Head of industry association says they are working on a national COVID workplace plan
When asked how property market activity would change once Australia reached its 70% vaccination target, the president of REIA Adrian Kelly (pictured above) suggested MPA ask the different premiers and chief ministers of Australia’s states and territories for the answer.
“It’s unfortunate at the moment there is so much confusion around that exact question,” he said. “Different messages are coming from different states and it’s very, very difficult to keep up with what the plan actually is.”
In addition to this confusion, there is already a disparate set of rules for the different cities currently locked down in Australia. REIV recently called for one-on-one, private inspections to resume in lockdown affected Victoria after a sizeable number of listings scheduled for spring were withdrawn from the market, while in Sydney, private inspections have continued despite the harbour city being in lockdown for more than two months.
Read more: Peak body demands return of in-person property inspections
According to CoreLogic head of research Australia Eliza Owen (pictured below), transaction activity in Melbourne has been more heavily impacted than in Sydney, presumably, in part, due to this ban on physical inspections.
“Sales volumes were down almost -40% in August 2021, compared to a -50.2% decline from July to August last year when the city was under the same restrictions.” she said.
According to Kelly, “an awful lot of work” was being done behind the scenes to conduct one on one inspections safely across the country.
“We have proven we can do that quite safely in the COVID environment,” he said. “Hopefully some common sense will prevail as it has done in Sydney.
“REIA is working on a national COVID workplace plan because we understand we are going to have to be working with COVID for the next year or two in terms of work safe practices. Hopefully from next year onwards we can have one national set of standards for our industry rather than seven sets of standards from varying levels. That should make life easier for us.”
Owen also alluded to the lack of clarification from the states and territories when asked how activity would change once the 70% target was reached.
“This depends on what the easing of restrictions looks like at that point,” she said. “But generally, we have seen a fairly rapid recovery in sales and listings volumes once social distancing restrictions start to ease.”
As for the question of whether real estate agents would be mandated to get the COVID vaccination, Kelly declined to comment, saying it was too early for such considerations.
Read next: Why a COVID-19 vaccine could be the best way for brokers to build rapport with clients
“I think that 99% of estate agents understand that vaccinations are important, not only for themselves, but also for their families, their clients and their customers,” he said. “I think once we hit the 70% and the 80% mark it will probably sort itself out by default because if there is a group of estate agents that can be vaccinated but don’t want to be, then that’s going to create a problem for them.”
