Every Agent owns his own small business.  There may be programs in place at your bank to help defer payments.   While Step One only applies to those affected by COVID, check with your bank for updates.  Relief is coming.

• pay disruption due to COVID-19;
• childcare disruption due to school closures; or
• those facing illness from COVID-19.

More information is available at Canada’s Six Biggest Banks Take Decisive Action To Help Customers Impacted by COVID-19 

TD has just informed us with the overload from both staffing shortage and flood of ETF transfers, it will now take 3 to 4 weeks to process a payment.

E-transfers will not work either as the amount limit is restricted.

We are processing your cheques as usual.   You will be paged to decide see the best arrangements for you are.

Many Co-Brokers and lawyers are now reverting back to the old mail system.   Mail service has not been interrupted in Ontario as of today.

We do however expect a little delay as many co-brokers have shut down their offices.  Its a day by day situation.  We are doing our best to get your money in!

Houssmax - Effective Immediately:

For all photography, floor plan measurement, 3D matterport scanning services, our staff will ONLY work in vacant environment. Please prepare the lockbox for access and/or coordinate with sellers to temporarily evacuate all the residents of the property during the on-site service session. We understand this is a difficult decision, however, social distancing is the most critical way to stop spreading the virus. 

We sent out a Superman Graphic and an email to share with clients to give them confidence.  Here is our favourite quote:

Real estate transactions continue all over the City, with the creative help of facetime showings, virtual tours, offers by digital signature, and conference calling.
In past times of extreme stress in the marketplace, from MERS, SARS, 9/11, people always revert to their #1 emotional and financial investment - THEIR HOME.  When there is political unrest, when the stock market tanks, when there is panic, people trust real estate.  

To protect our staff, we kindly ask, whenever possible, to have Co-Brokers call us for instructions on how to make trust deposits direct at their local TD branch.

Be prepared to answer questions from your clients on the market.  Understandably things will slow down as we all practice social distancing,  but then expect it to explode later.  With low interest rates and folks realizing real estate is their safest investment we will see a resurgence.

https://ca.yahoo.com/finance/news/coronavirus-is-already-taking-its-toll-on-canadas-real-estate-market-175434098.html

Unfortunately, agents are not entitled to unemployment insurance as they are considered Self Employed Independent Contractors, therefore we cannot provide ROE (Record of Employment forms)   But stay tuned the Government will likely have financial assistance. 

COVID -19 is impacting us in so many ways and we are all in uncharted waters in terms of our health risks , our employees and businesses. It is estimated that  programs will be available in early April.

The Federal government is also  administrating the COVID-19 “business financial assistance”   with a “business credit availability program “ through the BDC bank   with three facilities – (1) Small Business Loan; (2) Working Capital Loan; and (3) Purchase Order Financing. Please go to bdc.ca for the COVID- 19 link and there is a 2-page general application whereby on submission BDC shall email you back their confirmation of the application and that you will be contacted in due process.

There is no indication of the BDC approval requirements, but we would expect recent financial statements, existing financial position and probably a projected monthly (could be weekly) operations cash flow statement indicating collection of receivables, payment of payables, revenues and expenses.  The purpose of the cash flow statement is to support the amount of the loan as the BDC will not be lending ad hoc amounts. Even in the absence of an application, we recommend every business should prepare a three-month operations cash flow statement.

As emotions heat up and more folks have time to post comments on sites, consider reasonable pricing on properties.

Here is an example - read the comments.

https://www.remonline.com/kitchener-home-gets-53-offers/

Keep your Social Media updated - post often!