Responding to Coronavirus

On Tuesday, March 24th, the Ontario Government released a list of essential services that are permitted to continue operating. However, late yesterday, the Ontario Real Estate Association, which governs regulated Real Estate in Ontario, provided further clarification about how we can continue to serve our clients in the context of the current State of Emergency declared in Ontario.

In short, REALTORS® are being asked to stop all face-to-face business, including open houses, in-person showings and maintaining agents and public office hours. While many traditional brick and mortar Brokerages will be looking for ways to adapt, Point59 Realty has already been making use of virtual operations and remote marketing and we are prepared to step it up to assist you during these challenging times.

What does this mean moving forward? We will continue to promote your property, respond to buyer inquiries and work with cooperating REALTORS® to ensure any interested buyers are qualified and serious about pursuing your property. We will abide by the request to stop face-to-face showings.

We will be requesting video walk0throughs from all our clients, and providing a simple process to transfer the video to us.  This will only be used for qualified buyers and cooperating REALTORS® who have a serious buyer.

We will work on a case by case basis, but when we find a serious buyer, we can discuss the next steps including the option of working with an offer conditional on them seeing the property directly.

Further to this, we have prepared a COVID-19 Showing Policy Document which will be posted for REALTORS® on your listing (not for public view) and ask that we work together to implement this policy for working with buyers.

What we need to avoid is agents bringing buyers through your home as a first step in the buying process.

There will most certainly be REALTORS® who are going to disregard the direction given to us to avoid face-to-face meetings and you may still receive calls from REALTORS® requesting showings. We strongly recommend that you push back and direct them to us if they have any questions (or did not view the Showing Policy Document). The risk we run as an industry that refuses to abide by self-regulation to avoid face-to-face meetings is a strict order to cease all operations - which would have devastating effects on buyers and sellers across the board. By complying with a new set of rules to promote and ‘virtually’ view properties, we can continue to work together towards a successful sale while ensuring the health and safety of everyone.

This is certainly not business as usual, however there are buyers in need of homes and we are committed to helping you through this new reality for the time being.

Please let us know if you have any questions and we look forward to working with you in this new reality.