Lake Placid Realtor Jodi Gunther wondered if she hadn’t sold her last house. It was March 2020 amid the breadth and severity of the pandemic. The work of real estate agents had been deemed nonessential and they were barred from their offices.
Gunther remembered what she’d read about the real estate crash of 1926, which helped fuel the Great Depression, and feared a similar outcome. As a hedge she took a job buying groceries for the housebound.
That was before buyers from San Francisco to Florida to Philadelphia to Puerto Rico descended on the Adirondack Mountains, as did a multitude of in-state refugees from the cities, and hastily formed LLCs that began collecting vacation properties like trading cards.
“From March 18 until mid-May we were not allowed to go into houses,” she said. “Most of us thought there was no way people would buy a house without walking through the door.”
As it turned
