There is an executive order requiring Minnesota businesses to have a preparedness plan and that plan is due today. The plan has to include details about what we are doing to reduce the spread of COVID-19 among employees or customers or both.
After looking over the requirements for workspaces I am thankful that our offices are in our homes and that I don’t need to worry about keeping an office safe.
To keep our clients safe for the most part all we have to do is follow the guidelines for wearing masks and social distancing. For showing homes and listing homes we keep the number of people in the home to a minimum with shorter showings and no overlapping showings.
We wear masks and carry extra face masks and gloves and hand sanitizer too. I have it in gallon jugs and it can be used to sanitize lockboxes and keys and hands too. We ask our clients not to touch anything when touring a home.
There is more but you get the idea. There are lots of rules for real estate companies and these are on top of other Minnesota rules and MLS rules and local, state, and national rules and federal, state, and local fair housing laws too.
Recently I noticed some conflicts where if I follow one rule I may be breaking the law or breaking another rule. There doesn’t seem to be a way to report discrepancies to the rulemaking bodies.
Some real estate companies are doing open houses. Open houses are not a necessary part of the home sales process but are prospecting tools for agents and advertising for real estate companies. We are not doing open houses for safety reasons. Open houses are not safe for attendees or agents.
They pose an unnecessary risk especially when we consider that there are more new Coronavirus cases in the US than Europe, India, and China — combined.
The USA is the world leader in Coronavirus cases and deaths by such a large margin it doesn’t seem like a fair contest.
