It’s been a wild year for real estate. It’s difficult to think all the way back to the beginning of 2020 as it feels like it has dragged on for an eternity and, at the same time like we’re still stuck in a March quarantine time-loop. Despite the fog of the year, plenty has happened in real estate. You could say that this year has been one of the most surprising and exciting in quite some time! 

The 2020 real estate market has been surprising in more ways than one. No one could have predicted that the market would not only survive, but thrive during an unprecedented global pandemic. If we look back at predictions earlier in the year and even pre-pandemic, a market crash was certainly on all our minds.

If you look at the REI Nation repertoire of investment markets, you’ll no doubt notice a trend. We tend to gravitate towards southern markets. While we’ve dipped into a bit of the Midwest in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, the farthest we’ve gone north is St. Louis, Missouri. 

Real estate has been a wild ride this year. From predictions of a market crash to the unexpected frenzy of market activity, it’s been anything but predictable. Real estate investors have had to cope with their fair share of concerns, too. 

It’s been a strange year for real estate. That much is evident, given how many of us expected tough times as the pandemic began to take a true toll on the nation in the Spring. We watched the market sharply contract as homes were pulled from the market and activity came to a standstill.

This year, perhaps more than ever, we have seen how starkly real estate market performance stands against other metrics — against stock performance and economic statistics. The pandemic has unleashed a unique set of circumstances regarding real estate, but it alone has not been the sole determining factor separating high-performing real estate markets from lower-performing ones.

As we move into the Fall season and closer to the fourth quarter of the year, no one can deny that the real estate market has been full of surprises. Ask any expert what they thought was going to come of real estate back in March or April, and surely we’d have seen a sea of predictions spelling doom for the real estate industry as we know it.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a wrench into a lot of plans. Whether we had dreams of big 2020 vacations, family reunions, or big financial moves, the state of the world has led us to reconsider more than a few things. The pandemic has taken its toll on our health, our social lives, the economy, and our finances. 

Zillow CEO Rich Barton recently said that he believes “we are at the dawn of a great reshuffling,” for the real estate market. There’s no doubt that the real estate market has seen a shakeup in recent months — but there’s far more to current market activity than pent-up demand and the incentive of low interest rates.

2020 has been a strange year to say the least. As we forge our way through uncharted territory, plenty of worries, concerns, and questions come to mind. We’re thinking about our families and friends and their health, we’re wondering about employment status and cut hours. We’re adjusting to working-from-home or juggling wild, cooped-up kids.