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Real estate has been deemed an essential service in California and the Bay Area, but the process of buying and selling a home has changed dramatically under shelter-in-place orders and continues to change as those orders are revised.

Open houses have been banned since the the first order, replaced largely by virtual tours and, more recently, virtual open houses. In-person showings are allowed only if virtual ones are not feasible, and even then must follow strict physical distancing and disinfecting protocols that go far beyond disposable shoe covers.

In the past, buyers were usually given disclosures about a property after they’d seen it. Now they’re being asked to read the disclosures, and be serious about making an offer, before they’re let in to see a house, said Linnette Edwards, founder of Abio Properties in the East Bay.

Added to the usual thick stack of disclosures buyers and sellers may get are at least four new ones related to COVID-19.

Instead of having an appraiser enter a home, banks in some cases are allowing automated, drive-by, or FaceTime appraisals.

And instead of going to a title office to sign closing documents, buyers and sellers are signing electronically. For papers that need to be notarized, a notary comes to their house in mask and gloves, with hand sanitizer and fresh pens. “We did a sign-off on the hood of a car,” said Kevin Barrett, sales manager with Chicago Title in San Jose.

Real estate was not on the list of essential services when six Bay Area counties issued their first shelter orders in mid-March, but was added when the orders were updated March 31. Although the orders are very similar, the rules for real estate vary somewhat by county and how they are interpreted by county counsels, local Realtors associations and brokerage firms.

Technically, people were not even supposed to change residences unless it was impossible to defer a planned move or for a limited number of other reasons, said Gina Zari, government affairs director with the San Mateo County Association of Realtors. “Some agents are adhering strictly to the rules. Some aren’t. It’s a huge problem,” Zari said.

In-person showings are allowed only when virtual ones are not feasible, and then only if they follow strict rules. There can be no more than one agent and two people from the same household in the house at the same time, visitors must wear masks, use hand sanitizer and stay 6 feet apart. Surfaces and door handles must be disinfected between showings.

Most agents require visitors to sign a new declaration that basically says they don’t have coronavirus and acknowledge the risk of entering the home. All this takes time, making it harder to schedule appointments.

The March 31 orders limited in-person showings to homes where the occupants had moved out. Stagers couldn’t come into the home, construction was not allowed except for emergency repairs and landscaping was only allowed to prevent fire hazards.

Since then, the rules have been relaxed, a bit. Since May 4, agents can show occupied homes when a virtual showing is not feasible, but the occupant cannot be in the house at the time of the showing. The other rules for in-person showings still apply. People can now move for any reason and landscapers can return.

Most counties now allow stagers to come in as long as the home is unoccupied at the time, although the San Mateo Realtors association says staging is only permissible if it’s “essential to the sale of the home.”

Construction projects can resume if they follow health and safety protocols, but here too the rules for things like painting and remodeling vary somewhat by county.

From mid-March through April, many deals that were already in escrow closed, although it took longer and prices were sometimes negotiated downward. New business fell precipitously.

In San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, April sales of single-family homes fell 50% and 36%, respectively, compared to April of last year. Median prices, however, were up 2% and 5%, respectively, according to MLSListings, the counties’ multiple listing service.

Agents are using technology to a much greater degree, whether it’s showing homes via smartphone video or ordering an interactive, three-dimensional digital tour. Some agents hold “virtual open houses through Instagram, Facebook Live or Zoom,” Edwards said. “An agent sets a time and people can hop on and see the home and ask questions.”

Before March, Sparks Media Group, which provides real estate photography, videography and 3-D tours, got four or five orders a month for virtual tours. In mid-April, “we got 35 orders on three days,” owner Tom Sparks said. His business in the first half of this quarter is up 446% over the first half of the previous quarter.

Many agents say that in the past two to three weeks, business has picked up thanks to the relaxed rules and pent-up demand.

“A month ago it was pretty quiet. The market really shut down. The ability to show property was extremely limited,” said Blaine Morris, a Compass agent in Marin. “Now I’m incredibly busy. It has been night and day. All of the people who wanted to buy a house in the normal spring market, and all those who wanted to sell, are all out now.”

Amanda Lee and her fiance Tyler Ainsworth, who are 24 and 25 respectively, started looking to buy their first home in late February after their roommate moved out and they couldn’t afford their Oakland apartment alone. “We had been putting in offers in Martinez leading up to the coronavirus” but kept getting outbid, Lee said. On March 27, they put an offer on a three-bedroom, 1½-bathroom home and it was accepted. “There was only one other offer and the sellers were super flexible, they gave us almost $15,000 in credit, which you never would get if it wasn’t for the coronavirus.” They paid $684,000 and closed April 23.

Lee said, “It was scary putting all of our eggs into one basket, a house, at a time like this,” especially when they saw friends getting laid off and the stock market tanking. But she thinks a home will be a good hedge against inflation, which she expects to pick up.

Morris says there are “no more COVID discounts” on homes under $1.5 million. In central Marin, the market for homes under $1.1 million is “very, very hot.” The $1.1 million to $1.5 million range is “mixed” and while the luxury market is “not as busy.”

That’s partly because many first-time buyers are moving out of San Francisco, had a down payment in cash — not stock — and can still get government-backed mortgages, which go up to $765,700 in most Bay Area counties.

The market for jumbo loans over that limit has become very difficult because of various problems in the mortgage industry. “Some lenders have incredibly high rates and fees” on jumbos. “Others are competitive,” Edwards said.

Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpender

Welcome to another episode of the top-rated game show, “Who Can Really Afford to Rent in the Bay Area?” I’m your host, It Beats the Heck Out of Me.

In the last episode, we met Crystal Chandler, a single mother who was evicted from her apartment in Concord. It turned out fine because she moved to Arizona and bought a house.

In today’s episode, the audience will get to know Jenn Oakley, a homeless woman affectionately known as Tennessee Jenn on the street. She’s lived in Oakland for 14 years, moving here from — you guessed it — Tennessee.

Earlier this week, I met Oakley on 10th Street outside of the Lake Merritt Tuff Sheds. She had her face in the hood of her car. It was leaking oil.

Oakley’s in a construction-training program and has a full-time security job which pays her about $1,800 per month. She’s lived at the transitional housing site since February. She’s ready to move out, but she’s having trouble securing financial help. And she was having trouble getting a meeting with the site’s housing coordinator.

“I’m finding places, but I don’t know if I have the income,” Oakley, 41, said. “I’m scared to death I’m not gonna be able to pay my rent. I’m not saying, ‘Please pay my whole rent for a year.’ I just need a little help through school.”

Jenn Oakley, 41, walks with her dog Fattie outside the Lake Merritt Community Cabins, located at 9 10th St., in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, May 12, 2020. The unsheltered are housed in storage sheds at the site. According to reopening guidelines, counties can’t open unless they can house 15 percent of its unsheltered population. The county has around 8,000 folks who are unsheltered. The Lake Merritt site was scheduled to be shut down at the end of the month, but Oakland has canceled those plans. Oakley is having trouble getting help to find something on her own.

Oakley has a clear-eyed understanding of her situation. She’s crunched the numbers. In April, the average one-bedroom apartment in Oakland cost $2,460 per month, according to Rent Jungle, a real estate tracking website.

Listening to her made me think: If someone as dedicated as Oakley is finding it hard to get an affordable apartment, how will Oakland and Alameda County manage to find permanent, affordable housing for the hundreds of people being moved into hotels and trailers because of the coronavirus? And how will the people left on the street to struggle with addiction, mental disorders and lack of opportunity find their way to housing?

It beats the heck out of me.

We’ve got a lot of work to do. First, part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan for reopening parts of the state includes the criteria that counties will need to show they can temporarily house at least 15% of their homeless residents. Do the math: Alameda County has 8,000 people living on the street, which means 1,200 need to be moved indoors.

That’s on the to-do list of Kerry Abbott, director of the county’s Office of Homeless Care and Coordination.

“We always had a goal of getting to around that number of (hotel) rooms, so that’s the direction we’ve been headed in,” Abbott told me. “We currently have 522 under lease, and it’ll be back up to 530 when we have some room repairs done. Under consideration, we currently have over 700 that we are in some form of negotiation with.”

That’s 1,200 people who most likely won’t be able to find permanent housing without assistance. Housing navigation is even more complicated now because landlords haven’t been showing vacant units, according to Darin Lounds, executive director of Housing Consortium of the East Bay. The organization provides housing services and manages transitional sites, including the Lake Merritt sheds and Operation HomeBase, which opened last week in East Oakland.

“It was really just to limit exposure to COVID, not having people coming in and out of a unit to view it,” said Lounds, referring to landlords. “That’s meant that we’ve had kind of a backlog of folks.”

Folks like Oakley. Before the coronavirus, she was in the fourth week of a 10-week training program at Rising Sun Center for Opportunity. The organization provides job training to low-income adults who want careers in the construction industry. Oakley wants to be a heavy equipment operator and mechanic. A hard worker, she was April’s employee of the month at the security company.

After moving to the Bay Area, Oakley sold insurance. Her slide into homelessness began when her father died in 2009. He was her best friend, she told me.

“I just felt like I didn’t have anybody to prove anything to,” she said. “I went nuts, just lost it. I spent all the money he left me. And then I ended up on the streets of Oakland.”

She started using methamphetamine. She lost everything, she said.

“The whole thing about homelessness is it becomes a lifestyle, and you just live it,” she said. “When you’re doing drugs and having fun, then homelessness can be fun.”

In October, she had a stroke in a motel. When she woke up, she said, the right side of her body was paralyzed. After a two-month hospital stay, she began rebuilding her life.

I believe she’s ready to have a home again. She simply needs more help than most. And that’s OK, because everyone deserves the security that comes from having a stable home.

When I interviewed Oakley, she told me she hadn’t showered in four days. That’s because the mobile shower comes to the sheds once a week on Wednesday mornings, a day that Oakley’s shift starts at 7 a.m.

“The only thing saving me is that during COVID everybody has to wear masks and they can’t smell me,” she said, laughing.

The day after I inquired about Oakley’s housing prospects, she had a meeting with the site’s director. There’s a follow-up scheduled for next week, Oakley said. Does this mean she’s now a step closer to getting a place?

C’mon, folks, you know my name: It Beats the Heck Out of Me. Wear your mask, and please join us next time on “Who Can Really Afford to Rent in the Bay Area?”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr

WASHINGTON — Facing dire budget shortfalls because of the coronavirus pandemic, California and the Bay Area could get more than $50 billion from the federal government to help — if House Democrats have their way.

The House is scheduled to vote on its latest coronavirus relief bill Friday, and with Democrats in the majority, the measure is expected to pass. But a showdown is expected with the Republican-controlled Senate and President Trump, who say any further coronavirus relief should wait for a clearer picture of how previous measures have affected the economy.

And when the time comes to pass something, Republicans say they will resist giving money to states and localities if they do not use it directly for coronavirus needs. They are also insisting on liability protections for businesses, which Democrats oppose.

“Not acting is the most expensive course,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said as she introduced the bill Tuesday. “We are presenting a plan to do what is necessary to deal with the corona crisis and make sure we can get the country back to work and school safely.”

The bill includes $3 trillion in coronavirus relief, with nearly $1 trillion of that going to state and local governments.

That money is divvied up based on formulas factoring in need and population size, and would be released over two years. According to an estimate done by the Congressional Research Service, which was provided to The Chronicle by the House Appropriations Committee, California and the Bay Area would receive a large chunk of change.

The state would directly receive an estimated nearly $21.5 billion this year and $26 billion next year. Cities and counties in the state would directly receive a cumulative $30.5 billion this year and $15 billion next year.

Another windfall to California residents would be the repeal of the cap on state and local tax deductions on federal taxes. The bill would eliminate the cap for 2020 and 2021, repealing the $10,000 limit for joint filers that Republicans passed in their 2017 tax bill. The GOP has rejected the idea in the past. An analysis by California’s tax board in 2018 estimated that loss of the full deduction cost state taxpayers $12 billion.

San Francisco would get more than $1.2 billion in federal relief this year and $600 million next year under the Democrats’ bill. San Jose would get $428 million this year and $214 million next year, and Oakland would get $368 million this year and $184 million next year.

Smaller cities would not be left out. Walnut Creek, for example, would get a total of $24.5 million over the two years. San Rafael would get almost $30 million. And Burlingame would get $15 million.

The state is facing a budget deficit of $54 billion, the state Department of Finance projects, amid mounting demand for social services and plummeting tax revenue. San Francisco’s shortfall alone could near $2 billion.

Actual allocations could vary not only based on what Congress ultimately passes, but also changing circumstances. One of the variables is the local unemployment level, which could remain stubbornly high in the state.

Governors and local officials of both parties have called on Congress to allocate money for their hurting budgets. The combination of revenue decimated by stay-at-home orders and expenses related to the pandemic have put enormous pressure on state and local governments, most of which are required to balance their budgets.

While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has backtracked from rhetoric suggesting states could be allowed to go bankrupt, he and other Republicans have said they do not want any federal money being used to supplement states that have mismanaged their budgets. Republicans resisted money for state and local governments in an interim bill, but Congress’ first relief package included $150 billion for states and localities.

The Democrats say the need is now, and have labeled the legislation the “Heroes Act” to evoke the local workers and first responders whose jobs could be saved with the stimulus money.

“There are those who said, ‘Let’s just pause,’” Pelosi said. “Well, the families who are suffering know that hunger doesn’t take a pause, the rent doesn’t take a pause, bills don’t take a pause, the hardship of losing a job or tragically losing a loved one doesn’t take a pause.”

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan