REI INK

Charting Your Real Estate Investments Through Troubled Waters

Several factors are at play in the real estate market, but cash is still king. There’s been a lot of conversation about how COVID-19 will affect the U.S. residential real estate market. As real estate investors, we want to have current information with accurate updates so we can make informed decisions. Let’s take a quick look backward before we look ahead. Range of Impact Never in my lifetime have I seen a government shut down its economy due to a pandemic. When the Spanish flu invaded our country in 1918, more than 675,000 people died. Even though the first flu vaccine wasn’t developed until 1942, our economy withstood this brutal attack. As with the Spanish flu, the impact of COVID-19 on communities and regions has not been uniform across the country. As Thomas Garret points out in his white paper on the economic effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Colorado had the highest mortality rates although those states had very little in common. From this example, can we discern that different areas of our country will experience different impacts and therefore outcomes? Cash Is Still King The past decade has been stellar in both the residential and the commercial real estate markets. The stock market had experienced unprecedented growth and new highs. One would think companies should have cash in their bank accounts. What a wonder to see how many large and small businesses applied for the Payment Protection Program along with the overwhelming loan applications for the SBA’s disaster relief loan. Remember, you can run a business with a loss, but you cannot run a business without cash flow. In vacation areas, there are investors who own multiple vacation rentals who will not be able to make more than one or two of their mortgage payments. There are many small investors across our country who have invested in multifamily. Some will not capture enough rents to meet their lender obligations. So, there will be upcoming deals for investors who are able to evaluate swiftly and fund quickly. These opportunities will be available for anyone who has access to cash, regardless if they’re large investors or small investor groups that pool their capital. Limited Access to Properties There are some obvious challenges currently facing buyers and sellers. For example, appraisers are not allowed out of their homes in some parts of the country due to shelter-in-place orders. And some folks simply don’t want those appraisers trampling through their home. Open houses are reduced to non-existent in many areas due to social distancing and sellers not wanting strangers in their homes, even if they are potential buyers. These conditions will stall loans and, hence, closings for those transactions. Flippers, however, do not care whether appraisers or buyers trample through their flip at 10 a.m. or 10 p.m. So, those transactions will get to the closing table as long as lenders don’t tighten requirements. Chase just announced new lending requirements for conventional loans is 20% down and a minimum 700 FICO score. The president said he was relaxing underwriter requirements for government loans for specific items (i.e., recent pay stubs, seasoned funds, etc.) to keep this industry fluid. If that happens (I have my doubts), then these loans will close. If these requirements are not lifted, we will see a dip in sales as well as a longer timeline for a lender to close. First-time homebuyers who have young children or older parents don’t want to chance spreading this contagious virus to these family members. In addition, many first-time homebuyers have had their lives disrupted working from home, taking salary cuts or, even worse, being furloughed. The National Association of Realtors reports existing-home sales fell 8.5% in March following a February that saw significant nationwide gains. Each of the four major regions reported a dip in sales, with the West suffering the largest decrease. Access to Cash The Fed rate is zero and probably won’t go much lower. So, the cost of money is still cheap. Access to that money, however, is a different story. The Department of Treasury is responsible for distributing those individual $1,200 checks the government is giving away. They are also responsible for sending out millions of monthly Social Security checks. Secretary Mnuchin acknowledged the delays in those checks getting out due to the IRS’ antiquated software and being short-staffed. Combine those tasks with working through the banks trying to distribute loans to small businesses. So, the flow of money is going to be stalled, leading to two quarters of negative growth. Economists call two consecutive quarters of negative growth a recession. An article in Financial Times informed us that France’s government is not putting together a bailout program. Rather, the French government just paid every business’s payroll, thereby continuing the flow of money. In this scenario, rents will be paid and jobs will be maintained until the pandemic is behind us. Rather than creating government bailout programs, this strategy tries to give some semblance of normalcy to people’s cash flow. Taxpayers would continue to receive paychecks that are deposited into their bank accounts, even though they’re not working. This creates at least four positive outcomes:  1)  Alleviates the pressure on unemployment benefits 2)  Jobs are held in place 3)  The job is waiting for employees upon their return 4)  Government isn’t burdened with excessive debt If I learned anything from 2008, it’s that real estate investors large and small will lead us out of the upcoming real estate rut. Many investors are in a cash position. Others will continue to have access to short-term loans along with established credit lines at big-box stores. I do not believe real estate prices will tank as they did in 2008 since the purchase of most personal residences in our country have not been overleveraged. But there will be a slight decrease in price by those motivated to sell. The pandemic has temporarily shut down our economy, and there will be an opportunity for all types of

Read More

Keep Showing Properties, Just Don’t Be There

Virtual tools expand your opportunities for showing properties. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? That’s a question to debate with your friends during a virtual happy hour. For now, let’s dive deep into a similar philosophical question about your leasing process: If a prospective tenant views a rental when no one is showing them around, did a showing occur? The answer is a resounding YES! Self-showings have increased in popularity over the years as the cost has gone down and the security measures have gone up. During our current period of government-mandated lockdowns and the need to be socially distant, self-showings are now more important than ever to ensure you can still “show” your rentals while reducing the risk of getting or spreading infectious diseases like the coronavirus. Self-showings started with key checkouts decades ago. When a prospective tenant would come to your office, you would collect a $20 “deposit” and potentially make a copy of their driver’s license. And though this process kept your team at the office instead of driving around town dealing with no-shows, showings were still limited to your office hours, which meant you missed some prime showing opportunities. Today, we know that 38% of self-showings occur after hours and on weekends. In fact, 19% of self-showings occur on Saturday and 10.5% occur on Sunday. So, if you’re not showing units on the weekend, you’re missing out on nearly a third of potential showings. Electronic Lockboxes and Locks There was little improvement to the self-show process until electronic lockboxes came on the scene at the turn of the century. Electronic lockboxes were first made available to realtors and then to trusted contractors.  Now they are available even to vetted prospective tenants. The next hurdle was finding a quick and cost-effective way to vet prospective tenants in order to make self-showings viable. Property managers have found that solution in automated scheduling software. Prospective tenants can schedule self-showings to view your vacant rentals after they have provided verifiable contact information, been qualified against your leasing restrictions (e.g., pet policy, income requirements, etc.) and provided a copy of their government-issued ID. All access is monitored, and you are notified each time an authorized person arrives at your rental and requests an access code. Only those who have been prequalified or preapproved for entry into your rental are given a unique access code that can be used only one time, on the day for which it was generated. One of the benefits of electronic lockboxes is they can move from vacant home to vacant home and always be in use as rentals hit the market. One downside is they leave your homes after the vacancy has been filled. So new, keyless access solutions have emerged that are installed on the home and facilitate self-showings but remain as a long-term access solution for tenants and staff to easily access your rentals without having to worry about being locked out or having to come to the office to pick up a key. Plus, access on locks connected to smart home hubs can continue to be tracked under all scenarios: the tenant, their dog walker, a plumber, a property manager, etc. Through this period of social distancing, consider deploying a mix of smart locks and electronic lockboxes. For the units you own and manage, install smart locks backed by smart home hubs. Though there is a higher upfront cost, the long-term benefits of facilitating and monitoring access makes it worth it in the end. Plus, smart home technology allows for expansion of services like hot water heater sensors, window sensors and thermostats. For units you manage but you can’t get the owner on board to pay for the smart home technology, consider deploying electronic lockboxes to allow for secure self-access during the turn process. Vendors like painters, cleaners and handymen could get unique one-time codes each time they need to access the rental to get it rent-ready. Then prospective tenants can be vetted and given one-time use codes so they can view the property on their own. Once the property is leased, the lockbox would be used on move-in day, and the new tenant would keep the key. Finally, a staff member would pick up the lockbox to be moved to the next vacancy. This is contactless leasing that keeps everyone safe. Be Prepared If that all sounds too daunting or expensive, you can also use scheduling software with your existing contractor lockboxes or to schedule video conference showings using FaceTime, Google Hangouts, Skype or Zoom. Prospective tenants are still vetted, but instead of getting a unique one-time use code, they receive a static code or instructions on how to do a video conference. Using contractor lockboxes is not as secure as using electronic locks and lockboxes, and doing video conferencing would still require a team member to travel to the rental to virtually walk the prospective tenant around the property. But this approach does allow you to show your rentals without risk of infection. Regardless of how you approach leasing during a pandemic, just know that there will be fewer leads and fewer inperson showings, which means fewer opportunities to sign a lease. If you want to keep your rentals turning over as quickly as possible, have a plan for showing properties without any human interaction. Make sure you’re not trading one problem for another, so don’t skimp on security and just leave the backdoor unlocked (yes, we’ve really heard this from property managers!). Instead, kill two birds with one stone. Use technology to allow secure self-showings that ensure social distancing and that can accelerate your leasing process.

Read More

Hands-On Property Management in the Pandemic Era

Many tenants are poised to adapt to a property management inspection model that is safer, more effective and resilient to social distancing restrictions. Modern innovations like grocery store self-checkout, online retail shopping and webinar conferences weren’t, of course, developed in response to the current pandemic. However, these more efficient, contactless ways of conducting daily business certainly have become more popular and attractive—and even indispensable—in the current environment. The property management industry also had been applying smarter, greener and more digital technologies to traditional workflows before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Businesses already fluent in these refined approaches have seen a smoother transition into our “new normal.” Many tenants, with their smartphones in hand and an inclination toward self-service already cultivated, are poised to adapt to a property management inspection model that is safer, more effective and resilient to social distancing restrictions. Property inspections, the bread-and-butter product of any successful property management business, are the point at which the tenant’s living space, the owner’s investment and the property manager’s responsibility all intersect in meaningful, often actionable documentation. But inspections performed in person, on pen and paper, are extremely vulnerable to disruption, as we have so clearly seen over the last two months. In this new era, property managers can’t, in good conscience and within government guidelines, perform these inspections in person without potentially putting inspectors and tenants in harm’s way. Yet neither can these inspection activities be suspended indefinitely without consequence. Rental property tenants certainly enjoy more self-service capabilities now than they did 10 years ago. Self-guided rental property viewings facilitated by smartphones and keyless entry or lockbox technologies are sure to become increasingly popular in the next few years. Leasing application processes, now commonly performed online, will continue to become more paperless and contactless. Inspections, really, are the final link in the chain that can keep all but the most essential servicers and vendors from needing to visit a property in person during a tenant’s occupancy. With smart technologies, property managers can empower their tenants to become effective inspectors of the properties they call home. Contactless Move-In Inspections It’s moving day. New tenants pull up in their box truck, gain access to their new home via lockbox and step inside. They receive an email from their property manager. It instructs them to perform a move-in inspection on their mobile device—or else review and provide feedback to a pre-move in inspection completed by the property manager before move-in day. A few taps on the device and the tenants are inspecting the property exactly as it has been defined by the property manager. A user-friendly app walks them through the property room by room and one detail at a time, prompts them to snap photos, note conditions and provide any other info required in the inspection template. With that done, the tenant signs on the screen and taps to submit the inspection. After receiving the tenant-completed move-in report (or pre-move in feedback), the property manager reviews it and follows up as appropriate, with additional requests for info and clarification, perhaps, or by dispatching an essential service vendor. The move-in is complete and social distance has been maintained as much as possible. Mid-Lease Tenant Inspections Of course, tenant-completed move-in inspections alone won’t cut it. Property managers should implement contactless mid-lease inspection processes and procedures whenever possible to ensure a comprehensive solution. An effective tenant-completed inspection activity leaves little room for error: It guides the tenant point by point and asks the tenant to provide specific information about the property: Has the HVAC filter been changed?  Are there any water leaks under the sinks?  Are there certain winterization steps that need to be performed?  Are these concerns routine? Sure. But any one of them can pose significant and complex ramifications if not properly addressed. A tenant can easily complete and document various types of corrections and info requests using a contact-free approach. Complaint-based follow-ups, documentation of HOA/lease-violations corrections and due-diligence info requests are the most common, but even unique situations can be accommodated with the right tools. The property manager remains up-to-date with property conditions without ever setting foot on the occupied property. Only essential service vendors and the like ever need do so. Can you eliminate the need for professional inspectors entirely? Of course not. The expert eye of a veteran property inspector should not be undervalued. At the same time, property managers in the post-COVID-19 environment will be wise to collaborate with their tenants to remotely collect as much information as possible. It’s also important to realize that most tenants want this too. Most tenants are conscientious and responsible, complying to landlord requests when asked. Nonetheless, they prefer to avoid having strangers walk through their property, particularly in this current crisis. As such, they are incentivized to perform these inspection activities in a timely and effective manner, to keep from having an in-person follow-up. Remote inspection activities not only make it easier on you as a property manager, they can enhance your value from the perspective of your tenants. Tools are Available—Use What Works Whether you end up adapting more generic tools or apply a specific dedicated solution, the objective is the same. You need a technology solution that allows you to capture exactly the data you need from the property in a way that is easy both for your tenants and for your employees. Some property managers have settled on informal processes like FaceTime or Zoom for their purposes. Various form generator tools—such as Google Forms, WP Forms for hosted WordPress sites, and others—are available as well.  Finally, there are tailored applications with customizable features available. The important takeaway is that all the technologies and many of the specific tools already exist for property managers to become more safe, increasingly efficient and less vulnerable to disruption. Additionally, it’s clear that our consumer culture is ready for self-completed inspections. Perhaps the best time for individual property management businesses to begin implementing these kinds of technologies was five years ago, but the second-best

Read More

Spring Yard Cleanup Is a Better Investment Than You Think

Investing in spring yard cleanup for your properties can go a long way toward improving curb appeal and overall ROI. During the winter season, your properties are exposed to snow, ice and cold winds that blow in leaves, litter and other debris you don’t want on your properties. These harsh winter elements can blanket your properties and stifle your lawns’ roots from the oxygen and nutrients they need to maintain their healthy appearance and preserve curb appeal year-round. Come springtime, your properties may either come out unscathed or look like a scene from Twister. Or, they might just land somewhere in between. Regardless of which end of the spectrum they fall, cleaning and inspecting your properties in the spring is essential to fostering curb appeal, creating a satisfying experience for residents and improving ROI. Fostering Curb Appeal In situations where residents are responsible for yard care, it’s not uncommon for them to ignore their landscaping duties and leave owners with the risk and cost of neglect. HOA violations, rehab costs, decreased property value and lower rental prices are just a few of the factors that can hit your bottom line when curb appeal is overlooked. To avoid the expenses associated with turnover, preventive yard maintenance can help you catch small problems before they turn into larger expenses. Annual spring cleanup ensures that your lawns are on their way to a healthy and beautiful season and are utilizing all the care lawn products efficiently. The National Rental Home Council suggests single-family home rental operators should take preventative maintenance measures throughout their ownership to ensure properties remain in good condition. Preventive maintenance that aims to protect and improve the appearance and state of the rental home can eliminate rehab costs and fees associated with HOA violations. It can also limit the vacancy rates since a well-cared-for property leads to a more satisfying experience for residents. Researchers at the University of Alabama and the University of Texas at Arlington collected and assessed Google Street View photos and sales data from 88,890 properties and determined that homes with excellent curb appeal sold for 7%-14% morethan homes with less-than-ideal curb appeal. Creating a Satisfying Resident Experience Considering spring cleanup is your biggest opportunity of the year to get your properties in shape, it shouldn’t be left in the hands of your residents. Often, residents don’t have the appropriate equipment, knowledge and desire to maintain your investment. Provide your residents with an experience that allows them to enjoy the great amenities your rental has to offer, such as a well-manicured property. This is one thing you can do to give your residents the feeling of being a homeowner without all the added responsibility. The more your residents “feel” like homeowners, the less likely they are to rent elsewhere. The less your residents rent elsewhere, the more money you make. “Single-family rental operators should aim to provide residents with a highly satisfactory experience from the time of the first contact through the selection of their home, the move-in process and for the duration of the experience,” advises the National Rental Home Council. In addition to creating a satisfying experience for residents, cleaning and inspecting your properties throughout the year will help ensure they are well maintained. As many property owners have experienced, some tenants have a history of neglecting the yard. Regularly providing exterior services for your properties will give residents more appreciation and respect for your investment. It’s up to you to set the standards for how your properties should be maintained. Introducing your residents to your standards of yard care will lay the groundwork for how the interior of the property should be maintained, ultimately reducing your expenses inside and outside the home. Improving ROI The key to improving ROI for your properties is performing routine maintenance. Rehabilitating your properties between residents is neither cost-effective nor practical. Your properties should always be in rent-ready condition regardless of occupancy status. Spring cleanup is a vital piece of the year-round maintenance that keeps your properties in good condition. Maintaining your properties regularly will attract more long-term residents and reduce the costs associated with listing and marketing your properties. Studies show that improving landscape quality could increase rental rates by as much as $117 a month and improve turn times by as much as 30 days. Bottom line, better maintained yards translate to more money for owners. Neglecting your properties or assigning yard care duties to residents can increase your operating costs. Giving your lawns a good place to start in the spring can set you up for long-term success. Sidebar To keep up with curb appeal and protect your investment, here are a few simple and affordable landscaping tips you can implement today to yield long-term results. Maintain Bushes and ShrubsTrimming bushes and shrubs is quite possibly the easiest way to add curb appeal to your properties. It also offers the most dramatic effects. Keeping up with routine bush and shrub trimming ensures your properties always look their best without breaking the bank. The key here is routine. Bushes and shrubs can give properties dramatic effects. But, if they are neglected, they can have a negative impact. Fertilize Your LawnMaybe it’s because fertilizing doesn’t offer instant gratification like lawn mowing or bush trimming that some people overlook this necessity. Still, fertilizing is a vital curb appeal booster with long-term benefits, including attracting and keeping residents. At the very least, you should be applying lawn fertilizer two times a year. Some areas require even more applications. Check with your landscaper on how often your lawns need to be fertilized.  Use a Steel Blade Edger to EdgeLet’s face it—using a weed eater to edge along sidewalks and walkways is a rookie mistake and can be spotted a mile away. Instead, ask your landscaper about using a steel blade edger at least once a month to give your properties a clean and sophisticated look. When you compare a steel blade edger to properties that use a string trimmer to

Read More

The Personality of Real Estate Investors

What is your Advantage? For the past 20 years, I have worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs from all career backgrounds while being an executive at HomeVestors, The We Buy Ugly Houses people. Each one had a common desire to build a profitable business buying, rehabbing and selling single-family houses. I developed an assessment for those investors to complete as part of the application process. I also met with each investor and their partner to discuss the part of the business that would provide the best opportunity for success. My other passion was to review the results. What I learned from the process of tracking the more than 110,000 houses they bought during those 20 years is this: Some personality patterns tend to be more successful than others. I also learned that all entrepreneurs—no matter their personalities—can succeed if they recognize what their Advantage is and team with others who can do the parts of the business where they do not have an Advantage. The Three Levels My system, called Your Living Talent, presents choices on three levels: Feeling, Thinking and Acting-Advantage. The Feeling level is what you were born with. It determines why you do what you do. The Thinking level is developed by age six and determines how you think and communicate. You get that from your parents. Whatever they give you causes you to develop the opposite. For example, if they are very organized, then you tend not to be. This explains why grandchildren and their grandparents get along. You say I will never raise my children the way I was raised, and you don’t. The grandkids say to the grandparents: I’m OK and you’re OK. What is wrong with my parents? The third level is your Acting-Advantage. This is developed by age 15-16. By that age, you have a half dozen fiber connections in your brain that will always be your best Acting-Advantage. You develop this by choosing what you enjoy doing and through the recognition your family and friends give you for doing well. If you can spend 80% of your day doing what you have an Acting-Advantage to do, you will be energized by your work and you will energize the people you work with and serve. The Four Colors The four colors are Red-Doers, Yellow-Talkers, Blue-Thinkers and Green-Controllers. You can have one, two, three or four of these colors on each level. All businesses require all four colors to be successful. Red has an Acting-Advantage to focus on results. Yellow has an Acting-Advantage to connect with people. Blue has an Acting-Advantage to solve problems. Green has an Acting-Advantage to maintain a system. The two most essential Acting-Advantages for building a successful business are the Red Acting-Advantage that focuses on results (production of revenue and income) and the Yellow Acting-Advantage that connects with people. The key to buying houses directly from sellers who are usually still in their homes is being able to connect with them and helping them make the decision to sell at a fair price in exchange for a quick sale without having to make repairs. If you have a Blue Acting-Advantage and can solve problems, you are a good listener because you are listening for the problem. The risk is that you can spend too much time trying to solve a problem that cannot be solved. If you have a Green Acting-Advantage, you are great at analyzing the details of the transaction. The risk is you talk yourself out of the transaction because you are too focused on the details. Most investors who have the Red/Yellow combination are not good with details. So, it’s important for them to surround themselves with people who can maintain the system. We have found that the most valuable person you can recruit for your team is good with detail and people and has a sense of urgency. Anyone who has had a great personal assistant can attest to the fact that their ability to focus on results was significantly improved by that person. People with Red Acting-Advantage can get almost anything done through focus and force. But they tend to be do-it-yourself people and end up doing things they don’t have an Advantage to do rather than doing what they are the best at doing. Thinking and Communication Patterns It’s also important to understand thinking and communication patterns. Understanding how different people think is a key component of building a successful team that can think through the best strategies and tactics. There is a process for fully utilizing the thinking of all your team members. First, Yellow determines who should be involved in the discussion. Blue determines why we are having the discussion and focuses on the best alternatives for solving the problem. Before they engage the Red to determine what we need to do to execute, they need to select the best two or three alternatives to present to the Red. Reds do best when they have two choices. Once Reds have picked the best strategy or tactic, Green determines the process or the system to get it achieved and tracked to make sure it is performing as expected. Partners or teams that take advantage of the thinking patterns of their team will always get better results than those that do not. Understanding how people feel is very important because feelings determine their decision to buy or sell. We justify our decisions with thinking, but we make our decisions with feelings. Reds have a need to win, be in charge and make money. Yellows need to be recognized, to celebrate and to do things with others. They never like it if they win and the team loses. Many of them start a real estate investment business so they can do it with their relatives, friends or neighbors. Blues have a need to research better alternatives. They focus how they can make life better for themselves and the people they care about. Their challenge is that they get bored with others once they understand

Read More

Regional Spotlight: Charleston, South Carolina

The metro has a strong market structure likely to hold up under pressure. In March 2020, Charleston, South Carolina’s home sales posted a year-over-year growth of 6%, even with a coronavirus shutdown already looming on the horizon. Local businesses, including tech employers like Atlatl Software, home repair services like Punchlist, and a number of local and national commercial real estate developers, reported their outlooks for spring 2020 would remain positive and, in many cases, largely resistant to the COVID-19 shutdown. They set the tone for the city’s real estate sector as we move toward the halfway point in 2020. Justin Scott, CEO of Atlatl, reported only about one in 10 of his customers have “put a pause on purchases” from his company, which creates three-dimensional visualizations for manufacturers of complex machinery. The company continues to employ its roughly 60 employees, and its augmented reality software is filling a niche many companies need desperately as stay-at-home policies keep clients and service providers physically distant. Other Charleston industries are showing remarkable tenacity as well. For example, South Carolina’s ports in Charleston, Greer and Dillon all maintained normal operations into the second quarter of 2020 despite the coronavirus pandemic. And the Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal, located in nearby Mount Pleasant, remains on track for phase-one completion in March 2021. The facility’s five enormous cranes, all manufactured in China by the world’s only large-scale ship-to-shore crane company, are on track to be delivered in August or September. Statewide, South Carolina ports facilitate about 225,000 statewide jobs, so ongoing operations at these facilities indicate an underlying economic strength in the region. Of course, not all areas of the Charleston real estate market are doing “business as usual,” noted Bobette Fisher, president of the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors. She said March 2020 activity put the market in a strong position to face “the inevitable impact of the global pandemic on our market,” but she emphasized the housing market is likely to have “several challenging months ahead.” For example, Charleston’s available housing inventory dropped dramatically at the end of the first quarter of 2020. Homeowners removed their houses from the market to avoid showings that would expose their families to “through traffic” at a time when social distancing was becoming part of daily conversation. Interestingly, this could to some degree insulate the Charleston market from the wild price swings other markets may experience. Fisher said, “Charleston is in a somewhat unique position in that we continue to see buyer interest and demand in our market even as we progress through this highly unusual situation.” For real estate investors interested in the Charleston area, Fisher’s optimistic take on the situation can be feasibly supported with the area’s strong economic foundation. However, the positive aspects of Charleston’s “unique position” are tempered by some serious coronavirus-related issues. Is Support System Holding Firm? Investors interested in the Charleston area should look carefully at the strategic position of a potential acquisition before making a purchase. For example, Charleston led national numbers last year in terms of how many new homes were added in the area, with Construction Coverage reporting the area added more than 6,700 new homes total, more than twice the national average. Analysts expect the new construction sector of the real estate industry to weather the current economic crisis far better than the existing-home sector. So, the relatively higher availability of new construction and a preexisting trend toward new development could make Charleston particularly attractive to investors in this sector. On the other hand, certain industries in Charleston have been hit particularly hard. Employees in the area’s previously booming restaurant and hospitality industries are filing unemployment claims in record numbers. The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce (SCDEW) reported a 400% increase in claims the week of March 19, 2020, alone. That was the week following the state governor’s order calling a halt to all dine-in activities at restaurants, bars and cafeterias. The order also banned organized events of more than 50 people. South Carolina did take steps to protect these workers by enabling employers to file unemployment for employees infected with the virus, affected by a temporary shutdown, who have slow or smaller workloads, or who have temporary or seasonal work. Investors whose investment strategy involves housing for this currently unemployed population may have difficulty liquidating inventory at this time. Still, it is possible that investors who can hold these assets may benefit in the long run, once the state “reopens” its economy. In January 2020, the Charleston area’s unemployment was so low that SCDEW executive director Dan Ellzey said in a public statement, “More jobs are available than people to fill them. … South Carolina continues charting record levels of low unemployment while more people are earning paychecks than ever before.” Whether the state can regain that momentum will hinge largely on the fallout from the extended national COVID-19 shutdown and how the state handles its reemergence from sheltering-in-place orders. College of Charleston economics professor Frank Hefner suggested the aftershocks of the coronavirus outbreak could be like that of a hurricane in some ways, but emphasized the comparison is neither direct nor wholly reliable. “This is so unusual; anyone that tries to put a number on it is really going to be shooting blind,” Hefner said. When a hurricane hits the state, people may leave the area but then continue to spend money inland—sometimes more than they would spend if they had remained at home. Furthermore, when the storm is over, those people return and bring their buying power with them. “The local stores [in areas that evacuate] may lose a lot of retail sales, but people will need to buy from them a week later,” Hefner said. In the case of the coronavirus, consumer absence in the area could be multiplied by five times or more, depending on how long the state remains on lockdown. As a result, the financial stress on local businesses will be magnified. “Every time I have stood in [my

Read More