We’ve been back a little over a week, and have pretty much caught up with everything from lockdown. Almost. Certainly by the end of this coming week we’ll be sorted.

In practical terms we can now do everything we used to do pre-covid-19. Obviously with 2m distancing, masks and so much hand cleaning it’s a wonder we have any skin left. If you want a valuation or viewing but are concerned over covid risk get in touch and we’ll explain how we do things.

In terms of how the market is going to go from here, it’s a little too early to tell, but early signs are that it’s going to pretty much pick up where it left off in March. That’s for sales. For lettings it never slowed down, we were able to let everything we advertised immediately from video tours.

The types of industry that dominate the Cambridge economy – pharmaceuticals, healthcare, education, software and other high-tech-boffin stuff – are unlikely to see huge redundancies or income drops, perhaps even the opposite and whilst there is no doubt that confidence in the market, and money in general, will be hit there will always be a large proportion of people that *need* to move. Cambridge is good for that. If your job is moving here from California or leaving here to Copenhagen you won’t be commuting it. We think volumes will drop, which is bad for us, but we’re expecting the ratio of buyers to sellers to remain similar, which should be good for the market. We’re currently working on agreeing a number of sales from the last week’s viewings where we have a choice of 3 or more buyers and competitive offers.

Whisper it, as it feels a bit indulgent being positive with the current horrors, but we may even find our numerous medical firms get busier and employ more people from all this.

Anecdotally most people that we speak to aren’t changing their general plans to move and during the lockdown period our fall-through rate (houses that were sale agreed that fell through due to buyer or sellers changing their mind) was actually significantly lower than it usually is.

It’s all conjecture at the moment, but if the media has taught us anything over the last 2 months it’s that the great British public just can’t get enough of constant, unrelenting, soul-withering conjecture.

In more personal news, we’re all well here at CC&C, thanks for asking. Some of us are working at home, some from the office and some yet to return to work but none of us is any more poorly than we usually are. We hope the same applies to you and yours.

Well that was unexpected.

Estate agents, solicitors, surveyors and everyone else in the house-moving industry only found out about restrictions being lifted last night, the same as you.

We’re covering the phones and emails as usual today and will publish details this afternoon of how we’re going to be doing things to ensure safety for all.

The CC&C office is now closed to visitors, but we’re still working from home. We can open the office for essential visits like key collections, we just need a little notice to get there. We have gloves and things to make any handovers safe in accordance with government advice.

Here’s the detailed lowdown:

The highlights are:

No physical viewings, obviously, but we’re working on providing walk-through video tours of as many properties as we can safely do.

No physical valuations, but we can give pretty accurate advice remotely via Facetime or WhatsApp or similar.

The office numbers and emails are all being covered all day by staff working from home.

Existing sales can progress as normal and current (26/3/20) government advice is that completions and removals can go ahead with proper precautions.

Let properties will be managed as normal. Current advice is that contractors should only visit for essential repairs, not general maintenance.

Do get in touch if you have any questions.

But we can keep it almost business as usual, with some precautions.

We’re following the Government guidelines to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 by temperature checking each morning, washing our hands at every single opportunity and cleaning our work areas frequently.

For those clients who are still looking to arrange valuations or to place their property on the market we are still carrying out these appointments and will do so for as long it is safe to do so and clients would like us to.

We are currently able to provide a normal service to tenants and landlords and expect that to continue.