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Our Guide to Buying or Selling Your Greater Corvallis-Area Home Safely During Covid-19

As the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect our daily lives for the foreseeable future, we would like to share with you what The Sue Long Realty Group is doing in order to keep the process of buying or selling your home as safe as possible.  We also want to thank our community’s first responders and essential workers, who are doing everything they can to keep our most vulnerable healthy. THANK YOU!

With the speed that we have adapted with technology, there has never been a safer time to sell or buy a home. We’re offering video tours and virtual walkthroughs and all in-person property showings require masks to be worn inside at all times. We’ve implemented enhanced cleaning and sanitation procedures and have moved all meetings outdoors or to virtual settings when possible. All office procedures are in line with current COVID-safe regulations and recommendations from local authorities and the Oregon Association of Realtors.

How We Can Help You Buy A Mid-Willamette Home Virtually

  • Virtual Initial Consult: We love to get to know our clients over the phone or via a video call – Skype, Zoom, Facetime all provide video services that help us understand exactly what you are looking for and how we can create a plan to make that happen.
  • Online Corvallis & Albany Area Home Search: Once we know your criteria for homes in the Corvallis, Philomath, Albany or Willamette Valley area, we will send you what is currently available matching your criteria, and you’ll get updates the moment that new homes become available.
  • Virtual Home Tours: We’ll set you up with our team of agents to take as many virtual home tours as you need!
  • Electronically Sign Documents: The days of faxing contracts back and forth or picking up physical documents is long gone – you will sign official contracts electronically with our easy to use system, from the comfort of your home.
  • Earnest Money Delivery: When it comes time to put down your earnest money on your Corvallis area home, you’ll wire it or have a team member pick up a check.
  • Inspection: Once the inspection is done, you will get an extremely detailed report, with pictures and detailed descriptions  so that you’ll know exactly what issues need to be addressed before closing.
  • Closing Time: Many documents can be signed electronically, for all the rest we can use a mobile notary.
  • Done Deal: We’ll even deliver the keys once the process is complete!

Learn How We Helped a Client Sell Their Corvallis Home 100% Virtually

Watch our quick video about how we helped a Corvallis-area client sell a home that they inherited for top dollar, completely remotely! The Californian sellers never needed to set foot in Oregon.

We understand that doing things virtually may not be accessible or preferable for everyone, so we are still offering home showings and meetings in person, with proper safety protocols, face coverings, and social distancing in place.

More COVID-Safe In-Person Procedures For Home Sellers

  1. No shaking hands 
  2. Avoid sharing pens 
  3. Maintain a 6ft safety distance at all times.
  4. Have the meeting via phone call or email instead of in-person whenever possible
  5. Ventilate closed areas and rooms when spending a significant amount of time indoors
  6. Sanitizer is available at the front door and throughout the house, so that agents and potential buyers can sanitize their hands before and after every meeting or when showing a property. 

Important Safety Tips For In-Person Home Buying During COVID

  • Meet our agents at the property with your own car to avoid carpooling
  • As much as possible, avoid touching unnecessary surfaces when visiting properties
  • Wear booties and face coverings while inside a property
  • Remember to bring your own hand sanitizer and extra masks in case the property hasn’t provided it or someone else forgot theirs

Virtual Showings for our Mid-Willamette Homes For Sale

For both sellers and buyers, the first showing is now the virtual tour. The seller’s agents are sharing some great videos, with tons of information and wonderful views of the homes, including drone pictures and videos. We’re fortunate at the Sue Long Realty Group to have included many of these options to our sellers prior to Covid-19 and now that this is becoming much more common, this is a great service we are familiar with and are proud to provide to our clients.
So while many of us are still working from home and enjoying time around the house, this could be a great time to check out some virtual home tours from the comfort of your own couch and decide what features and locations you want in your next home!
To make life even easier for you, our KW App allows you to schedule a Virtual Tour with us on the platform of your choice! To download the app just text this code: KW2BZZGNM to: 87778

Check out an Example of Our Corvallis Real Estate Virtual Showing

Selling Your Home

We take our client’s safety very seriously and in our efforts to do our part in stopping the spread of COVID-19, the Sue Long team has provided home sellers gloves and booties to have available during showings. We are asking all potential buyers and buyer agents that come into our client’s homes to be mindful and to follow our safety instructions.

  1. Agent and buyers must all put on gloves and booties upon entering our listed homes.
  2. Agents will be asked to keep gloves on while returning the key back to the lockbox.
  3. We ask all agents and buyers to dispose of gloves and booties on their own. 

Important Safety Tips For Home Sellers

  • When showing your home turn on and off the lights to avoid others touching the light switches.
  • Leave doors of bedroom/bathrooms or any other major rooms/space open to avoid others touching knob handles.
  • Leave windows or doors open to allow fresh air flow during showings.
  • Disinfect and sanitize major touch points before and after home showings.

 

How is the Corvallis, Albany, Philomath, and Greater Willamette Valley Home Market Doing During Covid-19?

Q: Is the Corvallis area real estate market as strong as it seems?
A: Yes and nobody expected it to rebound quite like this! Things to consider:
1) There’s a huge pent up demand due to COVID. People still need to move for work, family, and health reasons. Stay at home orders made people re-contemplate their needs in a home.
2) Ridiculously low-interest rates now at 2.99% (More than half a percent LOWER than last year), and
3) Lack of inventory already existed and then many of the few sellers began pulling their homes off the market and waiting for “normalcy” to return.
This has created bidding wars, homes being sold very quickly, and sellers reaping more money than ever for their homes. Who knows how long this will last, but it is the ideal scenario for sellers.

 

Our Take on the Corvallis, Albany, Philomath and Willamette Valley Rental Market During Covid-19

If you were thinking about selling your investment home in the next couple of years, we believe that now is the time to do it. We are still seeing multiple offers at lower and moderate price points around Corvallis and Albany. The market is currently strong and it may not be worth the stress of the unknown. Be ready for a softer rental market this Summer and Fall. Advertise early and often, make your rent competitive to other homes on the market.

This could be a great time for first-time buyers and those considering downsizing to be on the lookout to purchase Corvallis-area homes between Harrison & Grant. Those neighborhoods may swing back to primarily owner-occupied in the next few years. If you currently own rentals in that area, decide on whether holding it is a long-term or short-term goal.

The pent-up demand and low supply is causing multiple offers on many of our home sales.  On top of this, the sellers are hesitant to list now with COVID 19, so we are more than short of inventory.  To make matters worse, builders are having the time of their lives trying to build in a timely manner under the new rules of social distancing during construction, many subs not working, suppliers’ factories shut down, supplier delivery trucks not operating at full capacity, and so many of the supplies coming from Georgia where they were shut down due to protests!

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