A Cactus Garden in Land Park

I met with a really sweet seller in Fair Oaks yesterday and, with any luck, we’ll be putting his home on the market next week. It has a to-die for backyard with a park-like view. It could be anything you wanted it to be in your imagination. A woodsy forest, like Sherwood Forest. A redwood retreat along the ocean just beyond the bluff. A plantation in the South, like Tara in the spring. I can’t wait to show you this home next week.

Until then, take a look at my cactus garden in Land Park. The spring blossoms are here. The pear cactus won’t have blooms until next month because the blooms are just beginning to form, but everything else in the garden is breaking out into song. Wait, I can hear Mary Poppins. Hope she doesn’t land in the cactus garden because the wind blew her the wrong way or she’ll have little spines and thorns up her skirt.

I also closed another home in Sacramento yesterday — that managed to drag on much longer than necessary. The mortgage brokers could not figure how to find the loss payable clause for the insurance policy, so they sent an email over and over to a person who hasn’t been in the office during our entire transaction! When I discovered this, they had already been sitting on their thumbs for several days. Some escrows close easily, and others you’ve got to kick and curse to get to the Recorder’s Office.

This particular escrow was a home in the pocket of homes just east of Broadway and south of 4th Street. It’s not Oak Park, and the homes are generally bigger and newer than those found in that part of Oak Park, but sometimes people confuse the two neighborhoods. This pocket of homes off Redding is so small that often there are no comps. The last comp in this area sold around $180,000. So when the seller asked me how much I thought he could get, I wet my finger, stuck it in the air and declared, maybe $200,000, maybe more.

We listed it at $200,000 and received several offers immediately. It sold at $211,000. Then the appraisal came in and, you guessed it, the appraisal was $200,000. Too low. We contested, no such luck. The buyer didn’t have the money to bridge the gap, as many buyers in this price range have limited funds. The seller could have canceled the transaction and sold to another buyer, possibly for all cash so it would not require an appraisal, but the seller was happy enough with the $200,000 price. Not to mention, he has a soft place in his heart for first-time home buyers. He was a first-time home buyer once himself.

It closed at $200,000, and a new family is very excited. It’s very hard to find a nice home in the $200,000 price range that is close to downtown and in an established neighborhood where the neighbors all know each other. Another happy ending for this Sacramento real estate agent and all involved.

Hope you like the cactus flowers! Welcome to Spring in Land Park.