Questions a Sacramento Listing Agent Must Answer With Diplomacy

There are undoubtedly questions a Sacramento listing agent must answer.

When my husband is home, he hears the questions a Sacramento listing agent must answer on a daily basis via my speaker phone, and half the time he just shakes his head. He cannot believe the stuff I deal with, and it’s probably one of the reasons (among many, if you ask him) why he would never in a million years want to join me in Sacramento real estate. He is a fairly sane person, so that sort of counts him out right there. He is also much snarkier than I am. He would probably tell people exactly what is wrong with them, and he’d never sell anything at all. Whereas, I have more patience and diplomacy.

After working in real estate for more than four decades already, you know I have patience, even if I don’t want to admit it. I’ll work with just about anybody who needs the services of a Sacramento listing agent, even the crazy people, the nut jobs, the looney tunes. But I do draw the line at angry people who have no respect for my knowledge and skills. I would also never want to make a person feel bad for asking me a question, regardless of what it is. There are no dumb questions. But there are questions a Sacramento listing agent must answer with diplomacy.

I’ve answered quite a few unusual questions over the past couple of weeks. They range from the obvious to the: gee, I never thought of that. Here are a few:

Can we reduce the number of showings we get by removing instructions to call first, lockbox? Sure, just as long as you realize if there are enough other homes to show, yours might not get shown. Is that OK with you? Agents will find the alternative is harder to show, and you really want to make it easy for agents to show.

We don’t want our neighbors to know we are selling, can you remove the front photo of our house from MLS? Yes, but buyers might wonder why there is no photo and it’s already been downloaded to a million other websites. Plus, your neighbors will see agents pulling up with buyers in their cars, and that might give away your secret.

Will you get rid of the cat in our yard? Cat? What cat? Whose cat is it? Is it your cat? If it’s your cat, then you need to find a place for the cat go. If it’s not your cat, it will eventually leave on its own. Remember, you can always turn on the sprinklers.

Can we not accept a full-price offer unless we get more than one offer? Absolutely but we might want to stipulate we will look at all offers a month from now. Then you will know for certain how much interest we’ve generated. Maybe none, in your case. Sometimes, we get one offer and that’s all we will ever get.

Will buyers be OK with boxes scattered everywhere because they know we are moving? Buyers have a hard time figuring out which room is the dining room unless they can see a table and chairs. Do you want buyers to think your house is a storage unit?

Should we turn off the AC when we are gone for the weekend and it’s 101? You could, but a buyer might poke in her head and leave because it’s too hot. Or, you could leave the temperature set at 78 and encourage buyers to hang around. This is really your call. Is it worth an extra $50 to SMUD to sell your home?

Can you hold an open house all day long? We cannot, but we can do two or three 2-hour shifts. Please know that an all-day-long open house doesn’t create urgency. Besides, the internet, when you think about this exposure, is a day-long-open-house 7 days a week!

The thing is I never know what questions a Sacramento listing agent must answer because clients never run out of questions. I try not to judge anybody, even if maybe I should. Because nobody wants to be judged or criticized. There is no such thing as constructive criticism anyway. There is no way to tell somebody you’re about to say a hurtful thing but hey, it’s for their own good. When my clients ask a serious question, I just do my best to respond in an informative and caring manner.

See, real estate is not for everybody.