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Elizabeth Weintraub
What to Expect from the Sacramento Winter Home Selling Season
Downtown Sacramento is often a busy market in the winter home selling season.
Coming soon to Trulia is an article about what to expect from the Sacramento winter home selling season. Part of it will probably include comments from Yours Truly. To round out opposing or supporting views, other agents will undoubtedly chime in as well. I have very specific views, developed from decades in the real estate business. Most people, I’d venture to guess, never think outside of themselves, in particular, many agents share this guilt. If you ask a Sacramento Realtor whether a seller should sell in winter, just about every single agent will tell you YES. Why? Because when the home sells, they get paid.
I say for some sellers the Sacramento winter home selling season is not the best time to sell, and for others it most certainly is. Consider the two extremes: the remodeled house and the non-updated home. These are typically at opposite ends of the spectrum. One is a buyer’s dream home, featuring every bell and whistle imaginable, over which buyers drool. The other is your typical non-exciting home with oak cabinets, white tiled counters, carpeting, white appliances, gold-toned fixtures and faucets: the stuff buyers want to rip out and redo except they have no energy, no vision and no money.
Usually, during the Sacramento winter home selling season, inventory increases and demand decreases, and days on market go up. But homes still sell.
Depending on the situation, it might make more sense for the seller of the remodeled home to wait until spring to sell. That’s because there will be more buyers in the marketplace in the spring. More buyers increase odds of multiple offers and buyers fighting over the house, which results in higher prices. However, if that seller also needs to buy, prices are likely to be higher in the spring. But there will also be more options, so that trade-off might make it worth it regardless to wait. Who really cares if it costs a few dollars more to buy a home you really want versus having to settle for what’s available?
On the other hand, a seller of a somewhat unappealing property, a home without any upgrades, that seller might consider putting her home on the market during the Sacramento winter home selling season. That’s because there will be reduced competition, fewer homes for sale during the winter than in spring. Because in the spring, this type of home will be one of 50 or more. But in the winter, the numbers reduce, so it could rank in the top 5 homes. One in 50 means your home will fall off the radar as buyers tend to gravitate toward the updated homes. But one in 5 increases your odds of selling.
Interest rates? Still relatively low, under 4.375%. Economists expect a rise in interest rates at some point over the next few years, along with more stable prices. Whether this is a good time for selling a Sacramento home during the winter depends on your personal objectives and goals. Some sellers absolutely need to sell in the winter and some buyers absolutely need to buy in the winter. Unlike states where it snows, causing dormant markets, Sacramento is a year-round real estate business. To discuss further, call top Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
The Easiest Ways to Impress a Real Estate Client That Agents Overlook
One of the easiest ways to impress a real estate client is to answer the damn phone.
The easiest ways to impress a real estate client are so obvious yet so few Sacramento Realtors practice it. Or, at least that’s what my clients tell me. For starters, they always seem astounded over the fact I respond quickly to inquiries. Pretty much immediately, unless I’m on a plane somewhere, and even then, except for Hawaii, I still tend to still get WiFi. Which means I can answer my phone. For example, we had WiFi on the Capitol Corridor Amtrak train that runs between Sacramento and San Francisco when we went to the City last weekend to see the Afghan Whigs. I was able to chat with clients as we merrily chugged along the tracks. I also got great reception on the BART.
My car allows me to make phone calls by talking to it. I press a button on my steering wheel and direct it to make a phone call without my eyes ever leaving the road. Press another button on my steering wheel to answer a call. An agent told me the other day, I won’t say who, that she could not call anybody because she was driving. That’s one of my best times because my computer is not distracting me with email dings. I have two things to do, pay attention to the road and talk. I can do those two things at the same time.
I have said over and over that one of the easiest ways to impress a real estate client is to answer your phone when it rings. But I’ve seen agents look at their cellphone and say, oh, out-of-area, or No Caller ID, or I don’t know this person. And they ignore the call. What? It could be a seller who read a blog and wants to sell her home. It could be the fire department saying your house is on fire. It could be a hospital calling because your husband has been in a car accident. It doesn’t hurt to press the green button. You always have the option to disconnect.
Oops, the cell tower dropped the call, LOL.
A former client emailed me a lengthy message yesterday. About home warranties and I don’t know what. At first glance, I wondered who she was because her name is not on my usual list of correspondents, but then I thought, hey, I sold her home not that long ago. I responded to ask if she had intended to email me. Which she had not. She emailed me by mistake, it turned out. But she was so happy to hear from me and mentioned how much she misses my fast communication. Immediately responding makes clients feel valued. Like they matter as much as they really do matter.
Another of the easiest ways to impress a real estate client is to tell her the truth. I was at a listing appointment yesterday and the home was not exactly what I had been expecting. I had created a CMA (comparative market analysis) for this seller based on her description of the home and what I thought it would look like. It’s easier to break the news when the price is going up but when it’s going down, it can be disappointing news to hear. I like my clients to be happy, not sad.
So I try to preface the news with letting my client know a) I had bad news to share, and b) I was sorry to have to say it, and c) I knew she did not want to hear it. That sort of introduction gives people time to process and prepare. I had to tell this seller that a potential buyer would view her home as being a fixer upper (not that I, god forbid, see it that way). It needed too many updates to be comparable to the other homes that have sold at higher prices. I think people can tell when an agent is sincere and honest and when an agent is not. She took the news OK. Makes both of our jobs, hers as a seller and mine as an agent, much easier.
Which means there you have it. A meeting of the minds and to feel valued. If a Sacramento Realtor can convey that those two things to her clients, she’ll do all right in the Sacramento real estate business.
Look at This Rabbit I Pulled Out Cleaning My Keyboard
Cleaning my keyboard took almost two solid hours.
When I first started removing keys while cleaning my keyboard yesterday, I was under the impression it had been maybe 3 to 4 years since I had last cleaned my keyboard. Lately my keys have been sticking. I type words that look like I’ve been talking to my phone. Because my phone does not understand half the things I say unless I speak very slowly, pronouncing words like a robot, and I’m tired of people staring at me funny while I talk to my phone. But I did not expect my keyboard to betray me.
I stared at the keys. They were a mess. Brown, icky gooey stuff, like caramel drizzled all over, stuck hard. Pieces of animal flesh. Unrecognizable things. And I don’t really eat at my desk. Aliens must do this crap. Well, what the hey. I popped off a key and whoa, I found a rabbit foot. Popped off a few more keys and then forgot which order they were in or where they went. Before I knew it, I was going down that rabbit hole and pulling out more rabbits.
All the hair and icky crap I pulled out of my keyboard.
I gathered my weapons of destruction: tweezers, Q-tips and rubbing alcohol. This must be years of stuff that has accumulated and crawled into my keyboard. When I depressed a key, there was no sound. It was muffled and quiet. That should have been first clue. A clue that that I should be cleaning my keyboard.
Probably due to the cats sitting on my desk. Even though they never touch the keys, some of their cat fur gets in there somehow. Imagine my shock when I looked up a blog I had written recently about how many keyboards do you buy. That blog was August of 2016. Which means I’ve had my new keyboard for 14 months. During that time, this is how much stuff had crept into my keyboard.
Believe it, I type 140 WPM. Why? Because I took typing twice in high school to avoid having to take a science class by saying I did not know how to type. My school records were such a mess, nobody knew which end was up because I attended so many schools and we didn’t use computers in the 1960s to track anything. You take typing in 9th grade on an old Remington and you do 30 WPM. Take it again in 12th grade and whoa, you’re up to 140. Doing basics again pays off.
I’m thinking I’ve never noticed this before because I usually replace my keyboard every 6 to 12 months. I’ve never had to clean it. Because I’ve ruined every keyboard. Water and electricity does not marry well, which is where that science class would have paid off. This is progress, actually. I’ve gone 14 months without destroying my keyboard. Except yesterday I had to spend several hours removing all of the keys, cleaning my keyboard, and putting them all back in some horrible random order. Well, it’s not like I look at the keys while I type. It doesn’t matter if they’ve moved around into a different position.
Who Are the Top 5 Real Estate Agents in Sacramento Right Now?
Year-to-date sales among top 5 real estate agents in Sacramento.
All year I have not once looked at the top producer stats in Trendgraphix, much less think I had made it into the top 5 real estate agents in Sacramento. I’m usually in the top 10, but I don’t look at those numbers until the end of the year. That’s when I make updates to my profiles all over the internet. Not every real estate agent in Sacramento updates her profiles to stay current but I make a sincere effort to do it. Besides, our Code of Ethics requires that Realtors present a true image. I care about my reputation.
One of my clients last week was joking about how so many agents call themselves Number One when none of them is Number One at anything, except in their own minds. Well, dude, my dog says I’m number one, and that’s good enough for me, they say. Or, they narrow it so closely, like I’ve sold more kitchens with white appliances than anybody! In 2012, during the market upswing, I did rank as the #1 agent in Sacramento for number of all sales, not just short sales. I closed 150 or so that year. But I haven’t been number one for 5 years, and that’s OK. I don’t need to be #1. I just need to be consistent. But I didn’t expect to move into the top 5 real estate agents in Sacramento.
Short sales is a tiny aspect of our market. Right now, short sales make up 2% or so of all sales in Sacramento, unlike the majority they used to be. And I made the transition out of short sales as they vanished while keeping my production high. I started on that process in 2011, and it’s paid off royally. My main focus, if you’d like to know, is to capture a 5 Star Review from my clients. That’s my whole secret in a nutshell. Well, that and I blog every day. I tell my sellers I want only one thing: that 5 Star Review. Many say they will post a review after closing and then they space it out. But they know I deserve it. They are thrilled by closing.
I’m not going into detail about who the other top 5 real estate agents in Sacramento are because it’s just important to me (and to my prospective clients) that Elizabeth Weintraub is on that list. Besides, I don’t know them, except maybe Lynda. I heard the top agent works for a home builder but I haven’t verified it. And really, would I want you to go looking for the number one agent; no, I would not. There is only one name you need to remember.
Elizabeth Weintraub is tied for #2 in Sacramento County for number of sales so far this year. I owe it to my dedicated team of 3 buyer’s agents, terrific mortgage loan officer and fabulous transaction coordinator. I imagine we’ll close out the year in about the same spot because we’re all hard workers and we don’t slow down just because the holidays are approaching. If you’d like to work with one of the top 5 real estate agents in Sacramento, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I have 43 years of experience. We don’t discriminate based on sales price and will help anybody who needs it. We sell $80,000 condos to million-dollar sales over a four-county area.
Chart: Trendgraphix, used with permission.
Random Thoughts on What a Difference 10 Years Makes
Elizabeth Weintraub in 2007 Cabo San Lucas.
You know what a difference 10 years makes when you look at photo galleries that continually shove photos from years ago in front of your face. Like when you’re on Facebook, for example, and suddenly it shows you a picture from a long time ago and you can’t believe your eyes. Or, if you’re like me, you click off the website and silently wish they would stop doing that. In my case so many of the old photos are of pets and people who have since died. It takes me a long time to get over losing a pet. I seem to adjust to deaths of people easier. It’s not a matter of value.
In this particular photograph, I just arrived in Cabo San Lucas at a recently opened newer hotel with very few guests. You can tell the year is 2007 because I’m wearing a watch. Unless it’s an Apple Watch or a Rolex, nobody wears a watch anymore. I’m also wearing my wedding ring on my chubby little fingers, and while I am still married to the most wonderful man in the world, I don’t wear my ring anymore. I don’t wear any rings because I intensely dislike wearing rings. My rings cause an irritation on my crepe paper skin, too, and one day I decided: why am I doing this? Because it’s expected that I wear a ring? Forget that. Doesn’t make me any less married, and I’m far more comfortable not dealing with it.
But my face looks so confident, not a care in the world, so young. It was just the beginning of short sales in Sacramento, and I wasn’t yet shredded to pieces. What a full head of hair, too. My hairdresser suggested this week that I try using Nioxin Booster to make my hair “the best that it could be.” That sounded like a line of BS until I googled the product. While they don’t want to come right out and say that Nioxin will grow more hair, that’s the basics of it. She told me something about it opening up blocked hair follicles, sounds goofy. But it seems to work for a lot of people, if you can believe Amazon reviews.
Yet, what a difference 10 years makes. Everything looks different when you look back in time. When you’re a little kid, the stuff around you seems so huge, your home, your school, your community, and when you look at photos years later, you’re often amazed at how small everything actually is in retrospect. This is why sometimes you’re better off with your own illusions of what life is like. Who says you have to stare at reality in the face all the time. Oprah?
At my age now, I try to be more in the present than anything. I don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to have fun. To stay happy, optimistic. I don’t want to think a lot about the future because it will come without my thoughts. I’ve prepared for it. I don’t need to spend more time on it than necessary. I also don’t need to look into the past and ponder what would have happened if I had taken a different road. The fact is I chose the road I’m on right now. It’s a good place to be. When I say what a difference 10 years makes, I can take comfort in the fact I have not become jaded by success. I still keep a positive outlook.
Just more confidently, that’s all.
