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When the COVID pandemic first brought life to a standstill just over a year ago, the last thing anyone expected was a real estate boom — especially in areas dependent on tourism.
“Real estate was deemed an essential business, so we still had an obligation to sell property,” says Alyssa Halisky, managing broker at Wallace & Co. Sotheby’s International on Martha’s Vineyard. “But it was hard to service listings, and a lot of people took their homes off the market and didn’t want to show them.”
Then the spell broke. “Toward the end of April [2020], things just changed 180 degrees,” Halisky says.