New Tools for Home Buyers as the Pandemic Upends Real Estate

New Tools for Home Buyers as the Pandemic Upends Real Estate

Wealth Matters

As homeowners rethink their surroundings and rush to relocate, companies are offering creative ways to help ease a fraught process.

Working from home during the pandemic prompted Dan Feder to consider moving his family to another Los Angeles neighborhood to be closer to his son's school.Credit...Rozette Rago for The New York TimesJuly 17, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ET

Dan Feder, a graphic designer, and his husband, Don Bacigalupi, a museum director, have lived in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles for two years. But they started looking to move closer to their teenage son's school when pandemic lockdowns showed they could avoid a commute across town by working from home.

Yet having moved from Chicago two years ago, they still felt that they had an outsider's view of Southern California real estate. They worried, too, about making a mistake in an uncertain economy.

"With so many unknown variables in the world, we wanted as much information as we could get before moving forward with such a large financial decision,“ Mr. Feder said. "As an outsider, it's difficult to gauge that.“

Buying a home under any circumstances can be stressful. But with some buyers looking to improve their lives during the pandemic and others trying