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The Fight to Keep Real Estate Essential How the Realtors® Political Action Committee Kept Utah Realtors® in Business during the COVID-19 economic quarantine. By Matt Clewett
In mid-March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was affecting every industry in the nation. Hundreds of thousands of businesses were deemed “non-essential” and closed which resulted in millions of employees being laid off. The fear of real estate being deemed nonessential was, at the time, a very real threat. In fact, many locations around the nation did just that and halted all real estate transactions. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were unable to move forward with finding a safe place to live during one of the scariest periods of American history since the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.
22 | Salt Lake Realtor ® | July 2020
In the midst of all the fervor, advocates for the real estate industry around the nation, including right here in Salt Lake County, stepped up and worked around the clock to advance the notion that real estate should be classified as an “essential service.” After countless late night phone calls, text messages, zoom conferences, and policy papers, these advocates were able to get our elected leaders in Salt Lake County and the State of Utah affirm that real estate is essential and would not be halted during this outbreak. At the federal level, the National Association of Realtors® was able to persuade the Department of Homeland Security to include real
