A Preemptive Strategy for Sacramento Real Estate

There are days in this business when I wonder to myself how any first-time home buyer ever gets out of underwriting unscathed. Buying a home in Sacramento is not as easy as those who aren’t in the market for a home believe. It’s becoming more complicated all of the time. Juggling all those balls in the air.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t do mortgages, I am not in the mortgage business, and I don’t know much about the mortgage business because that is not my specialty. I’m also very wary of agents who try to do both jobs and generally end up failing at one or the other or both.

I know enough to realize one does not send to the lender a list of things wrong with the house, for example. We don’t send unsolicited inspection reports to the mortgage lender. We hope that our borrower has not run into any close encounters of the third kind: short sales or foreclosures in the past. We hope our borrower can verify income. We hope that our borrower did not decide yesterday to buy a new car and throw debt ratios to the wind. We hope for a lot of things that we can’t talk to the borrower about and simply hope that the buyer’s agent or lender will do that for us.

As a Sacramento listing agent, I don’t engage with borrowers. But when they can’t perform or escrows are delayed, I’m the woman with the big red bullseye on her forehead. That’s commonplace; it comes with the job.

Of course, one of the ways that listing agents can help to ensure a transaction will close is to talk with the mortgage lender upfront and voice concerns. But it still doesn’t guarantee that the borrower can get the loan. When I’m looking through a purchase contract, I’m on the hunt for red flags — things that could mess up the loan — and I try to get them removed prior to sending the contract to the mortgage lender. I try to imagine what can delay the escrow from closing and handle it.

I was a little astonished yesterday when the title company said a seller did not want to sign a grant deed prior to docs. The seller lives out of town. We need same-day turnaround to close on time. So, if I’m not getting it from one end of the transaction, it comes from the other. Doesn’t stop me from trying to employ a preemptive strategy for Sacramento real estate. That’s one of the secrets to my success. Figure out what could go wrong and try to prevent it from happening.

Call Elizabeth Weintraub, Broker #00697006, at 916.233.6759.