Landon Clements Is Taking up Some Very Charleston Hobbies While Social Distancing in California

Like many people around the world, Landon Clements has had to find creative solutions to continue to do her job amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In lieu of an in-person broker's open, Landon took to Instagram to do a virtual tour of one of her Malibu listings, along with the vice president of sales for her real estate firm Engel & Völkers Beverly Hills, Siv Merethe Cotton, last week.

"I just am happy that I can still connect with people in a virtual world," Landon told The Daily Dish from her office in Beverly Hills during a phone interview on March 24. "I might not be able to open the doors and welcome them to the property in person, but I still feel like [I'm] showing property in the best way I know how right now."

Unfortunately, Landon said she has even had to put these virtual tours on hold for now since she isn't able to be at listings the owner currently lives at due to social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines enacted in California, although she said she might do another virtual tour at a new construction property that has no residents in the future.

Even though Landon said it's "not at all" business as usual for her these days, she is trying to make the best of the situation through the use of technology. "Real estate is such a person-to-person business, and when you can’t be person-to-person, how do you function? So we are just relying on the digital age. I’ve been on, you know, FaceTimes and Zooms and all kinds of conference calls and trying to carry on that way," she said. "But there’s really no replacement for seeing a property in person. So we’re just hoping and praying that this thing is over soon."

Landon admitted that she didn't take the alarm over coronavirus as seriously at first. "To be honest, at first I was like, kind of blew it off, like this is just not a big deal. Everyone’s overreacting. I mean, being Southern, we’re not hypochondriacs. We’re like actually way far the other way. It’s always like, 'Everything’s fine, everything’s fine,'" Landon said. "But this is really serious now."

After California Governor Gavin Newsom issued "a stay at home order" on March 19, Landon said she has been doing just that. "Right now I have turned to gardening and cooking and just kind of getting back to a slower life," she shared. "Lucky for me, I love doing all of those things. I’ve just been trying to not totally freak out and just kind of [take it] one day at a time."

Landon said she is "taking this really seriously" now and is concerned for the well-being of her loved ones. "My grandmother, she’s 93. She’s in quarantine right now, and I think that’s who is really being affected by this is the elderly. So it’s sort of like you’re staying at home so my grandmother doesn’t get it," Landon said. "I’ve got a lot of girlfriends that are pregnant. One’s expecting to have a baby any day now. She’s of course freaking out and can’t really go to a hospital."

She added that "it affects every single aspect of your life." "The stock market is tanking, and I personally just saw my nest egg kind of disappear," Landon said. "Hopefully all of that’s gonna come back, but it’s definitely a nerve-racking time. And just trying to figure out, well, OK, if everything is shut for a month, how can we look on the bright side? I’m so lucky with Southern Charm and the visibility it’s let me have on social media."

Prior to this, Landon's new life on the West Coast since leaving Charleston after Season 4 of Southern Charm had been going "great." "I had so much fun [during] my time on the show, but then I just kind of wanted to sort of spread my wings a little bit and get back to what I knew and loved, and that’s always been real estate," Landon said. "I just felt Charleston’s a really small town, and I just needed to be somewhere a little bit bigger. I wanted to start dating again and have my private life and just kind of take a step back from all of that."

So Landon packed up her life in Charleston and moved to Malibu in 2017. "I rented a little place out at the beach and got my real estate license reenacted. I actually had to go back and take a couple classes and get all of that going," she recalled. "I ended up working for another developer out here, but then in roundabout ways, found Engel & Völkers and met Siv, and that’s been about a year now. I just feel like I’m really at the right place and really starting to make stuff happen."

In addition to real estate, Landon has also been keeping busy with interior design projects, including one at her former residence with rug designer Ben Soleimani, which she hopes to continue to do more of in the future. She and her colleague, Siv, who also knows what it's like to be on reality TV as a star of the Swedish series Svenska Hollywoodfruar about a group of glamorous Swedish women living in Hollywood, also have plans to team up to feature more multimillion dollar listings on social media and YouTube in the future.

In fact, Landon wouldn't mind returning to TV in a way where she can showcase her real estate and interior design expertise. "I definitely would like to do like a Flip This House-type thing. A lot of the time when I’m doing some of this construction stuff, I am there in overalls and sometimes taking down a wall or with the contractors on-site," she said. "It gets messy sometimes, but I love that hands-on approach to things, and I think people would like to see that side of me and see me working."

Even though she is making her California dreams come true, you can still find Landon in Charleston "quite a bit" these days. "I still spend a lot of time in Charleston. I was just back a couple weeks ago and was there for about 10 days. That’ll always be my real home, but I do love my life in California," she shared. "As soon as this whole thing is over and we can fly again, I will be on the next flight to get home and see my family. When stuff like this happens, it makes you homesick. When you can’t go home, all you want to do is go home."

Revisit Landon's time on Southern Charm and more of our favorite Charlestonians' adventures in all six seasons of the series available to stream now through the Bravo app.

For the latest, most accurate information on coronavirus, go to the World Health Organization (WHO) website.