For all the personal and financial damage the coronavirus pandemic has caused, it has also given new impetus to what had been a slow-moving trend toward healthier homes. And it’s easy to see why.

As we stay at home to avoid contamination, we tend to worry -- not just about the dangers outside, but about how safe we are inside our dwellings, and what we can do to protect ourselves.

“We feel threatened about our own personal safety, as well as that of our close family members,” says behavioral psychologist Mary Campbell, who also is the mayor of Hermosa Beach, California. “And the best thing we can do is figure out how to get a handle on it. When we are in such a state, all we want is a lifeline.”

Healthy and sustainable living have been a slowly growing shift in homebuilding and community design in recent years, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting in Irvine, California. Think community gardens, the farm-to-table movement, fitness on demand and so on.

Now, the Burns group believes the movement will lurch “into hyperspeed,” according to a recent press release, and the latest research from Green Builder Media seems to bear that out. In tracking web and social media content, the company’s research wing, Cognition Smart Data, found the number of discussions specific to health and wellness has skewed “exponentially” higher. At first, the discussions were negative, with concern about COVID-19. But now, people are talking about minimizing their risk and staying healthy.

“People are looking for ways to default to hope and optimism,” says Green Builder’s Sara Gutterman.

After the 2008 recession, energy conservation became top-of-mind and has remained there ever since, Gutterman points out. Now it’s health and welfare, and she expects the topic to remain a key focus going forward. “We didn’t go backward then, and we won’t go back this time, either,” she says.

The online discourse is taking many forms. People are talking about mental health, stress relief, telemedicine, smart technology, on-site energy production, food safety and resiliency. Searches for “calming quotes” have doubled; “stress quotes” searches have tripled.

But interest in indoor air quality has exploded. “IAQ is now as important as location to some homebuyers. Says Gutterman, “Indoor air quality has shifted quickly from ‘nice to have’ to a necessity. It’s the belle of the ball.”

Fortunately, IAQ is one thing homeowners and buyers can do something about, even if not easily or inexpensively. But if we’re serious about improving the quality of our indoor air, we can do so.

That’s a good thing, because we don’t take care of our houses nearly as well as we should, says Caroline Blazovsky, a healthy home expert. As CEO of My Healthy Home in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, she has investigated more than 30,000 houses nationwide for people with health issues. “Treat a home like a doctor treats a patient,” she advises.

Some remedies are as simple as leaving your shoes outside when you enter your house, keeping the water heater at the correct temperature, opening windows for ventilation, changing HVAC filters regularly and leaving toilet lids down, especially when you flush.

There are numerous more expensive technology solutions available, too. Everything from whole-house dehumidifiers -- humidity has a big impact on health, according to one study -- to touchless faucets, and from HVAC disinfectors to energy-recovery ventilation products. You can even buy automatic toilet seats.

But before you lay out any money, Blazovsky suggests having your house tested by a healthy home expert. “Test first, before you do anything,” she says.

At one home Blozavsky tested, for example, the owner wasn’t feeling well, but the cause was a mystery. Finally, she discovered that a person working inside the house was a horse owner, and was bringing horse proteins inside with her, triggering symptoms in the homeowner.

That’s just one way your indoor air quality can be impacted. We can bring all kinds of particles indoors with us: gasoline, dander, animal proteins, volatile organic compounds, formaldehydes, flame retardants and pesticides, to name a few.

“Our bodies are filled with a plethora of problems,” says Blazovsky. “Radon, mold, formaldehyde and high VOCs are just some that may not only be potential carcinogens, but also cause inflammation in the body.”

If you are building a new house, you should be careful about what products are going into your place. Unless your building company calls itself a healthy homebuilder -- and can prove it -- you’ll have to do your own research. Blazovsky’s advice: “Think about health and wellness holistically, and build as naturally as possible.”

“This is where the industry is going,” she says. “Sometimes buyers have more knowledge than their builders.”

Talk to green-building consultants, builders and architects, and start asking questions. Also, check out groups such as the Healthy Building Network and the Energy and Environmental Building Alliance, and look online for residential environmental consultants.

Title companies are pulling out all the stops to get deals closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. But they say the best way to close -- not just during the outbreak, but moving forward -- is electronically.

Specifically, title firms are backing what they call remote online notarization -- RON, for short.

Typically, closing documents are papers that must be signed in front of a notary public. Notaries ensure the signatures on documents are authentic, and that the signer knows what he or she is signing and does so voluntarily -- thus helping prevent fraud and forgeries.

Around the turn of the century, federal and state laws began authorizing the use of electronic signatures. But the states were slow to implement and approve the technology. It wasn’t until 2011 that Virginia became the first state to OK remote electronic notarization.

Two years ago, the National Association of Secretaries of State, a group of officials from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, gave the movement a needed push by adopting nationwide standards for online notarization.

Meanwhile, at the federal level, a bipartisan federal bill to enact a consistent RON standard has been introduced, but has yet to gain any traction, according to Kobie Pruitt of the Mortgage Bankers Association. And that has implications of its own.

“The absence of a single federal law, along with state efforts to create emergency orders to permit loan closings, has created a mismatch of rules across the country for the use of remote online notarization,” says the MBA’s Rick Hill. This leaves befuddled investors like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to figure out what’s permissible on their own.

To date, according to NASS, 38 states have authorized some form of e-notarization, which they call REN, or remote e-notarization. But only 23 promote the practice, and perhaps half of those are still writing their rules and regulations.

Because of the coronavirus, though, several states have issued emergency orders temporarily permitting remote notarization. But until other states move forward, some title companies are doing all they can to make the closing as safe and easy as possible during the pandemic.

And make no mistake, title companies are busy -- though mostly with refinancings. “Business has been off the charts,” says Patrick Stone of WFG National Title. In the last 30 days, though, settlements with homebuyers have “dropped off significantly,” Stone says.

When there is an in-person closing, Stone says that WFG title agents are “making every effort to minimize personal contact.” Others are doing the same.

Those efforts include cleaning and sanitizing closing rooms, wearing gloves and masks, providing hand sanitizer, using only brand-new pens at each closing, and even putting up Plexiglas walls with holes at the bottom so papers can be pushed back and forth. They are also pursuing what Stone calls AVON, or audio-visual online notarization. But Stone would prefer to go full-bore with RON.

So would Allan Pollack of OpenClose, a loan-origination software company. “RON was never more important than today,” he says. “The old way of doing business has changed.”

Fidelity National Financial, the country’s largest title insurance company, is launching what it calls a “comprehensive digital closing experience” with a platform that brings buyers and sellers into the process prior to the actual closing. It uses digital signature technology that allows for certain documents to be signed in advance, in areas where RON is permitted.

Some closing outfits have become even more creative. Some are going to people’s residences to get the job done; others are performing curbside closings similar to the curbside pickups being offered by restaurants.

Cook & James is doing both. Prior to the crisis, the Georgia law firm was doing “at home” closings. “It doesn’t matter if it is at home, at your office or even at your favorite happy hour spot,” reads the firm’s website. “As long as we have access to a power outlet and a cell signal, we’re good to go.”

Now, it’s doing curbside settlements. Drive up to one of the firm’s two Atlanta-area offices and a masked and gloved attorney will bring the documents and a fresh pen to your car window. Clients wait in their cars while the masked agent goes back and forth from office to vehicle.

Another Georgia company uses two traffic lanes: one for buyers, the other for sellers. Others are closing deals while keeping a safe distance from clients on porches, patios and driveways.

NewDay USA, a major lender to veterans and servicemembers, now allows some documents to be signed electronically at home on the borrower’s computer. But the five most important documents are delivered to the front door by a notary. As long as you can be seen signing them, they are verified and notarized from a safe distance.

Notarize, a platform for digital notarizations -- which saw its business jump four-fold in March and has $23 billion in real estate transactions ordered for April, according to one report -- is trying to hire 1,000 notaries in Florida, Nevada, Texas and Virginia.

And in Chicago, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is using “Zero Touch” video signing to close sales through its affiliated title company.

New and existing houses aren’t selling like they were prior to the pandemic. But people are still selling and buying houses.

In January and February, the market was heading toward its best year in ages. New construction was selling at about 14% over the first two months of 2019, and existing places were changing hands at a rate not seen since early 2007. But then the business all but shut down, even though real estate is considered an essential economic activity in most places.

According to the latest information from the National Association of Home Builders, most builders say COVID-19 has curtailed traffic at model homes -- often dramatically. Builders have already experienced a 20% drop in sales compared to last year, according to the RCLCO advisory firm, and they are bracing for a 50% drop by summer.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors reports that 9 in 10 of its members have seen a decline in buyer interest in resale houses. Half of those Realtors have seen drops of 50% or more. Most buyers are delaying their purchases for a few months, but some are out of the market indefinitely. (The figures cited here are national; your market may be markedly different.)

Nevertheless, some buyers and sellers are soldiering on.

“Deals are still happening. There’s been a lot of really good activity,” reports Coldwell Banker agent Jill Eber in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

Aaron Kirman, a Compass agent in Beverly Hills, California, says he’s currently working on eight or nine deals. Fellow Beverly Hills agent Joyce Rey, with Coldwell Banker, has four deals under contract at the moment.

Pending home sales in Sarasota County, Florida, were up 69% in the first two weeks of April compared to the first two weeks of March. That’s especially promising, because in that market, the first half of the month is often weaker than the last, reports agent Robert Goldman of Michael Saunders & Co. in Venice, Florida.

Still, there is no denying that sales have cratered overall. But if you are a serious buyer or seller, now may be as good a time as any to go for it.

Some tips for sellers:

-- People who are looking right now are serious buyers. They’re not tire-kickers who visit open houses on the weekends for fun.

-- With so many sellers taking their houses off the market, you have less competition right now than at any time in the past year.

-- You stand a better change of getting your asking price, or something close to it, now than sometime down the road. No one knows what the future holds, but if the pandemic lasts too many more months, experts expect prices to tumble.

-- You may not need to show your house in person. NAR says 25% of its members worked with at least one buyer in mid-April who made an offer on a place they never physically visited. “If a buyer wants to buy,” says Kirman, “I think you have a greater chance of getting a better deal today than in three months. I’d rather be ahead of the curve.”

Tips for buyers:

-- Honest-to-goodness sellers may be anxious, so make your best offer and see what happens. “If you identify a property you really love, go for it,” advises Eber. “Make an offer. I don’t have a crystal ball, but if you wait, there won’t be enough properties to satisfy the pent-up demand.”

-- There are fewer buyers in the market, so you, too, have less competition. That means you might be able to be a tad more discerning, advises Jay Parker of Douglas Elliman Real Estate in South Florida.

-- There are going to be hurdles along the way. Some lenders, though not all, are exercising caution: raising their minimum credit score and down payment requirements.

-- Seeing houses in person could be problematic. “Virtual tours are important,” says Tim Sullivan of Meyers Research, a new home market advisory firm. “But they don’t take the place of an in-person visit.”

Be that as it may, many realty agents already had programs such a virtual tours in place prior to the pandemic, and those who didn’t are adding them as quickly as they can. Ditto for appraisers, title companies, closing agents and the like.

-- Mortgage rates have dipped to their lowest level in decades. As of this writing, the Mortgage Bankers Association pegged the 30-year, fixed-rate loan at 3.45%. But Freddie Mac says it slipped to 3.31% in mid-April. “It’s practically free money,” says loan broker Grant Stern of Morningside Mortgage in Miami.

However, actually securing financing at a decent price may be a formidable challenge. Many lenders are taking and processing applications electronically, but risk-sharing overlay fees on top of loan rates have tripled since the beginning of last year, reports Karan Kaul of the Urban Institute. That adds to the cost of the loan.

At the same time, if you don’t feel comfortable dabbling while most people are staying home and social-distancing, there’s nothing wrong at all with playing a waiting game. Realize, though, that the housing market is very likely to be much different a few months from now than it is today.