The pandemic and its constant Real Estate change

The pandemic has upended the concept of “normal life” for everyone.  In 2020, residents of the City of Chicago isolated, stayed in apartments they may have otherwise moved from, and generally hid away for their own protection.  Now it is 2021, and the City of Chicago has just passed 2 million shots administered. The United States of America has inoculated 30% of eligible adults. We are in a strange period of time where we’re trying to return to normalcy but haven’t quite gotten there yet.

In 2020, and continuing into 2021, many residents of Seminary Properties and Management, Ltd. (Seminary Properties) apartments have been working from home. Areas of their home have been converted into office space where countless virtual meetings are conducted.  This has caused Seminary Properties to adapt so that we are more conscientious of this new reality that our residents are facing. 

Colin Rewrite of first two Paragraphs: In 2020, The City of Chicago and its residents upended the normality of daily life and joined the world in isolation in response to the growing pandemic. Now, more than a year later, Chicago has surpassed 22 million Covid-19 vaccinations with more than 50% of eligible adults inoculated nationwide. This remarkable year has left residents and businesses trying to adjust to the ever changing “normal” daily life as we reopen our cities and communities.

Many individuals, including residents of Seminary Properties and Management, Ltd., began their work from home routine, more commonly called WFH, which meant living spaces were being converted into makeshift offices, virtual meeting rooms, and even classrooms. Seminary Properties has endeavored to understand and be more conscientious of this new reality.

For over a year, all residents who submit a work request for repairs have received notification that the request was received and a second notification when the key is picked up by a Seminary Properties Maintenance Team member to address the issue. Seminary Properties continues to address maintenance requests from 9am – 5pm Monday – Friday and emergencies outside of those hours. We have a policy of knocking several times and loudly announcing ourselves before entering an apartment; while this has sometimes disturbed work-related Zoom meetings, we feel it is important to maintain this policy so as not to surprise residents who may be using the bathroom, sleeping, or would otherwise need a moment to prepare for entry.

The rental season has now begun, and there has been a large increase in people switching apartments relative to last year.  People are looking for additional bedrooms, large spaces, and are more open to living with roommates. This is a reversal from last year, when most people wanted to live alone.  Overall, this has greatly increased the demand to see apartments.  In 2020, the City of Chicago placed restrictions on showings and on the number of people allowed to be present during a showing.  All those restrictions have ended. Now people can view apartments if the landlord complies with the Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance (RLTO).  This has created a problem of showing apartments when people are working from home (WFH).

Seminary Properties has added additional measures to our policies regarding showings in attempt to keep our tenants safe and to adjust to their work schedules. In the past, Seminary Properties has required all apartment showings to have a minimum of 48 hours’ notice provided to the current occupants of an apartment. This was done to ensure residents have ample notice to make changes in case they would prefer not to be present or need to reschedule planned time off.    In the current WFH environment, this helps tenants plan out meetings so a showing will not cause too much of an interruption to their work.

Seminary Properties still requires all showings to fall within certain windows of time so tenants know when no showings can occur. These windows are:

Monday 10am – 8pm

Tuesday 10am – 8pm

Wednesday 10am – 8pm

Thursday 10am – 8pm

Friday 10am – 8pm

Saturday 10am – 6pm

Sunday 10am – 6pm

Even during these windows, a tenant must receive 48 hours’ advanced notice of a specific window for a scheduled showing, such as “on Tuesday, between 10 and 10:30am”.   In the past, these measures have allowed our residents to plan around any scheduled showings; during today’s WFH environment, this policy has been doubly important in helping to limit work-related conflicts.

The pandemic is not over.  Many people have received their vaccinations, but many more are still waiting to receive their first or second dose.  The threat of COVID-19 is still a reality. It is for that reason that Seminary Properties require double masks for all showings of occupied apartments.  We also wear gloves for showings to make our tenants and prospective tenants more comfortable during showings.     At the time of this blog (4/28/2021), all Seminary Properties Property Managers who perform showings are fully vaccinated.  We are nearing the point where we can announce all Team Members of Seminary Properties are vaccinated.  However, even when we’ve achieved this milestone, we intend to continue wearing PPE to protect the health and safety of both vaccinated and non-vaccinated residents.

It is important to continue to work together to get through this pandemic. Even as the United States of America gets closer to herd immunity, the rest of the world is not as fortunate. Seminary Properties will continue to do our part to protect ourselves, our residents, and the public from this virus until it is deemed safe to let down our guard.  Until that time we will keep the safety of everyone as our main focus.