In early March, we took a leap and signed a lease on new office space, and had planned on moving in April. Of course, those plans were completely turned upside down as society shut down to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. Fortunately, our new lessors were gracious and understanding enough to allow us to delay our move, and as public sentiment seems to have pivoted to re-opening, we are preparing to finally say goodbye to the Cranford office we’ve called home for the past three years. We knew this move would feel like a new beginning, but we could not have imagined how differently we’d be seeing the world in June compared to March. The emotional impact Covid-19 has had on us, and the company’s strategy, is profound, and we will forever be shaped by this experience.
What's Next...
The Coronavirus pandemic has impacted many industries, and the repercussions will be far-reaching and ongoing. Everyone is searching for guidance on whether the recovery will be U-curved or V-curved (my friend recently told me about a W-curve hypothesis that is gaining some steam as well). Real estate shifts can be spurred by many variables, such as unemployment, interest rates, consumer confidence, to name a few. To tack on a widely predicted urban flight, a loss of wealth, and a resurgence in the value of space (the millenial spurning of houses for small apartments, renting vs. owning, and house-hacking movements have to be dead, right?), it’s challenging to forecast where the economic winds will blow. Our marketing efforts will be focused on first-time and upgrade-class homebuyers, cultural communities, and investors. These markets have proven to be resilient, have traditionally strongly valued homeownership, and are often taken for granted and underserved.
A peek INSIDE our new office
Prior to Coronavirus, we were more than happy to host closings in our Cranford office. We had two sizable closing rooms (and a fun room) for doing so. Based on our loose calculations, approximately 21% of our closings took place in our office. PostCoronavirus, we predict that attorneys and real estate brokers will prioritize becoming leaner in their overhead costs, and will lean on title agencies more for hosting closings. As many law offices and mortgage offices have been forced to move remote, these professionals may forego having a full-time office altogether. As such, professional cleanings have shifted from a 2nd-tier operational cost to a missioncritical expense. Since the beginning of May, I’ve attended webinar after webinar discussing how offices and workplaces need to prepare for reopening. A large component of those plans is daily professional cleaning to make sure all touch points are properly addressed.
The Covid-19 quarantine has highlighted a gaping vacuum in the title industry for reliable, comprehensive education. When county courthouses started shutting to the public, we were pleasantly surprised to see so many people in the real estate industry asking questions, watching our videos, and reading our posts. Since then, we’ve moved our Title Insurance 101 course online, offering CE credits to realtors in a webinar format. This experience has also entrenched our commitment to providing educational resources to consumers and professionals in the real estate industry. We will be doubling down on making sure the title insurance industry is well-understood and transparent.
The greatest fear we had when we moved our entire team remote was that files would begin to fall through the cracks and client communications would break. Although we have a number of procedural failsafes to highlight files that go overdue, or unattended, we realized that we were lacking an overseeing accountability/communication system to ensure that our team would continue to proactively drive files to the closing table. Our solution is one that we had been mulling over, planning for, and implementing in pieces for the past 18 months — POD Captains! Now representatives from each department will work together in a smaller unit with one "captain" who acts as the point of contact and leader. The goal of this is to create the feeling of having a team that knows every client file and is intimately familiar with how a client likes us to operate. Our first POD Captain will be implemented in the coming weeks. As we hone in our new structure, clients can expect an exceptional VIP feeling and a higher sense of communication.