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Elizabeth Weintraub
Review of the Door Dash Mobile App for Sacramento Meal Delivery
For our needs, Door Dash seems to meet delivery options for Land Park.
When I first heard about mobile apps for Sacramento meal delivery, I was completely intrigued. This was even better than coming home, plopping down on the sofa and asking my husband: “What’s for dinner?” Because I have to be NICE to him. I don’t have to be nice to a meal delivery app. Nope, just bring up that cell, pick a restaurant, enter your options and pay. It remembers your orders. They also tell you how long it will take for delivery. As long as you back-track your hungry stomach an hour, you’re in business. My husband seemed to resist the idea at first, but now he’s on board. I notice he no longer gets into his car and makes runs to pick up Thai or sushi. Now, it’s all delivered to the house.
He has been assimilated. We have people who come to clean the house. People who show up to wash my car in the driveway, others who mow our lawn and trim our bushes. What I want to know is where are the people who will brush out your hair at night and help you undress, like on Downton Abbey? Are we becoming a nation of people who can’t take care of ourselves?
I rarely even go to the liquor store anymore. Because I belong to several wine clubs and my favorite at the moment is Mt Hood Winery in Oregon. Mt Hood Winery makes it easy for me to email my shipping guy, Brad, and ask him to reship my last order. A case shows up in 3 days. No forms to fill out. He’s got all of my information. It’s fast and convenient.
Grub Hub is fast and convenient for my husband. But the problem with my husband’s choice of app for Sacramento meal delivery is that I don’t have Grub Hub on my cellphone. When he went out of town last week, I tried to download the Grub Hub app. It wasn’t working. OK, I turned off WiFi and tried it. Nope. OK, I turned off my VPN and hit download. Nothing but spinning circles. I attempted to download the app on different days at different times. Finally, I gave up. Well, I did notify the company about the issue.
That left me no option but to download Door Dash. It advertises it has more than 900 restaurants in Sacramento. How many are near me in Land Park? Turns out quite a selection: Sellands, Centro, Bento Box, Sushi Cafe, Old Spaghetti Factory, PF Changs. No matter what kind of food you want, the variety is available.
You can’t go wrong with Sellands except it offers too much a´la carte. If I chose the lemon chicken, then I would have to pick out my own accompaniments as separate orders. If I do that, it’s too much food. Further, Sellands makes me have to think about my food choices. I don’t want to think about it. I want a veggie side with a small salad and a type of protein. Now, if I were into carbs, I might like a carb / veggie option, maybe with dessert. They need to make it easier to choose a meal. I’d pay $50 not to think about it.
Plus, according to Door Dash, it looks like it comes all the way from East Sacramento instead of right up the street in Land Park.
Regardless of whether it’s Grub Hub or Door Dash that delivers, until we got a regular delivery guy, they seem to have a problem finding my home. I find it is important to keep my cell turned on. We live on a one-block street in Land Park that nobody knows where it is. My delivery on Sunday was right on time. The only problem was the restaurant did not tell me it was out of uni and had no scallops. But it did send me fried shrimp heads without charge. Hello? Do you think everybody wants to eat fried shrimp heads?
What were they thinking? Oh, we have no scallops so let’s send the next best thing. Fried shrimp heads. I hate to say this to them, but fried shrimp heads is not a common nor acceptable substitution. Also, they stuck in some sort of raw shellfish at no charge as well, which I did not recognize. It ate it anyway.
Then I was sick all day on Monday.
But don’t let that stop you from picking an app for Sacramento meal delivery. Just find out which restaurants are close to your home before choosing an app. The Door Dash mobile app for Sacramento meal delivery was very easy to use. It also sends updates and will tell you the following: 1) when the order has been received, 2) when it’s been processed and 3) when it left the restaurant on the way to your house. If you are really bored, you can bring up the map app on your phone and watch the vehicle navigate to your house. But seriously only a sick person would find that fascinating. Sorry, sweetie.
The Most Important Real Estate Tip This Realtor Learned From Marge Reid
This home on Vallejo Way took almost a year to sell at its highest price ever.
When I read that Marge Reid had died on October 7th, the news snapped my breath away. I was lounging about Sunday morning reading the Business section of the Sacramento Bee when I spotted an ad. It was right next to the ads for homes for sale and other agents advertising services. The ad was a reduced version of the death notice for Marge Reid that had appeared in the paper in the local section a few weeks earlier. Although it’s odd to see something like this in the Business section, that was a good place to put it because many of us who knew Marge Reid do not read death notices on a daily basis. It was also a nice way to let clients know her daughter and son-in-law are carrying on the family business.
Marge Reid had worked at Lyon Real Estate for 43 years before branching out on her own 5 years ago. How do you like those apples? An 85-year-old woman started her own family business. You’re never too old to start a new business. I had been talking to a prospective seller yesterday morning, and we were discussing at what age a person seems old. She suggested that age is when that person is at least 20 years older than you. Anything younger than that is not old. But that doesn’t apply to Marge Reid. She never seemed “old” to me. Experienced, yes, but old, no.
I might be going out on a limb here but I’m going to say it anyway. I believe that Marge Reid never met a listing she didn’t like. That was the impression she left me with. Some agents develop a superior attitude and won’t work on an overpriced listing. I once asked Marge about the price of a listing because it seemed too high. Marge’s attitude was walk down the hill and get them all. She didn’t judge people or refuse to take a listing that I knew about. There was nothing condescending about her. Marge was a legendary success in Sacramento real estate.
As such, I adopted the same principle. I rarely reject a listing, unless I don’t like the seller. But never over the sales price. One of my very early listings in Sacramento was a home on Vallejo Way. The seller had always been loyal to a different Land Park real estate brokerage but that broker refused to take his listing. The broker told him his asking price was unrealistic. So, he turned to Lyon Real Estate and to me. I wondered what Marge Reid would do. Well, Marge Reid would take the listing. I asked a coworker in my office and he said I should become the Queen of Vallejo. The price was $100,000 too high but I attempted to get it for the seller.
I was the Queen of Vallejo that summer. An open house every Sunday. After a couple of months, the seller agreed to drop the price.
By the time we got to the second price reduction, it seemed like a good idea to remove the listing from the market and put it back with a new MLS number. At that point, this home in Land Park sold with multiple offers at $10,000 over list price. After a Sunday open house, I had one agent in the kitchen writing an offer and another in the dining room writing an offer. While this seller did not get the $675,000 he had hoped to obtain, he did pocket $585,000. I had erased any doubt left lingering in his mind that his price was obtainable. I never did not want to work with him. He had a good sense of humor and I liked him.
Not only that, but a while after all of this happened, the Vallejo seller introduced me to the seller of a two-story Spanish home next door. She had tried unsuccessfully to sell through several other Realtors. She, too, had harbored unrealistic expectations. But I listed that home and I sold it. Now I can tell people I have sold the entire block, adding there are only two homes on that block.
When I mentioned to my team member, Barbara Dow, who is reaching a milestone herself this winter, that Marge Reid died at 90, Barbara said the smartest thing. She said that means she has another 20 years before retiring. We all tend to turn to our own mortality in times like this. Marge Reid taught me the lesson to accept all listings. Eventually a home will sell. Apply patience. Do your job. There are agents who disagree with this philosophy, but I am not one of them.
Rest in peace, Marge. You will be missed by many in Sacramento.
How to Stay One Step Ahead of the Sacramento Real Estate Scams
Nobody is really safe from Sacramento real estate scams.
In 1980, I won a trip to Jamaica and thought it was a scam. I called HBO and asked if they knew some scam artist was sending out letters on its letterhead telling victims they had won an all-expense-paid trip for two to Jamaica for a week. They promoted it as a collaborative effort between HBO and the Jamaica Tourist Board. And even though it was the early days of HBO when anything goes, I was still suspicious. Perhaps it’s my Midwestern upbringing or living on the streets as a child. In any case, HBO assured me that I had indeed won a trip to Jamaica. Hurricane Allen had devastated Jamaica the year before, and this PR event was supposedly a way to reinvigorate interest.
Which wasn’t entirely without its scam-factor as it had turned out. At the end of the year, I received a 1099 for $10,000. This was only 7 days, and it wasn’t luxury. In fact, I had to endure a midnight ride over tiny bridges suspended by ropes in a Jamaican taxi driven by a guy drinking Red Stripe and smoking Ganga. It terrified me to look down at the gorges. My white-knuckled taxi ride happened because the plane out of Kingston to Ocho Rios had been sitting on the tarmac filled with passengers for four hours by the time I climbed aboard.
Hey, was I not a guest of the Jamaica Tourist Board and HBO? I am not sitting on the tarmac in a plane without air conditioning. That $10,000 income proposal was an insult. Because it didn’t cost $10,000. I had been to Jamaica many times before. My own mother was asking me why I didn’t fly to Europe instead. Sure, I’d fork out $3,000 if I could deduct $10,000 off my corporate taxes. I tallied the cost of the hotels. Checked out the airfare and submitted a request to HBO to issue a revised 1099 for about 1/3rd of that cost. I guess they wanted to shut me up because they revised the 1099.
But you can see how my initial instincts were fairly correct. No free lunch.
Other people often cannot tell when a scam is about to happen. Maybe they’re not expecting it. One of my sellers texted to say people were knocking on their door, inquiring about renting his house. He thought the buyer was prematurely advertising the place for rent. I had to explain the hard, cold facts about the rental internet scams. The crooks swipe my professional listing photos, whip up an ad for a place to rent an unbelievable price, demand immediate wired funds, and then they just sit back and collect free money.
When my husband and I closed our own escrow last summer, I didn’t even bother to consider wiring funds. Too many scams involving wired funds. The crooks hack your email and send bogus wiring instructions. Once the funds are in their account, it’s over. You lose. Nope, I went to the bank and obtained a cashier’s check.
People fall for all sorts of scams. The callers start out with “I’m with the fire department” or “I work with veterans” or they use scare tactics like “your bank account has been hacked” or “we’re shutting off your electricity.” Stuff is so weird nowadays involving the White House that it’s hard to tell what is real and what is not. You say to yourself, it is not possible that a guy who is in the pocket of fossil fuel giants and believes climate change is a hoax is running the EPA. Or, that a person against educating our children is our Secretary of Education and would like to teach Bible classes in schools. Or, that our Attorney General plans to return the country to a pre-Civil Rights era.
It’s no wonder people get scammed by the crooks.
Crazy scary crap happens every day in our real world.
You see the absolute worst options in power and you say, no, you do not live in the Philippines. This is not North Korea. This is the United States of America and this is not happening. But it is.
It is not normal.
I used to talk to people and be polite when I received a telemarketing call. Not anymore. In fact, I almost hung up on an agent the other day who was referring a client to me because his voice was overly energetic. Hang up and block the call is my method. I’d rather lose a potential listing than fall victim to a scam, I guess. The bottom line, though, is if it seems too good to be true, then it is. Unless of course, I’m telling you we’ll get multiple offers and sell over list price, because that part, actually, is often true in Sacramento. Don’t worry about offending an agent if you ask her to prove it.
Can Hardwood Flooring Increase the Value of a Home in Sacramento?
This home features brilliant walnut flooring in Lincoln, CA.
It’s difficult for those not in real estate to find precise numbers to answer can hardwood flooring increase the value of a home in Sacramento. That’s partly because when home owners install hardwood flooring, they are also making other types of improvements. It’s rare to find just a hardwood flooring installation to compare a rate of return when selling. However, I can tell you in my experiences, sellers always tend to get their money back and then some. My sellers earn a range of one to 6 times rate of return.
This might not hold true in other parts of the country. But I don’t work in other parts of the country. I sell real estate in Sacramento. Here, not only can hardwood flooring increase the value of a home in Sacramento, but that home is almost guaranteed to sell for much less without it.
How much can hardwood flooring increase the value of a home? It’s subjective and based on neighborhoods, coupled with style of home. But an experienced Sacramento Realtor is a walking fountain of information.
The value of this home in Elk Grove increased $62,000 after installing engineered wood.
Case in point, a seller contacted me last fall about selling her home in Elk Grove. I don’t always launch into remodeling ideas when I take a listing unless the seller requests it. This seller asked if she could make improvements to increase the value of her home. It had been a rental for a long time, and it looked like it.
The floors featured carpeting from the year 2000. Sort of aqua. How do you tell a seller her choice in carpet color is atrocious? Well, you don’t use the word atrocious, for starters. You make her feel OK about the choice when she made it because then was not now. In fact, I suggested she leave it in the upper bedrooms. But changing the flooring options in her entertainment areas on the first floor definitely altered the overall appearance of the home by installing hardwood and removing the aqua carpeting.
Suddenly, it was now inviting, warm, contemporary and desirable. The seller also hired a painter to change the color of her oak cabinets and railings to espresso. I further suggested hanging pendant lights over her kitchen island. Those few improvements bumped this seller’s market value in the spring of 2017 from $425,000 to $475,000. And it sold with multiple offers at $487,000 after 6 days on the market.
Hardwood floors discovered under the carpeting in this 1956 South Land Park home.
Another sale from this year, a beautiful South Land Park home built in 1956 in its original condition. No updates. The home had carpeting throughout. In its present condition, I estimated the value of the home at about $495K. Fortunately, the sellers asked whether they should paint, and that opened a huge discussion about things to do increase value.
I suggested pulling up the carpeting. These were older people about my age selling a home that had belonged to their family for decades. They glanced briefly at each other when I noticed a grin slowly cross their faces. Yes, they could do it. I explained how to remove carpeting because I’ve done my fair share of remodeling jobs. I also know what not to do such as plan your exit before you begin rolling up the carpeting. Otherwise, you could end up like someone I won’t name who had to shove her carpeting out the window.
You’re always taking a chance when you remove carpeting that part of the floor might be plywood or something else. I suggest starting in the corner of a closet or behind a door to check for wood first. Don’t commit to anything until you have removed the carpet. But in the overall scheme of things, a good floor installer can match the hardwood, as I’ve also learned the hard way. An overwatered plant drained into a wool rug over my hardwood floor in Land Park. You can’t tell today where the wood planks were inserted.
In this instance, the floors were perfectly pristine. We pulled a few corners in the closets to check and yes, the entire house, except for the kitchen and baths, had hardwood floors under that old carpeting.
I bumped up my estimate of value after they painted and threw away the carpeting. They did not refinish the floors because the floors didn’t need it. Just painting and disposing of the carpeting, coupled with my, ahem, marvelous marketing efforts, commanded a price of $545K. The home sold at $552,500 after 3 days on the market with multiple offers.
Matching existing hardwood flooring in other rooms increases value.
This home in Curtis Park sold four years ago for a bit under $600K. This year the sellers contacted me to list and sell the home. I recalled when this home sold previously. In fact, I was very surprised that it sold at the price that it did. To pull the amount of money these sellers needed out of the house would take creativity.
I suggested they match the existing hardwood flooring. The living room and dining room featured hardwood floors but the two bedrooms and hallway were carpeted. That seemed odd and out of place to me. It broke the continuity and overall flow. It wasn’t that expensive to install new hardwood, around $5,000 if I recall correctly.
The installer matched it perfectly. You could not tell which part of the house had original flooring and which was brand new, that’s how good it can look. When I first pulled the comparable sales for this home, the reflected value was $630K. There was no way the sellers would agree to sell this home at $630K. Not after 4 years of ownership.
With home staging and the new hardwood floors, this home sold at a list price of $689K. However, the appraisal came in low at $634K. The buyers canceled. Those first set of buyers refused to pay the difference. But I don’t give up. I don’t like to sell a home twice and get paid once, but I will do it. Shortly thereafter, I found a new set of buyers who agreed to pay all cash at $682,500. We adjusted the price to $682,500 and closed escrow without an appraisal.
The difference between my original estimate and the final sales price after installing hardwood flooring amounted to $52,500. Would you spend $7,000 to make $52,500? I surely would.
I hope these three examples from 2017 sales this year have answered can hardwood floors increase the value of a home in Sacramento. Need more stats? I’ve got ’em. If you are thinking about selling a home in Sacramento, why not call top producer Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759? Put 43 years of experience to work for you.
And please, I know this doesn’t apply to most people, but please don’t tap a top producer to snag expert home improvement advice and then instead hire some cheap-ass agent. That’s not nice. It is also penny-wise and pound-foolish, as my mother from Minnesota would say if she were still alive.
Tips for Relocating to Sacramento and Buying a Home
Relocating to Sacramento is hard enough without worrying about your Realtor.
If you’re thinking about relocating to Sacramento, you’ve definitely come to the right place. As a new buyer to the area, you owe it to yourself to find exclusive representation through a knowledgable agent. It’s a little bit harder than you would think to do it on your own. Further, there is no need to subject yourself to that kind of misery when you can align yourself with an expert for free. The problem is everybody and his uncle claims to be an expert in real estate. So, how can you tell if you’re talking with an agent who will make relocating to Sacramento easy and fun for you?
For starters, listen to your gut instincts. If something makes you feel uneasy or uncomfortable, that could be a red flag. If you ask questions and receive no satisfactory answers, that’s also a red flag. Bottom line, you’re probably not buying a home in Sacramento unless you accept representation by an agent. Since you deserve the best (and I believe you do) then you should read on to find out what you can expect.
I talk with a lot of buyers in the beginning stages of relocating to Sacramento. Generally it’s because they call on a specific home and my name pops up. My name pops up even though I might not be the listing agent. I enjoy extensive exposure online, pretty much unparalleled as compared to your average Sacramento Realtor. One fellow called and insisted on buying a home in a “safe” neighborhood. Even after I explained that agents cannot violate Fair Housing laws nor steer buyers. On top of which a safe neighborhood is a subjective term, he tried to rephrase it another way as in: “would you live in that neighborhood.”
Jokingly, I told him not to ask a Realtor that question because agents will tell him every neighborhood is a good place to live. Because it is for somebody. And you’ll find some suburban people afraid to go Downtown Sacramento because they will run into homeless people. Yet Downtown and Midtown Sacramento are both super hot neighborhoods where people move into and don’t leave. Highly desirable, even with a rather visible homeless population. I referred him to the sacpd.org website where he can poke around on crime maps to his heart’s delight.
Another relocation buyer today called about buying a home in Elk Grove. Her husband just got transferred here. I list a lot of homes in that neighborhood, so I know the builder’s reputation and the individual models. She had been working with an agent on the coast south of San Francisco and thought she should ask if that agent will work in Elk Grove. I told her that’s highly unlikely an agent would drive for three hours to work in a neighborhood she doesn’t know, through a Board she doesn’t belong to, because we would not compromise our integrity in that fashion.
Little-known fact, if the Bay Area agent does not pay dues as a member of our MLS she has no commission protection. Further, the buyer deserves local representation. But she gets kudos for talking to her previous agent about it. Definitely. We value loyalty as well.
The Elizabeth Weintraub Team works in a four-county area. We’re one of the few groups of buyer’s agents in Sacramento who possess intimate knowledge of many different areas. We are perfect to help those relocating to Sacramento. We can talk your head off about various neighborhoods, recite historic facts, accurately explain architectural styles, disclose unusual factors affecting the neighborhoods, and we are excellent negotiators.
To get a feel for us and what we can do for you, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. You can choose anybody, why not choose one of the time proven and trusted best? We are Sacramento’s relocation experts.
