CEO'S MESSAGE
REALTORS® Stay Focused and Resilient Even in Challenging Times….
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she walked me through a nice home that EALTORS® have shown had caught our eye using Skype and she amazing adaptability showed and talked me through every and perseverance in room. Her comment was “this home meets 90% of your criteria and if we like the midst of the pandemic. this home, I’ll need to purchase it TODAY Frankly, you had to do because it will be gone tomorrow!” it. Whether dictated by Well, I liked the home and location a lot, trusted her and our REALTOR Linda governmental order, public STEVE STEVENS, CCE, IOM Moore. We made an offer that day and policy or just your own drive CEO – KENTUCKY REALTORS the transaction went very smoothly. We to keep your business going, did the whole transaction without me ever stepping foot in the house until we traveled back you found ways to protect from the West and were preparing to move in. I had yourself and others, reassure potential purchased a house without ever physically seeing it for buyers and sellers through new methods the first time in 32 years of marriage and it didn’t hurt and practices that they can still do a real at all! estate transaction safely. For those of you The challenge of the pandemic has not been viewed who adapted and stuck with it, there have entirely as a negative by REALTORS®. To the contrary, in many cases what we are now experiencing has been been the rewards of real estate activity a tremendous opportunity to step back and look at all that is again rivaling some of our best of the ways in which we do business, make necessary markets in the past couple of years. adjustments to our circumstances and achieve notable The virtual world was always here for real estate and helping folks buy and sell real estate the way you are doing now could have been done for years. The reason it hasn’t is that real estate has been traditionally a bellyto-belly “people business” and most REALTORS® simply enjoy the face-to-face interaction they have with clients. When we returned to Kentucky after I was hired for this position more than four and half years ago, my own experience buying a home was all virtual. After my wife and I planned a trip here to look at a list of properties, I could not come with her to see them with our REALTOR®. The market in Central Kentucky had heated up and houses were literally “flying off the shelves”. Within the three to four days after choosing a dozen or more homes and travelling here to see them, Marilyn found upon arriving that almost half of these properties had already come under pending contracts! Luckily,
improvements. Many of the changes in business practices we’ve seen take place will assuredly last long after the pandemic is over. We will see real estate professionals working smarter, safer and with new perspectives on the real estate business. Throughout the past year we have offered virtual Town Halls for our members to hear best practices, staying focused on their businesses and keeping themselves healthy. We will work to continue to be the resource members need to support their business. The business of real estate was deemed “essential” at the start of the pandemic and our members never stopped working – it always was essential and always will be. As businesses, our members were not only “survivors” during these challenges, but in many cases they have been “thrivers”, succeeding when so many other types of businesses failed.
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