Selling a Home in a Mask: What COVID Taught Me About This Business

I've sold homes through recessions, rate spikes and more slow Februaries than I can count. Nothing prepared me for showing a house in a mask, hand sanitizer clipped to my belt, asking a family to please not touch the railings on the way up the stairs of a home they were about to spend a million dollars on.

The early days of the pandemic were surreal for everyone, and our little corner of it — helping people move during a time when moving felt dangerous — came with its own strange lessons. Some of them I've kept.

The showings emptied out, and got more honest

Open houses vanished. In their place came private, scheduled, one-family-at-a-time walk-throughs, and something unexpected happened: the tire-kickers disappeared. The people who booked a showing during COVID actually wanted the house. I learned that a quieter, more intentional process often serves a seller better than a crowd. I still run showings tighter because of it.

I did full tours over FaceTime for buyers who couldn't — or wouldn't — come in person. I walked empty rooms narrating for a phone screen, opening closets, running the taps, pointing the camera out the window at the yard. Buyers made real offers on homes they'd only seen through my hand. That taught me how much of this job is trust, and how much of trust is just showing people the truth, flaws and all.

When you can't hide behind a staged open house and a crowd, all you have left is honesty. Turns out that was always the better tool.

People were scared, and that mattered more than price

I sat with first-time buyers who were terrified — of the virus, of their jobs, of committing to the biggest purchase of their lives during a moment that felt like the ground was moving. My job stopped being about square footage. It became about slowing down, answering the same question three times without making anyone feel foolish, and being honest when I thought someone should wait.

I talked more than one family out of buying during those months. Not because the house was wrong, but because they weren't steady enough to carry it if things got worse. A few of them came back a year later, calmer and better prepared, and we found something better. None of them forgot that I'd told them the truth when it cost me a sale.

What I kept

The market that followed was a rocket, and then it cooled again — that's a story for another article. But the habits COVID forced on me stuck. Fewer, better showings. Video tours for anyone who wants one. And a permanent reminder that behind every transaction is a person making a decision in the middle of their real, complicated life.

That's the part of this business the headlines never capture, and it's the part I care about most. The market will do what it does. My job is to help you make a good decision inside it — with a clear head, honest information, and someone in your corner who has seen a few storms come and go.