We’re certainly living in some crazy times right now.

It’s hard to believe that a roll of toilet could be so valuable and that people are literally physically assaulting each other in Supermarkets across Australia.

Will there be 150,000 deaths like the ‘experts’ are predicting?

Will 70% of Australians catch Coronavirus (or ‘COVID-19’ as it now seems to be more commonly known)?

As I write this, there’s rumours doing the rounds that the country will effectively be shut down from this Friday for 2 weeks (other than essential services) but I’ve just watched the press conference with Sco-Mo and he seemed to put a sword through any suggestions that schools (and many businesses) will shut down altogether.

Most sporting events (professional down to ‘grass roots’) have been cancelled (including indoor cricket Major League – much to my disappointment) but the reality is that small business needs to function in order to survive so the shutting down of these is easier said than done.

I’ve just heard that all indoor events cannot operate unless they have less than 100 people present at any one time.

Without even talking to the business owner, I’m sure my local indoor cricket is caught in a conundrum – when games are being played, there’s probably around 70-80 people inside the centre at any one time…but during the changeover of games, this number momentarily rises to around 120.

Do they stagger game times to ensure that there’s not more than 100 in the building at any one time?

Or do they just close down for some time…but if so, who’s going to pay their bills?

They have staff that need to be paid so the pressure if there is keep the doors open but there’s also pressure to ensure they’re doing their part to limit the spread of the virus.

I’ll bet every small business in Australia is asking themselves the same sort of questions – we certainly are too.

Whilst none of us want to catch this horrible illness but at the same time, I’m sure the Government isn’t going to pay our bills if we aren’t allowed to work or earn a living.

I have parents over the age of 70 that look after my kids a couple of times per week whilst I work…and I admit I have a dilemma – my parents want to keep looking after their Grandchildren but how would I feel if one of my children infected my parents and they became critically ill?

Should I order them to stay away from their Grandkids? And if so, how do I work during these times? Or should I be working?

Again, I guess a lot of us are asking the same questions.

And more to the point, how is COVID-19 affecting the property market right now.

Every single seller, buyer, friend, relative and probably even a few strangers have asked me this over the past week.

Whilst this is a ‘rapidly changing target’, I can provide an update of what’s happening right now.

Quite honestly, our past few weeks have been very busy and I’ll admit to being surprised how busy we actually are.

We had huge numbers at our open homes last weekend with one example being a home that was newly listed for sale on Friday with more than 20 groups through on Saturday morning…and three offers to purchase that were very competitive offers.

Whilst Australians are buying toilet paper like crazy, they don’t seem to be quite as concerned about the affects of the virus on the property market…at this stage anyway.

We signed three new contracts only yesterday so I can assure you that there are plenty of buyers out there.

The number of appointments we’re doing has slightly slowed down over the past 48 hours but it’s too early to tell whether this is just a small dip in our road or whether this will be the reality moving forwards.

Many other real estate agents around South-East Queensland are also reporting that they are quite busy so perhaps the low interest rates and relative lack of new stock to the market is still over-riding the hype of what effects COVID-19 may have on our community.

It would seem that there will be plenty of job losses (or reduced contracts) and it’s pretty obvious from the measures that the Government have taken thus far that our economy will take a hit to some degree.

It would appear that the Reserve Bank are meeting earlier than they are scheduled to meet, and economists are stating that another interest rate cut at this meeting is ‘inevitable’.

So how will prices be affected with all of this going on?

What’s evident to me is that in times of challenge such as these, there are those people that become extremely hypervigilant to what’s going on and there’s those that believe it’s all hype and couldn’t care less…and I guess there’s many of us that sit somewhere in the middle.

Despite what’s going on in the world, there will be those that have a need to upsize, downsize, relocate etc… and as such, the property market will keep ticking along in some respect.

There could be less properties that come to the market for sale as we’re already hearing some sellers feel that there may not be many buyers out there and as such, they don’t want to try to sell if they perceive that there’s few buyers around.

And if this happens, all of a sudden you have a further shortage of stock and some very sharp median price increases.

I have a friend of mine that’s a very successful agent in Toorak (Melbourne) and he told me that several weeks ago, sellers decided to stop listing their homes for sale given that the big driver for huge price growth in the area has been Chinese purchasing.

If the Chinese aren’t purchasing right now, the perception (from a seller’s point of view) is that it’s not a good time to sell.

But if there’s limited stock to the market, all of sudden there’s increased competition between the buyers that are still active and the current properties for sale achieve top prices.

Potential sellers gain a hint of this and the market starts turning over again.

My gut feeling is that we’ll be seeing similar patterns in the Brisbane market over the next 6 months.

Certainly, there might be investors that decide to offload their investment properties in order to provide some much needed cash if they lose their jobs…but in the same breath, when the share market becomes extremely volatile, there are those that see ‘bricks and mortar’ as a much safer avenue to place their hard earned cash – after all, you won’t go bed at night and lose 8-10% of your investment by the time you wake up in the morning if you invest in property.

The banks will be under pressure to show that they can still turn over a sizable profit in order to recover their share prices that have suffered over recent weeks…and that means they need to sell more money.

Despite the recent banking inquiry, you can bet that they’ll loosen their policies where they possibly can if loan numbers start to fall.

In summary, the property market is as busy as ever right now and I can assure you that we’re listing plenty and selling plenty as I write this.

I still believe that the Brisbane property market is very resilient and has proven this over the past twelve years…particularly through the GFC and the floods of 2011.

As such, I believe that our market will take a slight dip in transaction numbers (not necessarily median prices) whilst the risk of COVID-19 remains, but it will re-bounce equally as hard (and probably a little harder) once the virus is controlled and our economy returns to normal.

At this point in time, it’s business as usual for us with appraisals, inspections and other appointments continuing but we’ll let you know if anything changes.

Until next week, Stay Healthy…and Happy Listing and Happy Selling.