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Home closings increase in 2020 along coastal SC counties despite COVID pandemic | Myrtle Beach Business

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Myrtle Beach Realtor Travis Muir put a condo up for sale in September at Blue Water Resort on Ocean Boulevard and within an hour, it was sold.

Not an every day occurrence, the realtor for The Hoffman Group admits. But, after all, it’s 2020 and anything can happen.

“The biggest thing is pricing it within realistic market price,” Muir said, adding 2020 has been his best year for sales, pushing nearly triple what he normally does.

“With this one being an investment property, the price point for the rate of return… I think one of the biggest things, too, is the interest rates are lower than they have been in a very long time. That gives people more incentive to go ahead and make that jump. They were thinking of buying in a two- or three-year window, but now with the interest rates so low, people are moving faster.”

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Florida Coach Wanted 90,000 Fans at Home This Week, But Now His Players Have COVID

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Florida Gators football coach Dan Mullen said he wanted 90,000 screaming fans at his home stadium this weekend when they host the LSU Tigers. Now, they hope to just play a game after suspending team activities because some of their players have caught coronavirus.

The school announced Tuesday that it has suspended athletic activities after five football players tested positive for COVID-19. Florida athletics director Scott Stricklin issued a statement that said the suspension of activities was out of caution.

“Out of an abundance of caution, team activities are paused as of Tuesday afternoon. Head coach Dan Mullen has been in communication with football players and their parents, and I have had conversations with the Southeastern Conference office, last week’s opponent Texas A&M, and this week’s opponent LSU,” Stricklin said.

Strucklin added that the UF sports medicine department will reassess the situation on Wednesday.

Florida Gators Dan Mullen
Head coach Dan Mullen of the
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Funeral Home Hands out Flyers at COVID Denier Protest

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An Italian funeral home handed out flyers advertising its services at a ‘March of Liberation’ rally for COVID-deniers in Rome on Saturday.



a group of people standing in front of a building: A woman with a sign saying "it's a dictatorship not a pandemic" participates at Let's Free Italy!, Liberation March for Work, Income, Sovereignty, Democracy, in Piazza San Giovanni on October 10, 2020, in Rome, Italy. A man handed out flyers advertising a local funeral home at the protest in Rome.

© Simona Granati-Corbis/Getty
A woman with a sign saying “it’s a dictatorship not a pandemic” participates at Let’s Free Italy!, Liberation March for Work, Income, Sovereignty, Democracy, in Piazza San Giovanni on October 10, 2020, in Rome, Italy. A man handed out flyers advertising a local funeral home at the protest in Rome.

On Twitter, the Taffo funeral home shared a photo of a man handing out flyers at the rally and simply said: “Flyer for the March of Liberation! Business is Business.”

The organizers of the rally say it was held in protest of the government, the European Union, and neoliberalism, and while organizers said that they do not deny the existence of the coronavirus, they denounce its political use and appear to deny the severity of

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Home COVID tests are convenient, safe and key to an economic restart

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Dr. Marty Makary, Opinion contributor
Published 7:00 a.m. ET Oct. 12, 2020 | Updated 10:02 a.m. ET Oct. 12, 2020

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COVID-19 widespread testing is crucial to fighting the pandemic, but is there enough testing? The answer is in the positivity rates.

USA TODAY

The technology exists and people want to get tested at home, so they can avoid risk. It’s time to bring coronavirus screening into the 21st century.

Doctors and patients increasingly embrace telemedicine tools to diagnose and treat during the ongoing pandemic. So why is it people who want to be tested for COVID-19 are still venturing out to clinics or doctors’ offices, where they could potentially be exposed or expose others to the novel coronavirus? Moving aggressively toward self-administered in-home testing ahead of a potential second wave should continue to be a top national priority.

In March, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services revised outdated

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Real Estate Market: Rent or Buy a House During Covid? Home Hunters Explain Moves

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Maybe it’s too many months living and working in the same cramped quarters. Or the ultra-low mortgage rates. For some, spending less during the pandemic means they finally have enough saved for a down payment.

All that is prompting people to ask themselves whether now is the time to buy a home — even as the long-term outlook for the real-estate market remains uncertain.

There’s been a burst of home buying across the U.S., especially in suburbs outside cities where people were cooped up during the spring Covid-19 lockdown. In August, contracts to buy single-family houses in Greenwich, Connecticut, nearly tripled from a year earlier. Contracts were up 57% in nearby Westchester County.

Homes Get Scarce

The supply of single-family homes in the U.S. is getting tight

Capital Economics Ltd., U.S. Census, National Association of Realtors

The U.S. market is so hot that the supply of homes for sale is

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winners and losers in the COVID economy

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Although European capitals are loath to reintroduce the national lockdowns imposed in March, they are targeting restrictions on hospitality, entertainment and travel.

“No government wants to go back to where they were in March given the impact on the economy,” said Melanie Debono, European economist at Capital Economics. “But any restrictions may take longer to unwind so the virus doesn’t uptick again.”

Where we have seen policies to contain the virus, people have quickly returned to normal.

— Frederic Neumann, HSBC

By contrast, countries in the Asia-Pacific region – including New Zealand and Vietnam as well as Taiwan, South Korea and China – suppressed COVID-19 to lower levels and then maintained tighter controls against a resurgence. While Europe enjoyed its summer holidays, Asia kept international travel on hold.

Taiwan closed its borders early and followed that up with well-organised contact tracing, quarantine and social distancing to eliminate a few initial

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Home saliva COVID tests are just as accurate as nasal swabs

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As the pandemic rages on, research on different types of coronavirus tests continues in an effort to increase testing capacity and minimize contact with others.

Many Americans are familiar with the uncomfortable experience of having a 6-inch cotton swab poked deep in their nasal cavities, but there are also tests that can be completed at home that involve a simple spit in a tube — and they are just as accurate and reliable as their more painful counterpart, experts say.

Ever since the first emergency use authorization was issued for an at-home saliva-based COVID-19 test in May, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued more for companies across the country.

Experts say they are easier to process in the lab, more comfortable for the patient and safer for health care professionals. The downside? Most at-home coronavirus saliva tests are costly, and in some cases, your insurance won’t cover the

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Maker of At-Home Covid Test Seeks Funds at $1 Billion Valuation

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(Bloomberg) — Everlywell Inc., a health startup that sells a Covid-19 home-testing kit, is in talks to raise fresh capital at a valuation of $1 billion or more.



a close up of a hand holding a blue object: A doctor wearing surgical gloves holds test tubes containing saliva swabs during coronavirus symptom tests in the outpatient clinic at the Paracelsus Clinic in Zwickau, Germany, on Thursday, April 2, 2020.

© Bloomberg
A doctor wearing surgical gloves holds test tubes containing saliva swabs during coronavirus symptom tests in the outpatient clinic at the Paracelsus Clinic in Zwickau, Germany, on Thursday, April 2, 2020.

Prospective investors including venture capital firms are participating in the discussions, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named. The company reached a valuation of $175 million after a fundraising round last year, according to Pitchbook estimates.

The latest effort, if successful, would vault Everlywell to unicorn status, giving it a lead among niche telehealth startups that are rushing to expand. The global pandemic has been a boon for such companies as patients seek to avoid the risk of visiting a doctor.

A

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COVID rapid at-home antigen testing may get FDA approval

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COVID-19 widespread testing is crucial to fighting the pandemic, but is there enough testing? The answer is in the positivity rates.

USA TODAY

Even as advocates cite bureaucratic red tape blocking fast and cheap home coronavirus tests, the federal government’s regulatory agency overseeing testing says it will be flexible and encourage developers to seek approval.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a document on July 29 calling for home tests to correctly identify the virus at least 90% of the time. But a high-ranking FDA official overseeing testing told USA TODAY the agency will consider tests with lower sensitivity. 

Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said the agency’s recommendations issued more than two months ago are “starting points.”  

“Our door has been open, and we’re very flexible because we’re trying to do all we can, at least from an FDA side, to have

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Europe’s Banks Get Serious About Work From Home After Covid

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(Bloomberg) — So how much will you really be able to work from home after the pandemic? A lot more than you might think, if you work for a European bank.

As some Wall Street executives warn of the perils of working from home for too long, Europe’s biggest lenders are getting serious about using lessons learned in the pandemic to lower costs and afford employees a better work-life balance. They’re changing a culture that has seen few disruptions of this magnitude since modern office buildings were created.

Leading the way in Europe are the Dutch, whose biggest banks predict that staff will be working about half their time from home once the pandemic is over. In Italy, UniCredit SpA plans to have 40% of work done remotely after the crisis, while Switzerland’s UBS Group AG estimates that employees could work from home about a third of the time.



chart, bar chart: Bye-Bye, Office?

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