Click on image to view larger version. Credit: ShowingTime

Though 2020 started out with national showing activity that outpaced last year, the situation has flipped since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. ShowingTime, a showing management technology provider for the residential real estate industry, is monitoring the situation with a new dataset, updating daily, examining how scheduled listing viewings are falling off in an era of social distancing.

The company set Jan. 1 as a baseline, looking at how showings have changed since that moment in both 2019 and 2020. As of Sunday, March 22, showings across North America are down 18.2% since the beginning of the year. To offer an idea of what late March should look like in terms of activity this time of year, showings were up 33% by this time in 2019.

Massachusetts was a bit of an outlier in the data. While showings did see a significant dip from early- to mid-March, they are back on the upswing already. A slow start to 2020 showings may be the reason behind why the state is still seeing 96.9% more showings than it was on Jan. 1. Still, looking at this time last year, showings had risen 129.1% higher than they’d been at the start of the year in 2019.