The last pandemic of this size and scope was during the 1300’s. It was called the Black Death or Bubonic Plague because some iterations of it caused the infected person’s extremities to turn black before they died. People were dying in such numbers that the bodies were piling up in the streets and grave diggers could not keep up with the staggering numbers that needed to be buried.

We can feel some gratitude that we are not faced with those situations, but the reality is dire. We are all aware of the staggering statistics about unemployment, the number of people who have been infected with the virus and sadly the number who have died.

As an industry we were faced over night with the prospects of being shut down and then being told that we were an essential business so we could not shut down. While we were trying to absorb those realities, our employees were wondering what to do, our customers were hoping that we could close transactions and carry on with their files. We had buyers, sellers and borrowers who needed to close because, as we know, life does continue during a pandemic albeit in a different way. But all of those folks including our employees needed to be reassured that they could work for us, work with us and close with us and still be safe.

It was a pivotal moment and as an industry we turned on a dime, quite literally. We made arrangements for people to work remotely so that there would be less people in our offices. We devised new ways of closing transactions and we shared those ideas with each other. We bought masks, sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, gloves in volume (if we could find them). We devised dividers for closing tables. And we gave everyone the feeling that we cared, we were concerned and we were going to do our best to keep them all safe. We stepped up to the plate and we hit that home run right out of the ball park!

Congratulations Title Professionals for a job very well done!