Today marks the first-year anniversary of “Padkos” – and what a year this has been. If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that 2020 was one of the most memorable in our lifetime. The impacts of the events we experienced will affect us for years to come. Being a small business owner in New York City, and a real estate development specialist with projects in the market certainly gave me a unique perspective. I learned a lot about myself this past year, and I learned a lot about other people as well. 2020 brought out the best of us and the worst. Here’s a snapshot of a few of the things that stand out to me.
The grass isn’t always greener. When the pandemic hit New York City, and it was shut down, a lot of people who called themselves “New Yorkers” ran for The Hills, The Hamptons, Westchester, and Florida. Those with the means found a way to escape the reality of Covid summer in the city. The suburban market saw unprecedented demand and an irrational exuberance that drove prices higher than Elon Musk’s BFR. This will absolutely have a big impact on future values and there will be a moment of reckoning in the years to come. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. People who fled rented houses for 3 times the value. Some houses were sold sight unseen. If there’s anything that creates a housing bubble, it’s a knee-jerk reaction driven by fear. It’s never a good long-term prospect for the market when real estate agents are boasting that their inventory is “flying off the shelves”. Now that there’s some light at the end of the tunnel, some of these defectors are realizing that they miss the very things that brought them to the city to start with. Things you can’t get inside a white picket fence. People are starting to trickle back to the city and they will be back. 2022 might bring a surge of available inventory in Florida and Westchester, and pent-up demand for apartments in Manhattan.
A moment of crisis exposes our resourcefulness. The human spirit rose to the occasion. We saw our real estate community turn convention centers into hospitals. We witnessed frontline workers suit up and put their lives on the line in an effort to curb this pandemic. The global scientific community pushed the limit and succeeded in solving the COVID-19 problem with a vaccine. All of this in spite of being undermined and questioned. Thanks to them, the outlook for next year is bright.
We are more and less connected. As we shut down our workplace, we were forced to adapt the way in which we interacted with each other. I, like many other people, turned to technology. I started a weekly CORE learning lab. An online community where we shared our experiences and insight. In many ways, I felt more connected to people because of this weekly event. This is something I look forward to continuing in the soho-to-be post-pandemic world, and I recognize that this is something I could have and should have done a long time ago.
The people around you count. Surround yourself with good people and good things will happen. Without the support of the closest people in my life, this past year would have been very different for me. Without my wife, my children, my mother, my sisters, my cousins, my friends, my business partners, my associates, my staff, my agents, my clients, and my neighbors, my world would be a very different place. I count my lucky stars for all of them.
Thanks for coming along with me on this ride and for spending a few minutes every week to listen to some of my stories.
Let’s do this!
-Shaun