I had a discussion yesterday with a large development company who is entitling a project to build multiple high end luxurious attached townhomes. I think their investment is so genius…in a world without Corona. In our old lives, it’s easy to see a busy corporate jetsetter traveling between cities and coming home to a luxurious large well appointed space without the upkeep of a pool or landscaping and close in location to attend events, restaurants, and airports. In our current lives, private outdoor space to hang without a mask, a great home office with so much natural light, and a space to call home year round because of fear of traveling + in person meetings changes both the demographic and the needs of the target buyer for their planned space. As we end 2020, it’s fascinating to see the extent to which our lives, our perspectives, our needs, and our priorities shifted with the new world reality.
A client texted me this week asking to schedule showings for Thursday, when she said she and her family would finish their quarantine. Instinctively, I wrote back if dinner would be helpful, given that she’s quarantined. I started to offer a choice of takeout dinners and then again without thinking, I added some homemade menu dinner options. She wrote back very quickly that dinner would be awesome and her family unanimously chose homemade spaghetti and meatballs. Even though none of it was calculated or planned, somehow making dinner for that family – from soup to main to salad to dessert – was so much fun on so many levels. I think it’s because the big pot of meatballs took me back to the days when all my then little kids lived at home and I would make that very recipe of meatballs in homemade sauce with diced eggplant, mushroom, zucchini, and onion, and connect with the large lively brood around the dinner table after their exhilarating day of in-person school with contact sports and shared snacks. Dinner out conjures images of restaurant meals where we used to sit back and get served delicious appetizing food that we didn’t cook ourselves. Quarantining for weeks seems so isolating and so it feels healing to bring the outside world in, not through a sterile take out container but by a human spending time cooking dinner-to-order for another human and delivering pans covered with aluminum foil in a laundry basket piled high with all the different components of the different courses. Welcome to our new life in Corona where we cook dinner for people in quarantine. Who would have ever thought.
With the changed perspective and priorities in Corona starting Spring of this year, we saw a huge surge in the pursuit and accomplishment of home ownership. The first “Stay at Home” order in Los Angeles shined a light on the importance of where we stay at home. Slowing down and staying at home woke people up to their desires to live in a different home, in a different location, in a different city, in a different space in whatever capacity. It made so many more people want to MOVE. With interest rates at historic lows, and perhaps extra time (because of less places to go) and extra money (because of less travel + recreation + brick and mortar shopping), Corona ended up making 2020 the year when people picked up and moved. Since Los Angeles is shut down again, and so much of our city is still closed and restricted, there are still so many people wanting to move and not enough houses for sale for them to buy. Sellers thinking to go to a different space can still take advantage of high demand into 2021 and get where they want to go.
I absolutely love what I do. I love that my job is so collaborative and that I get to interact with so many people on each transaction – buyers, sellers, agents, vendors, fellow service providers, my awesome team members. What I discovered this year from so many interactions is that my favorite people at work are: 1) highly competent 2) highly communicative and accountable 3) highly respectful and caring 4) highly productive and hard working. To me, the biggest blessing in the world is good people and the hardest endeavor in the world is vetting and curating a circle of more and more good people. Goal for 2021 is to cast the net wider and to keep adding like minded people in order to assemble a curated tribe of people with shared values and ethics.
I’m excited for all my sellers who have buyers enthused to buy their homes and in the middle of the process of working toward closing on their purchase. I’m excited for our buyers who are embarking on a mission to fill their dreams and to live in their new home. The biggest overall change in perspective from Corona is the blatant realization of how much we matter, and how important it is for each of us to get acutely aware of our dreams + our deepest wishes and desires. As we close out the last weekend of 2020, my most fervent wish for all my friends, clients, and family is that we each figure out what it is that would truly make our soul sing…and then we figure out how to get us there. I can’t wait for 2021 – it’s going to be EPIC!
Have an awesome weekend!
Xoxoxo,
Sheri
