Real Estate is Non-Essential? How a New York Agent is Working Through Quarantine

Real estate agents across the country are being labeled “non-essential” as quarantines take effect to help flatten the curve of the coronavirus pandemic. New York was one of the first states to order real estate agents to stay home, and many others have followed suit.

In this episode of The Walkthrough, New York agent Eric Stein tells us how he’s keeping his brokerage and team motivated, his daily routine to keep productivity up, and the hardest thing about working under quarantine.

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If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to get future episodes delivered automatically: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | YouTube

Links and Show Notes

• Eric Stein on HomeLight
• NY Governor Andrew Cuomo announces “New York State on PAUSE” quarantine
• HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center
• Subscribe and listen to The Walkthrough: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

Full Transcript

(SPEAKER: Matt McGee, Host) As the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt the real estate industry, many agents across the country are dealing with a new twist. They’ve been designated non-essential and told to stay home. In some states, the order to quarantine comes with a hopeful timeframe that’s usually measured in weeks. But state governments are also saying they might need to extend it.

In New York, real estate agents have been classified as non-essential and, get this, the quarantine has no end date. “Until further notice,” is the exact wording of the executive order.

So, how would you feel if you were told you have to work from home until further notice? What would you do to keep your team and your business going? How do you make the most of a situation like this? Today I’m posing those exact questions to a successful agent in the New York City area.

This is “The Walkthrough.”

(INTRO MUSIC)

Hi, everyone. I’m Matt McGee, editor of HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center. On this show, you’ll learn what’s working right now from the best real estate agents and industry experts in the country. At HomeLight, we believe in real estate agents. And we believe that by helping agents like you be even better at serving your clients, the entire industry improves. If you’d like to reach me with feedback, ideas, or questions about “The Walkthrough,” just send an email to walkthrough [at] homelight.com.

Agents, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Before we get started with this week’s episode, I just want to say from all of us at HomeLight, we hope you’re in good spirits and good health. That’s you, your families, your teams, your brokerages, and so forth. We know that you are doing your best to keep serving your clients in this crazy chaotic time, so keep that up. We’ll keep doing our part to help however we can, all right? Sound like a deal? Deal.

So, when the coronavirus pandemic first started to take hold in the U.S., you probably remember, it hit the Seattle area hard — Kirkland, Washington right outside Seattle, in fact. For a while, that area had the most confirmed cases and the most deaths.

More recently, the New York City area has been called the epicenter of coronavirus in the U.S. There were headlines, I think a week or so ago, that said New York City and its suburbs accounted for about 5% of all cases around the world. New York was one of the first states to issue an executive order putting a quarantine in place and forcing non-essential businesses to close. That includes real estate agents. You can work but you have to do it from home.

We’re not going to get into a debate over the right or wrong of quarantines like that and whether states are going too far, there’s plenty of that on social media already. Just fire up Twitter or Facebook and you’ll find those debates if that’s what you want.

What we are going to do is find out what it’s like to live and work as a real estate agent under quarantine, under shelter in place rules, whatever you want to call them.

Eric Stein is based in Westchester County, New York. It’s a beautiful suburb just north of New York City. He runs a 46 agent RE/MAX office, and also has his own 9-person team. And for the past week, they’ve all been working under quarantine. No showings allowed, no face to face meetings, nothing. Are you curious to hear how that’s going?

Well, in this conversation, you’ll learn

• the daily routine that Eric is using and encouraging his agents to use so that everyone stays productive
• the first step towards making sure your mindset is where it needs to be in a time like this, and
• the hardest thing Eric has had to deal with in the first week of being quarantined

This is a great conversation, maybe grab a pen to take some notes. I think you’ll get a lot of ideas from this, especially if you haven’t had to work yet in similar conditions. So, here we go. My conversation with New York agent, Eric Stein.

(BEGIN CONVERSATION)

Matt: How is everyone doing? I guess that’s where I want to start. How are you doing? How’s your team doing? How’s the whole brokerage doing? Is everyone safe and healthy and managing okay right now?

Eric: So, knock on wood, everybody is safe, everybody’s healthy, everybody’s quarantined and home. It’s funny, I’m in an advantage where my wife is a psychotherapist and between her and being in therapy myself, I learned you can have two emotions. So, I’m sure, like myself, everybody out there everybody got afraid in the beginning. What’s going on, what’s gonna happen, what’s the health implications, what’s the financial implications?

But knock on wood, we’ve been trying to keep everybody positive and strong and know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Like I said, we’ve seen the recession days, from 2007 to 2010, 2011, and we got through that. So, just keeping everybody’s spirits up, doing what we have to do.

You know, everybody’s healthy, we’ve been doing a ton of Zoom calls, we’ve had Zoom in our business for a while, and really just staying ahead of the curve. So, you know, keeping everybody upbeat, I try to send out video messages every day to my whole entire office, just to keep everybody going, send some positive messages and vibes, and do a lot on social media with video to that extent, for the rest of the real estate community, as well.

Matt: Is that the key to keeping everyone in good spirits right now, is just staying in regular contact as a group?

Eric: So, I think that’s the biggest part. I think that either your team, your staff, your office, the industry has to respect kind of what you’re saying. And I don’t think you could just say, “Hey, be positive, be positive.” You have to have some substance behind it as well. So, kind of giving agents things to do during these times and kind of reinforcing it, and also giving them the information that you hear.

You know, the biggest thing that causes anxiety is lack of clarity. So, if I can provide some clarity there on what to do or things in our trade associations that’s going on, different Zoom calls that I’ve had with attorneys and loan officers and home inspectors, and this is how we’re going to get through these things, does kind of curb that anxiety.

Matt: The reason that I’m glad we’re having this conversation today is, New York was one of the first states to put a quarantine in place for agents. As you said, you guys are deemed non-essential. Since then, many other states have done the same over the past week. Here in Washington, where my wife is an agent, today is the first day. We are recording this on Thursday, the 26th. Today is the first day that here in Washington real estate agents are non-essential and not allowed to go out and service clients. I suspect this is going to just continue to impact more agents in other states, maybe eventually most states or even every state. So, I think it’s important for agents to understand what your experience with this is. So, as you said, this happened in New York this past weekend. Tell me how it played out in terms of what you were told and communicated from the state officials.

Eric: So, when Governor Cuomo actually got on television and did his news conference, he said 100% of non-essential workers will not be allowed to go to work and have to close their offices. And I had kept my office open, my staff was willing to come in. Agents were coming in sporadically here or there. So that was Friday afternoon, and we actually didn’t know whether or not we were able to still work. And there was a comment that was passed about, in New York they froze all evictions. And basically what happened was Cuomo said that it doesn’t matter if we had evictions because Realtors can’t go out and show property, show other apartments anyway — and by him making that comment it then told everybody that we were non-essential and we couldn’t go to work. And then he kind of passed through the trade association, NYSAR, our local board of Realtors, and then became more and more apparent after the press conference was up, I guess all the associations then reached out to the governor’s office and got the clarification. So then it was put in Sunday night at 8:00.

So, Saturday and Sunday last week, we were extremely busy trying to get everybody in because you are still able to transact with it. You just can’t show property. So, I was on a Zoom call on Sunday at 5:00 with attorneys, home inspectors, loan officers, other agents. And it was basically, “Hey, guys, what are we going to do to get through this? How do we do walkthroughs? How do we do appraisals?” And different ideas of going in, “Can we do inspections after the contracts are signed?” Because in New York, you actually do inspections before the contracts are signed, but almost every other state, the contracts are signed and then you’re doing inspection with that inspection contingency.

So, we were trying to get creative. There’s a bunch of local attorneys doing what they have to do. Since then, my office has closed a bunch of deals this week already. The buyer and seller are potentially going out and doing their walkthrough, and we’re getting them on Zoom rather than FaceTime so that we can record it in case there’s any issues there. I think it’s Fannie and Freddie have asked that appraisals could be done through the desktop or drive-by for most areas. And let’s face it, on an appraisal, if they do a drive-by the outside and there’s pictures of the inside, you can get a pretty good idea of what the value of that property is. So, I think the industry is responding to coming up with different ways that we’ll be able to kind of push past this.

Matt: So, let me make sure I understand what you just went through, because there’s a lot of important stuff in there. So, existing transactions, you’ve already accepted an offer, whether for your seller or your buyer has had their offer accepted. So, existing transactions can still close under your current circumstances?

Eric: That is correct. It’s harder, moving pieces, 90% of them, I think, are going to be able to close. Co-ops are a little bit more complicated. Some of the municipalities are closed or are skeleton crews and the county office has skeleton crews, so deals that we’re ready to close are closing.

Matt: You kind of touched on this a little bit, what about all of the different players that are involved in the transactions? So, lenders, title and escrow. Out here one of the concerns, and I know it from hearing from other agents, too, are whether recording offices are going to stay open? What is happening in your area?

Eric: So banking was deemed essential. So, lenders are able to go to work, appraisers are part of lending so they’re able to go to work if they choose to. Some appraisal management companies — you know, appraisers don’t want to go out into people’s homes with what’s going on and understandably, but they are able to go out. Title companies were deemed essential and they are able to go out and service the deals.

The county office, so we have the towns and then the county office — most of the smaller towns or cities are either closed or on a skeleton crew, but the county offices where the deeds are being recorded and are happening, they are open and getting stuff done. So, some of the title companies have told us that they are doing affidavits, some of them are holding deeds in escrow and they’re figuring out a way to get the majority of these things done.

Matt: I mean, that’s great to hear. And it sounds like then the biggest impact for you as an agent is working with, say, existing clients where there’s not an agreement already in place because you can’t leave the house, is that correct? I mean, you can still do work, but you just can’t go and have any face-to-face conversation?

Eric: Correct. So that’s our biggest problem, is booking new deals. You’re able to leave the house here, you just can’t in theory, go to work and show properties. There’s up to a $2,000 fine and potential misdemeanor, I was told.

But yeah, new deals are hard. The only thing…you know, if you have videos of a property and somebody’s going to purchase a property that way. Investors will do a little bit more like that but end-use buyers, probably not. But a buyer and seller technically can’t go out, they are not working. You know, so new showings, we’re not doing, but walkthroughs there are some things that could be done with that.

Obviously, you want to limit the contact. What we’ve done especially, on a vacant property, is that the buyer went in, they took a look at it, it was then closed up afterwards. Only the attorneys went to the closing, the realtors aren’t. The checks are being mailed and we’re working through that. But the new deals are going to be the holdup. And that’s going to be our biggest thing to overcome which we have some ways that we’re trying to combat that.

Matt: I have to ask you, going back last weekend to when the order came out, how did it feel when you find out that the state thinks you’re not essential?

Eric: You know what, that to me personally, that didn’t bother me. I know some realtors have been like, “What do you mean? We’re essential.” You know, I look at it not being defensive at all, not saying, “Oh, you don’t think I’m essential?” It’s, “Hey, what can I do to get around this? What can I do to stay within the law and stay healthy, and how do I make this work? What do I need to do? What do I need to advise my team, my office, the agents in my area on what can be done?” So, you know, instead of kind of taking that tone, I basically said, “All right, let’s do it, man up and let’s go to work.”

Matt: So, okay. That’s perfect too. That’s a great segue into one of the things I wanted to ask you about. So this order comes down, last Sunday night, I think you said. Monday morning, it’s time to work. You can’t go into your office though. So, what’s the first thing you do Monday morning?

Eric: Get up, meditate, read a book, work out in my basement, take a shower, get dressed, and hop on the phone and computer. You know, my laptop that I have in my office, I don’t have a desktop in my office, I use my laptop, it is sitting on my dining room table with a coffee cup, and I have my phone, and honestly, that’s all I need.

It’s something where what I’m telling everybody number one, your morning routine is the most important right now. Get up, get dressed. I’m a big Tom Ferry guy and Brian Buffini — and Tom talks about, up your MEDS. And this is where a lot of people made New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, get a morning routine, get up earlier, read a book, whatever the case may be. And maybe they did it for a week or two and they fell off. Well, you know what? You got another shot at it.

And the thing is, take advantage of it. This is now a perfect opportunity for you to do this. And I’ve worked out for years now, not in the morning and not as religiously as I want to be. But one of the things that I have done is I’ve worked out in my basement every day this week, and I’m going to continue to push it forward.

You know, I’ve gotten my morning routine pretty well dialed in for the last few months and we actually do our monthly mastermind. We’re actually having Adam Contos, CEO of RE/MAX, come onto our mastermind in early April to talk about how to start your morning with a CEO mindset. You know, this is something where I think that’s the most important thing. You know, if I’m doing Zoom calls and people are in their pajamas, unless you’re really, really effective in your pajamas, get up, get dressed, and go to work.

Matt: Was there like a big team or brokerage meeting? Was that part of the Monday routine?

Eric: So, I actually do my office meetings once a month. But I actually did a Zoom office meeting last week before this even was announced to talk about this and what potentially could happen, and this is what you need to do. Because even though we weren’t officially shut down, last week was skeleton crew. And people didn’t want to go out. This was climbing, New York is the hardest hit state in the United States. And it was basically like, “Hey, guys, okay, what are we gonna do?” Call your past clients, call your leads, you know, be a resource, do not sell anything right now. First of all, you’re never selling a home, you’re selling yourself, you’re being a resource to your client. But even more importantly, now, check on people, check on the elderly, check on people that potentially are sick. Do they need anything? Can you drop something off for them? Support your local businesses. Go out, talk to people, get on video more.

One of the things that has inspired me through all this is the RE/MAX leadership team, that they’re on video two, three times a day, on social media and putting it out there. They’re emailing out the entire RE/MAX network. And it’s like, “Guys, this is where you shine.” So, you know, there’s so many things. Be a resource, get on Zoom calls. You know, I do one on ones with my agents, “Let’s get on a one on one. What are you going to do with your clients? Is your database together?” “No?” “Well, this is a great opportunity to do it.” “Are your marketing projects done the way you want?” “No.” “Okay, great.” I know that a couple of my agents listened to the Tom Ferry Marketing Edge today that they did virtually.

My internal staff — I want to have two databases, kind of merge them together, we do a weekly mail out. I was like, “Okay, let’s get that updated.” We updated our listing presentation, our recruiting kit, getting in some other systems and stuff that we wanted done. And, you know, let’s do it. Let’s push them all out. So, it’s a great opportunity, whether this is a week, three weeks, four weeks, whatever it is, to really make the best of it. And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be calling your past clients, leads that you’re working on now, and just say, “Hey, how are you doing? What’s going on? The world is not ending. We’ve been through this before. Even if property values do decrease, we will figure it out. I am your guy.”

Matt: I’m curious to know, with clients that have houses on the market right now, and you can’t do showings for them. How do you communicate to them about getting through this and how long it might take?

Eric: So, I’ll say to them, “This is a day-by-day, hour-by-hour situation. We don’t know where this is going to go. Right now, keep your home on the market.” Most of my properties have videos for them anyway that we’ve done even before this even came about. We’ve been using video in our business for a while. The ones that we didn’t, we went and got videos shot before Monday. And what I’m telling these guys, “Let’s keep the house on the market right now. I know we have a days-on-market situation. But once we get some clarity of when we can go back out and go to work we’ll have to reassess what the market looks like at that time.”

And then we’ll figure out what we need to. Put it on as a new listing, do a price reduction, change the photos, figure out where we are, and we’re going to have to actually work the business. I remember being in a Tom Ferry event, and they talk a lot, you know, one day it was going to go back to where agents actually have to work to sell a house. It’s not going to be just putting it on the MLS, and have it sold in 24 hours with 9 offers. So, it’s the same thing. You have to manage expectations. Your clients want to know that you’re aware of what’s going on, you’re working it. You have to be proactive, do not have your clients call or email you, you need to call and email them and really kind of push it through.

Matt: It sounds like there’s a juggling act going on here to me because you’re dealing with these clients that are maybe feeling some anxiety because of the situation. Well, let me ask you, are you dealing with team members and agents at the brokerage that are feeling nervous and anxious about what’s going on as well?

Eric: Absolutely. And I myself, I tell the agents myself that, “Listen, I went through my moment too that I was scared, I was nervous, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on?'” I’m 34 years old. I’m in pretty good health. If God forbid I got the virus, hopefully I’d be fine from it — worried about a financial situation, what does this do to the economy, where are we at? Where are houses going to be? And I remind myself that I did well in the recession because I worked harder than everybody else.

And I tell my agents that, we’ve been talking about this for two, three years, expecting a downturn in the market. And I think everybody in this industry had expected that, that have been in this business for a while, and we prepared for it. We got our databases together. We got our systems and created those bonds and relationships with people. And you know what, there’s ways to kind of go about and make more money and close more deals and service more clients in a down market if you’re prepared for it and you go out. So, you know, they have it.

One of the things that I’ve been doing to try to help them is really speak to them on a daily basis. I do nightly videos to them, send out through BombBomb to all of my agents, “Hey guys, this is what’s going on, this is what we’re doing. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay, but let’s be scared and then let’s push through it anyway. Let’s acknowledge the emotion.” Like I said, my wife’s a therapist, and I’ve learned some of the tricks of the trade. “Let’s acknowledge that we’re scared and it’s all right. Great. Now, what are we going to do about it?” And just trying to be that resource and that rock for them, I think is my job as a leader to really be strong for them and help them.

And I had a team call today and I was like, “Guys, what can I do better? What can I give you that I don’t give you enough?” Or, “What would you like to see differently? What can I add on?” And they’re like, “What you’re doing of giving us the positive messages consistently gets us out of it because we feel good at night, then in the morning, we wake up, we’re scared. But then you know what, we see you do something and telling us it’s all going to be okay, let’s do it. Gives us another day, gives us another shot of adrenaline.”

Matt: I think it’s so important what you said too there, just a minute ago about it’s okay and it’s normal to be anxious and a little scared at this point because it is such an unknown. It sounds like you’re going out of your way to over-communicate and reassure everybody that you’re going to be able to get through this.

Eric: Hundred percent. And not just my office, I think the industry as a whole, putting this stuff out there. We’re actually doing a “quarantini party” tomorrow via Zoom at 4:00 and we’re going to have some fun with it. Me and my wife, my wife is great. I have a 6-month-old and we’ll get him in there, we’ll give him his baba as his drink for the time and we’re gonna have some surprise guests probably pop on and invite agents throughout the industry and the community and lenders, title companies. Because you know what, this is hard. This is scary. We’ve been putting out messages all week of, “Guys, we’re going to get through this.” Now, you know what, let’s take a load off. Let’s have it.

And it’s funny because, in our office, we redesigned our logo this year to have production, culture, and leadership. I feel that most companies, you either have really good production and no culture, you have good culture and no production. Most companies do not have leadership, production, and culture. And that’s something that we have all the way around. And when I was talking to my staff about this, they’re like, “That sounds just like us.” For the first four days, it was all, “Hey, listen, we’re going to get through this. Don’t worry, don’t worry, we’re going to be all right.” And I said, “Guys, let’s go have a drink.” I’ve spoken to a bunch of my people today, and they’re like, “Yeah, I miss you guys. I’m gonna enjoy it. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Take some breath off.” And you know what, that’s going to re-energize them and get them rolling. And I think it’s super, super important.

Matt: Yeah, I agree. It sounds like you guys are like really on the right path in handling this as well as you can. Let me sum up a couple things that I think we’ve talked about so far just to sort of reset for folks that are listening. You’re about a week or so by the time this airs early next week on the 30th, you’ll be about a week where you’ve been under quarantine, not allowed to go out and do business. You have a daily checklist, right? You’re telling your team, your agents at the brokerage to stick with a routine every day and communicate with clients and communicate with each other. Is that accurate for summing up daily-type things?

Eric: Yeah.

Matt: And then in the bigger picture too, it sounds like you were saying that you are using this as an opportunity maybe to work on some of the parts of the business that maybe you didn’t have time for in the past, the listing presentation, some of the marketing things that you do?

Eric: Absolutely. And also add in education. I’ve listened to a ton of webinars, I’ve got some classes pinned down and stuff. So, making the best of it.

Matt: What has been the hardest thing to deal with so far?

Eric: The hardest thing for me to probably deal with is maybe the anxiety that I had in a couple of days or possibly not seeing my staff. You know, I am a social person, so not kind of popping in. You know, I said to my staff earlier that like, “I’ll just come out of my office, and be like, ‘Here, what about this, or what about that?'” Now, I think, “Okay, we need to have a scheduled Zoom time to go over it.” And so I like those breaks kind of in there. I definitely have adult ADD so sitting still is always a hard part. So, if you tell me I have to stay home all day, it’s hard. And my days are anywhere from 10 to 12 hours, depending on what we have going on. I like to kind of get up, move around, do some things and try to switch up what I’m doing. Those are probably some of my hardest parts.

Matt: Yeah, I think I can totally relate with that. My wife is a very extroverted agent as well and enjoys going into the office and being around the group and all that communication. And she’s married to me who is more introverted, both of our kids are kind of introverted. So, she’s actually this week been like walking around the house, like, “Where’s everybody? I want to talk to people.” The work-from-home thing I think is maybe a real challenge that a lot of agents, certainly the extroverted ones are going to have to deal with, right?

Eric: And that’s where the Zoom calls come in, and really kind of doing that where I can tell you that, if you see somebody even on a screen, your endorphins are going to be higher than just having a phone conversation.

Matt: Absolutely. Absolutely. At HomeLight we’re doing daily meetings with our content team. And normally I would be the person that’s like, “Gosh, these are too many meetings,” but because of what’s going on, I love seeing everybody’s face, and it’s very reassuring to see everyone.

Eric: Hundred percent.

Matt: Eric, I think this has been really fantastic and will be really helpful for agents that are listening, especially the ones that are not yet in your situation — all the states where they can still go out and meet clients. But that might be changing in the next week, couple weeks, whatever it might be. Do you have any, like final words of advice for agents that are listening? Like what would you want them to know about the situation you’re in, and the best way to work through it if they in fact find themselves in that situation in the very near future?

Eric: The best advice I can say to you is, have a positive mindset. That is number one, the most important thing.

Number two is probably acknowledge that you are going to be afraid and it’s okay, and keep going anyway.

Number three is, just have a course of direction on what you want. Start your morning off in a way that’s productive for you. And you know, get at it, get your database, get whatever projects you want, spend the time on time blocking, it’s going to be all right. Even if this lasts for a few months, for you guys that have been in this business and seen the recession and seen 9/11 after the terrorist attacks and what would happen. Interest rates are still very low, we’re going to get through this. There is always people that are buying and selling homes. I think I heard this stat, that there was 4 million homes sold in 2008 or 2009, something like that, whether it was 5.5 million. So it’s not like half the amount of homes in the country being sold. So definitely, there’s light at the end of the tunnel no matter what. This is the time where you make the difference in your career, you set yourself forward, because there are going to be a lot of agents that bury their head in the sand. I encourage all of you to go out there and make the best of it.

(Speaker: Matt McGee, Host) If you’re working in a state where real estate agents are considered non-essential, I bet you identify with a lot of what Eric just explained, what it’s like to work through this in New York. As I said, our quarantine just began here in Washington State and seeing what my wife is up against, the challenges that she and her team are facing, it’s very, very similar to the challenges that Eric talked about. And agents, if you’re not yet facing a statewide or a citywide or a countywide quarantine, whatever it might be, maybe just be aware of things. Maybe bookmark this episode because it really does seem like this situation is going to keep spreading to more and more parts of the country.

All right, let’s do our takeaways segment. Here is what stood out to me from listening to Eric.

Number one, right at the end, he said, “The most important thing is keeping a positive mindset.” And I connected that back with what he said earlier in the conversation. Remember, he said he didn’t get all bent out of shape when the state declared him non-essential. His reaction was, “Okay, how do I make this work?” I think that’s a huge part of having the right mindset to succeed right now — buckle down, and work through the challenges.

Number two, he talked about over-communicating with his team and also with clients. So, for the team, he said, “It’s important to acknowledge the emotion, talk about it. Say that it’s okay to be scared but let’s push through it together.” And then with clients, he talked about, just checking in on people, contact your database, offer support, and offer help. It was very reminiscent for me of what Richard Robbins, Edie Waters, and Dustin Parker talked about in last week’s shows.

Number three, he said, “Have a daily routine and stick with it.” He even gave away his daily routine. Because even though you’re at home, you’re really at work, so you have to act like it and try to make things as normal as you can.

Number four, he said take advantage of this time to work on the parts of your business that maybe you’ve been ignoring. So, marketing projects that have kind of slipped through the cracks, education, cleaning up your database, improving your listing presentations. He said, “This is a great opportunity to make the best of it.”

And then last but not least, I’m glad he mentioned, what did he call it, that quarantini party, I think, he said that they’re doing on Zoom. Don’t forget to have fun, let some steam off. There’s a lot of pressure on everyone right now in these difficult, uncertain times. Our Human Resources team at HomeLight, in fact, is doing a really great job of this, scheduling fun stuff to help us all feel connected even though everyone is working alone from home. I think it’s really, really important.

All right, if you have any questions for Eric or me, or if you just want to share some feedback, you can email us anytime. It’s walkthrough [at] homelight.com. In fact, quick shout out to Julia Cunningham. She’s an agent in Florida and she sent us a really kind email after listening to both of our coronavirus-related episodes last week. So, thank you, Julia. We really appreciate getting emails like that.

Before I say goodbye, let me just say this again real quick — on behalf of everyone at HomeLight, I hope you’re staying healthy and safe and in good spirits.

So, that’s all for this week. Thanks to Eric Stein for joining us, and thank you for listening. Instead of saying, go out and sell some homes like I normally do, let’s go with, stay in and sell some homes. We’ll talk to you again next week. Bye-bye.

(CODA – Matt McGee, Host) Hi again everyone – and you thought this episode was over, didn’t you? I did, too. But here’s proof of how quickly the real estate landscape is changing.

You heard me mention a couple times during this episode that real estate agents were declared “non-essential” here in my home state of Washington. That was true when we recorded and edited this episode late last week.

And then over the weekend, our governor backtracked a bit on that. He declared real estate an essential activity, but left very stringent and limited rules in place for doing business and meeting with clients. If you’re an agent in Washington listening to this, you probably already know all about this. But I just wanted to add this coda on to the end of the show so that other listeners are aware and so that we could make sure all our information is as accurate as possible.

That’s all – thanks for listening. See ya next week.

Header Image Source: (Eric Stein Real Estate Team)