example, are things that must be facilitated by hand, and thus in person.

I suspect that one or more marketing person will now be on site in many brokerages.  They were working and printing remotely for the last three months, but a classic paper jam resulted in the head of marketing having to trek to the office last week to work on site.

It was nice to see a couple of agents in the office over the past couple of weeks, and talk shop like we used to.  I have a very large office, which is actually a former boardroom, so an agent passing by and stopping to chat is about fifteen-feet away from me.  For the last few weeks, there is one agent on our main floor who has been in every day, one in the basement with me, but nobody on the top floor who’s coming in every day.  There have been three or four agents who I’ve seen more than once, but for the most part, it’s really just a handful of bodies in there each and every day.

The phones ring off the hook though, that’s for sure!  Even with life being made easier by BrokerBay, our front desk staff is still busier than ever.  They’re also facilitating marketing, since all of marketing is being done remotely.  Our in-house legal counsel is in every day, but most of management is off site.

As many of you can attest to, Zoom is a regular part of all our lives.  Our company has meetings, courses, training, and guest speakers on Zoom multiple times per day.  The Monday-morning office meeting has been replaced by a 10am meeting on Tuesday, company-wide, and a 10am meeting on Thursday’s, for our branch.  There is a weekly meeting for our “Top Ten” agents, which is a gathering of the (sharper) minds, of sorts, and then as I said earlier, lots of training courses and ways to keep agents engaged.

Who is booking appointments, trouble-shooting, closing transactions, transferring funds, etc.?

When all this is over, many brokerages will have a couple of staff members who deserve big raises!

BrokerBay is handling most of the online bookings, but there are always issues, and even though online booking through our TorontoMLS is the way to go, there are still lots and lots of agents who pick up the goddam phone and call the brokerage to book.  Then there’s calls for registering offers, inquiries on properties, and just about any requirement of a front-line staff member, pre-COVID, but now we have fewer staff to handle the load.

Closing transactions is a thankless job, and you have no idea how much work goes into real estate behind the scenes.  We have the best “deal secretary” in the city of Toronto, and she’s relentless.  Seriously, my favourite is when some lawyer, or one of his/her staff, send us an email asking for something they’ve already been sent, twice.  Our deal secretary will tell them as much, and of course, nobody ever admits fault, right?  So then our deal secretary will email them and say, “You were provided with this on April 16th at 9:07am, and April 23rd at 11:41am,” and provide PDF’s of the emails.  I have a saying with my team – “When in doubt, remember that ‘she’ is always right, and you are always wrong.”

You have no idea, nor will you ever have any idea, what it’s like dealing with lower-end brokerages after a firm sale, up until closing.  A brokerage like ours essentially does their job, and this happens on countless transactions.  I mean, we could sit back and let the other side sink, but then our transaction is in jeopardy.  So time and time again, our accounting and deal secretaries do the other brokerage’s job.

All of the unsung heroes who work in our back-end have been working remotely, and they’ve been doing an amazing job, with fewer tools, and amid the feeling of being displaced.

What legal and safety challenges have brokerages faced?

When all this started, there were a lot of conversations about how we as agents could be liable if a seller or a buyer caught COVID through our dealings.  What started as this general, “What if?” became a frantic search for legal opinions, and of course, you never get two legal opinions that are the same.

Since March, I’ve seen about thirty memorandums relating to health, safety, and/or liability.  We’ve had a dozen variations of waivers, clauses, et al.

The whole “force majeure” idea was thrust upon us early on, and we all had that one cocky seller that said, “I don’t have to close on time.  Force majeure, bro.  Force majeure.  Can’t wait to see this battled in court!”  Yeah, sure.  Great theory.  But in practice, do you wanna take it there, bro?”

Again, we had a few different legal minds give us their thoughts on force majeure, none of which were remotely helpful, in my opinion.  Then we went through the phase where we were all including a force majeure clause in both our offers, to protect our buyers, and our Schedule B’s for listings, to protect our sellers.

Things have calmed down quite a bit on all those fronts, but this isn’t going away any time soon.

What’s with all the waivers and disclosures?  Do they really serve any purpose?

No.  They don’t.

That’s my opinion as a non-lawyer who did not go to law-school.

However, as a realist, I think I bring something to the table here.

When the pandemic started, the idea that “A buyer could go into a house, bring COVID, infect the seller, and make us liable for a million dollar lawsuit from the seller” was scaring a lot of agents, managers, and brokerage owners.  While I recognized that this could happen, I also recognized a little something called: reality.

In reality, how in the world is anybody going to prove any of this?

A property is listed for sale, seventy-six buyers go through with their agents, maybe their kids, or friends too.  Then a week later – BLAM!  Seller gets COVID.

Who did the seller get it from?  Contact-tracing and all, I get it.  But how can the seller ever prove, without a doubt, where he or she contracted the virus from?

These waivers that we’re all signing – myself included, are silly.  They’re simply present to give us peace of mind, not unlike a life-jacket on an airplane.  I mean, until “Sully” Sullenberger landed a goddam jet on the Hudson River, just about every single plane that ever crashed into the water burst into oblivion.  So those life-jackets under your seat, and the flight attendant showing you how to blow into the tubes, and the information card in the seat-pocket in front of you that show people calmly putting life jackets on themselves, followed by loved ones – this is all just nonsense.  It’s there to provide the illusion of safety.

So yeah, I’m going take some serious sh!t for this tomorrow, but that’s my two cents.

Checking “NO” to the question, “Have you travelled outside of Canada in the past 14 days?” what is that about?  Nobody’s reading any of this, they’re just signing through BrokerBay – since the physical forms have been done away with now, and you can just scribble with your mouse, and avoid even attempting to read this.

What’s different about the way showings are conducted for buyers?

When I showed up to my very first COVID-showing, wearing a mask and gloves, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen my client in ten years, and I’d never met his fiance.

They stepped out of the car, not yet wearing their masks, thank God!  Otherwise, I’d have just stood there like an idiot.

All of my listings have hand sanitizer, rubber gloves, and masks located inside the front door.

I do not allow double-bookings on my listings, and showings are limited to half-hour intervals.  No longer can four different buyers, and their agents, show up to see the property at 6:00pm, thereby turning the property into a de facto open house.

I would like to think that most listing agents are taking serious precautions, but not all of them are.

There’s a reason why we, as a society, are beating COVID.  Slowly but surely, cases are coming down.  Credit due to the various levels of government for forcing these social distancing, quarantining, and state of emergency measures upon us, and credit due to people in general for taking it seriously.

There’s an argument to be made that no house or condo should have been “allowed” to be up for sale during the pandemic, but I’m not a proponent of that line of thinking.  It’s up to a buyer as to whether he or she wants to take on a level of risk, large or small, and see a house or condo for sale, and it’s up to seller to decide if he or she wants to entertain the same level of risk by having people through the home.

I’ve yet to see a single buyer enter a house or condo without a mask and gloves, so it looks like all hope for mankind is not lost after all.

What are sellers going through right now?

If you’re a seller, enjoy wherever it is that you’ll be living when you’re not in your home!

I have one set of sellers living in the property right now, but that’s it.   A dozen other listings, sold, on the market, or on the way, for which the owners are not living there.

I currently have clients living with their parents in Burlington, clients sleeping at a friend’s, clients in an AirBnB, and other clients in a 4-month rental.

It’s the new reality of selling, although as cases come down, we might see this ease up a little bit.

I stage just about every property I list for sale, so the sellers moving out on a Sunday night means we leave the property vacant for a day or two, then have it professionally cleaned, then staged and photographed, then list it 4-5 days later.

For a property with an “offer date,” the time commitment is 15 days out of the house, assuming the property sells on that offer date.

It’s not easy, but I had a lot of sellers move out before COVID as well, so here’s one area where the pre/during COVID differences aren’t that vast.

Geez, that was long!  The conversation I had with my client was like six minutes.

He was so interested in, as he put it, the “inner workings” of the industry.  And one question he didn’t ask was whether or not any brokerages had gone under.  I’m sure some have, but I don’t know for sure.

One of the guys on my team was selling a property two months ago where the listing brokerage was some fly-by-night operation, with an address for service out of the broker of record’s house!  It was so suspect, and when it came time to provide a deposit, I said, “This is not going in their trust account.”

The last thing we needed was for this brokerage, which, from what I could tell, completed about three or four transactions per year, to go bankrupt and have those funds go missing.  I wanted the funds to be held in our trust account, but that’s a such a big F-U to the listing brokerage, so we had the funds held in the buyer’s lawyer’s trust account instead.

Phew!  This got long!

Excuse the lack of brevity today, but I’m absolutely wired here on a Sunday night and the fingers are on fire!

Written By David Fleming

David Fleming is the author of Toronto Realty Blog, founded in 2007. He combined his passion for writing and real estate to create a space for honest information and two-way communication in a complex and dynamic market. David is a licensed Broker and the Broker of Record for Bosley – Toronto Realty Group

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34 Comments

  1. hoob

    at 7:03 am

    Speaking of weird hobbies, mine is reading Air Transport Accident Investigation Reports.

    The chances of being useful on a particular flight are infinitesimally small, but it’s not security theatre/pantomime. Pretty much every aspect of what you as a passenger see in an airplane cabin, read in the safety card, or are told by a flight attendant, is a direct result of Something Horrible in the past: something that would have been survivable “if only”.

    Physical combined with human factors/cognitive science (ie, why are you reminded on flights over 4 hours where the emergency exits are on landing? Because, the stat show a HORRIBLE inflection point of passenger egress efficiency on survivble accident landings on those longer flights.)

    Ditching over water is, relatively speaking, not that uncommon, and not universally catastropic. Still very very very rare, granted.

    1. hoob

      at 7:07 am

      NOTE: Canada’s own AC797 accident (the Stan Rogers flight) was seminal in this area. I don’t know of any single accident investigation that has led to more survivability cabin safety improvements and insight than that one. Fun reading.

    2. JL

      at 1:17 pm

      Now I’m thinking to all those Air Crash Investigation (Mayday) episodes I watched… but you’re right; you never know the set of circumstances in any accident when that one extra safety thing could have been helpful.

  2. jeanmarc

    at 8:40 am

    Given that the topic today is about Covid. I thought this would be an interesting read about a possible source of where it came from (i.e. mutation).

    Lots of conspiracy theories. Like a script out of a James Bond movie (political espionage). Trudeau and Tam must have known about this but nothing has been said.

    https://ca.news.yahoo.com/canadian-scientist-sent-deadly-viruses-080057674.html

  3. Appraiser

    at 9:39 am

    Latest mid-month MLS data from LG:

    “Average prices for the first 2 weeks of June are up 12% over last year, but this is largely due to a pickup in the high end market. $2M+ sales are at least year’s volumes which means there are proportionately more $2M+ sales this year vs last year pushing avg prices up.”
    ~John Pasalis.

    https://twitter.com/JohnPasalis?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

    Gee, if one didn’t know better, one might surmise that the GTA real estate market is unstoppable.

    1. Chris

      at 10:05 am

      Sales -16% from last year
      Listings -11% from last year
      MOI at ~2.2

      LGJP also shared another interesting article:

      “The pandemic has exposed the precarious economic situation of many Canadian families

      – More than half of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque.
      – One-third of households are “asset poor.”
      – Ten million workers have no workplace retirement plans.
      – The median retirement savings of near-retirement households without pensions is only $3,000.
      – Nearly four in 10 Canadians have no retirement savings at all.
      – Household debt is hovering at an all-time high.”

      https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-the-pandemic-has-exposed-the-precarious-economic-situation-of-many

      1. Appraiser

        at 10:26 am

        The financial condition of many Canadians is nothing new. All of the so-called vulnerabilities listed above were present before the pandemic.

        Other than listing a bunch of old factoids – what is your point? Is the market actually crashing and the rest of us are simply unaware?

        Or are you once again on the wrong side of history, woefully behind the curve and desperate to deflect attention from the fact that the market is heating up and prices are ahead of last year by 12% ?

        1. Chris

          at 10:42 am

          Ask LGJP, he’s the one who shared the article. I wonder why he thought it was relevant…

          1. Caprice

            at 11:53 am

            That article has nothing to do with real estate and JP isn’t even quoted in it.

            ““The pandemic has exposed the precarious economic situation of many Canadian families”
            Newsflash for you… these are not the people that buy Toronto real estate.

          2. Chris

            at 12:02 pm

            Where did I say JP was quoted in it? And while it does not directly talk of real estate, obviously the economic health of families plays a role in the market, which presumably is why JP shared the article.

            Newsflash for you… 65% of Torontonians own their homes. Are you of the belief that precarious economic situations are exclusively the purview of the other 35%?

          3. Caprice

            at 12:18 pm

            I am saying despite all those factors, there is more than enough demand and money to absorb inventory and keep prices from falling.
            For those the currently own and are affected, selling their home would be a last resort. Not happening.

          4. Chris

            at 12:23 pm

            Obviously selling their home would be a last resort. Has anyone ever suggested that would be a first resort to make ends meet?

            But depending on how government programs, economic recovery, and the virus itself evolve, it may become a necessary resort for those under financial stress. They would also likely be more willing to offload a home that is not their residence, but an investment property.

          5. Chris

            at 1:16 pm

            Heard about that on the radio. Very curious to see what shape it takes. Some valid arguments on either side of this one, e.g. businesses having a hard time re-attracting employees to work vs. some jobs still not being tenable with current social distancing requirements.

            No matter how it shakes out, I think it’s safe to say we’re in for a pretty steep deficit and are likely to see some substantial tax increases in our future.

        2. condodweller

          at 1:11 pm

          YOY numbers are pretty much useless at this point due to the large run up to March. What matters is the change since March. i must say I did not expect the government to start reopening this soon as I recall a press conference where they stated that they want to see new cases below 200 before they even start thinking of reopening.

          Which BTW reminds me of the recent fed chairman’s answer to a question of when will the fed think about raising rates to which he replied we are not even thinking about thinking of raising rates.

          Ford actually admitted at one point that he was being pressured to reopen and I guess he cracked when they started while cases were well above 300.

          What was more surprising to me is that after an initial blip for a while where we went back above 400, the cases have been steadily coming down.

          Also, since a lot of reports over concerns about rents in March and April I haven’t seen any headline news about rent payment issues in May/June. I didn’t go looking either, I just realized last week that two rent days have passed without me hearing about major issues.

          Combine these with mortgage deferrals and all the government support, we just might get through this relatively easily in term of economics. I don’t mean to suggest it wasn’t difficult for a lot of people/businesses not to mention the lives lost but we didn’t get the doomsday scenario many predicted. Please don’t flame me for using the word easy I’m simply using it in comparison to what might have been.

    2. Kyle

      at 1:39 pm

      June 2019 Average Price was $832,703. At +12% over last year, we’ll be looking at a new all-time record at the end of this month. Once the economy opens back up and more restrictions lift, i think we’re going to see even more Buyers returning to the market.

      1. Appraiser

        at 9:06 am

        Good catch @Kyle: There is also a good chance that the 12% number is low, as the market continues to recover / accelerate toward the end of the month.

  4. Appraiser

    at 10:32 am

    Dow Jones and the rest of the equity markets are tanking again today.

    The Dow is off 500 points (2%) today already; and negative almost 10% from last Monday!

    Something about dead cats bouncing comes to mind.

    1. Chris

      at 10:47 am

      Ahh there’s the classic appraiser post when the market has a down day. They’ve been pretty absent the past couple months!

      Also curious how you think equity markets are horribly overvalued, yet real estate is not. Would you not expect them to move in broadly similar ways, impacted by broadly similar forces (economic output, population growth, income levels, availability and cost of capital, etc.)?

      1. Appraiser

        at 9:08 am

        More like a bad week, but hey…some people love the wild volatility of the markets and competing against high-frequency trading platforms.

    2. Chris

      at 11:22 am

      As of 11:15am:

      DJI -1.11%
      S&P500 -0.77%
      NASDAQ -0.34%
      TSX -0.58%

      “markets tanking again today” indeed.

    3. J G

      at 1:21 pm

      Coming out of the woodwork when market has a down day eh? Sleazeball.

      You lost all credibility when you called dead cat bounce early on a 40% rally.

      Update: s&p and Dow both positive for the day @1pm. Karma, keep calling.

      1. Chris

        at 1:27 pm

        S&P500, TSX, NASDAQ all positive on the day. DJI at -0.16%. Appraiser nowhere to be found.

      1. Condodweller

        at 9:13 pm

        One thing appraiser does well is troll you. Now I can just come here for market updates 🙂

    1. Condodweller

      at 4:04 pm

      The article says rents are down 10% and then say this. “Before the pandemic, a one-bedroom condo in the downtown would probably not go for less than $2,200 per month, but now you’re seeing them being advertised for about $1,800,” he said.”
      That’s about 20% according to my calculation. Some of the new investors taking possession of their new units are going to feel that. But then again rents would have been lower when they likely purchased several years ago. Now those who purchased recently that’s a different story.

  5. condodweller

    at 11:05 am

    I’m probably borderline OCD as I also like to follow the numbers but not to the point where I “need” to do it. I closely followed the world numbers and the progress of the spread around the world. What I found interesting is effective/ineffective various measures were in different countries.

    Looking at that graph I wonder if weather played a role in the lower numbers in June. When they started reopening in may the numbers initially went up and then in early June they started dropping all of a sudden where we have around 180 cases daily. So cases increased as I would expect after the reopening, and then started dropping after June 5th. “Winter” was over around May 20 and almost exactly two weeks later the numbers consistently drop.

    Initially it was believed that warm weather would have a positive effect but some disagreed saying the virus didn’t seem to have a problem in tropical weather. The numbers in Canada seem to suggest good weather has played a role which is great. However it does open the possibility of a second wave in the fall.

    1. Chris

      at 11:22 am

      I’m far from an expert in the field, but it doesn’t seem to be the weather that has changed the spread of Covid.

      If weather had a significant impact, we probably wouldn’t be seeing the explosive growth in cases in places like Florida, Brazil, India, etc. Meanwhile, New Zealand’s weather has been getting cooler as they enter their winter, yet they have managed to get cases to virtually zero (with the exception of two new cases today from UK arrivals).

      What has seemed to make a difference is lock-downs, social distancing, mask wearing, wide spread testing and tracing, and taking prompt action.

      1. condodweller

        at 12:49 pm

        I just noted that weather seems to fit. What else would cause such a dramatic turn around?
        It’s difficult to say for tropical countries as we don’t know if they would have had lower cases if the weather was cooler. New Zealand is a bit of an outlier as when I heard a while ago they had 0 new cases for 17 days when they fully reopened. If you have no cases the weather is not going to make a difference.

        Also, as I said it’s interesting how unique the situation can be and the same measure that worked in one country might not work in another. For example experts were expecting Africa to be badly hit due to their weak health care system yet they did pretty well which was explained due to the fact that they have the youngest population and since some countries have had 6 epidemics going on already, people were good at hygiene and social distancing.

        Some of the nuances were like in South America where some countries that did lock down still had high cases due to factors such as a large portion of poor population who don’t have fridges and bank accounts which forced them to go shopping daily and line up at banks to receive aid.

        Even lock down measures had the most effect where borders were closed early. The two most effective measures that seem to be common in most places was mandatory mask wearing from the start and testing of people without symptoms.

        I find this stuff fascinating.

        1. Chris

          at 1:11 pm

          “The short answer is that while we may expect modest declines in the contagiousness of SARS-CoV-2 in warmer, wetter weather and perhaps with the closing of schools in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, it is not reasonable to expect these declines alone to slow transmission enough to make a big dent.”

          https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/will-covid-19-go-away-on-its-own-in-warmer-weather/

          From a CBC article on the topic the other day, quoting Dr. Saverio Stranges, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at Western University’s medical school:

          “What works? A community-centred approach means testing people outside of hospitals quickly to find cases, tracing their contacts and containing infections in a timely and efficient fashion.

          The paper’s authors gave successful examples, such as:
          – South Korea’s rapid expansion of diagnostic capacity and innovative drive-through and walk-in screening.
          – Quarantine of suspected cases and mass masking in Vietnam.
          – Taiwan’s efforts to address stigma associated with people who test positive.
          – Germany’s extensive testing policy to identify milder cases, including in younger people.”

          Again, not an expert here, but it looks like the experts believe that warmer weather has little impact. What does have an impact are the things we’ve been doing, such as lock-downs, social distancing, testing, and doing all of these as quickly as possible.

  6. Appraiser

    at 5:55 am

    “Mortgage applications for purchases climbed for the eighth consecutive week in the U.S. They’re now near an 11-year high. That’s a good reminder that despite all the economic carnage, home buying interest is far from moribund. One difference in the U.S., however, is that their qualifying rate has steadily dropped and is now below 3% in some cases. That fuels buying power. Canada’s qualifying rate (“stress test rate“) has barely moved and remains inflated at 4.94%.”

    https://twitter.com/RateSpy?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Pick5 is a weekly series comparing and analyzing five residential properties based on price, style, location, and neighbourhood.

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