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Elizabeth Weintraub
About Buying a Home Before Selling a House in Sacramento
It is very doable to pursue buying a home before selling a house in Sacramento today.
For some lucky sellers, it is definitely possible to pursue buying a home before selling a house in Sacramento. How one goes about this depends on basically two things: the type of real estate market you’re in and your financial ratios. At the moment, we are experiencing a strong seller’s market in Sacramento. This means sellers are in the driver’s seat. We have low inventory and high numbers of buyers. It’s the principle of supply and demand at work.
Sure, we have buyers who say, my house is so beautiful, it will sell right away, so why can’t I look at buying home before selling? As Sacramento Realtors, we have to bring these buyers into reality. Move them outside of their own situation and get them to look at this through the eyes of the seller. I say to them: Ok, pretend YOU are the seller of this house and YOU have 5 offers. Four of those offers are from buyers who don’t have a house a sell, they have no contingencies. They can get a loan and close right away. And then there is YOU. You who have not even put your home on the market, and you who wants the seller to wait while you get around to it.
If you were the seller, whose offer would you take? The buyer who is ready to go into escrow and doesn’t have a house to sell? Or the buyer who has a contingency to sell her home first and doesn’t have an offer yet? Buyers stare at their feet, shuffle toes in circles. They draw their own conclusion: Um, I guess the other buyer’s offer? Right! So, why do you think the seller will want YOUR offer, an offer that could blow up in their faces? I hate to be the bad news messenger, but there it is.
If you’re thinking about buying a home before selling, you’ve got to see this from the other side to understand.
Now, say you’re in escrow already with a buyer on your house. The seller’s listing agent will want to know if that buyer has removed contingencies. Until that happens, there is no solid commitment. If you’re just gone into escrow, the buyer has by contract default 17 days to change her mind. That’s still an iffy proposition to a seller who has offers from buyers without a home to sell.
We’ve been working with quite a few buyers lately who have had homes to sell but decided in this limited inventory market that they might sell their home without finding another home, which they don’t want to do. They don’t want to be homeless. I don’t blame them. So, for them it makes sense to focus on buying a home before selling a house. Conventional wisdom says to do it the other way around, just so you aren’t tempted to dump your old house for peanuts. Contrary, in a strong seller’s market, the risk of that happening is very low to nonexistent. The hard thing is finding another home to buy. You can leave the sale up to your Sacramento Realtor, a listing agent like Elizabeth Weintraub, who concentrates on sellers and maximizing their bottom-line profit.
If you have good credit and the financial means to carry two mortgages at the same time, you can look into buying a home before selling. Bottom line, all sellers need a place to go. That’s the first question I ask people who are selling. Where will you go? Because if you’ve got no place to go, you’ve got no good reason to sell. This way, sellers are assured they will get the home they want by buying that home first.
Preparing Your Sacramento Home for Professional Photography
All homes can benefit from preparing for professional photography.
My wish for all sellers is for them to properly prepare a Sacramento home for professional photography. Unfortunately, it’s not the way every Sacramento Realtor operates. You’ve still got the agents who don’t feel their low-end clients deserve professional photos. Or, worse, they think they are saving money by walking around the house shooting vertical photos with a cellphone, of all things. I’m not sure where the cut-off price point is with some agents. Probably under $500,000, would be my guess, or thereabouts. They just think anybody selling a regular home that is not a luxury home, well, it’s just not worth it for the agent to pay for professional photos.
I often wonder how their clients feel about that. They probably look at the agent’s website and see how some of the other homes looks spectacular while their home looks drab and dull. Oh, who am I kidding? Those clients don’t look at their agents websites or there would be some agents waking up to a rock thrown through their plate-glass window. If clients don’t demand equality and professional service, they probably won’t get it.
My belief is every client, I don’t care if it’s bare piece of land, deserves professional photos. I try to brief my clients before I arrive at their home with my photographer. Yes, even after all my decades in real estate, I still try to attend every photo shoot if I can. It’s not that I don’t trust my photographer, it’s that I am there to help the photographer move around stuff that sellers leave in peculiar places. They don’t see it because they’re too close to the subject at hand.
Here is what I tell my sellers prior to the photographer arriving and how to prepare a Sacramento home for professional photography:
- Do not park in the driveway. Do not park any vehicles in the driveway. No cars, bus, train, motorbike, tricycle.
- Remove the trash receptacle from the kitchen. Take the trash with it.
- Turn on all the lights, even the lights over the stove or under the microwave.
- Open all blinds but leave the windows closed.
- Clear everything off the kitchen counters, coffee pot and all. Everything. Except that bottle of Pinot, which you can give to me.
- Hide the dog food bowls and kitty litter boxes and dog beds.
- Close toilet seat lids.
- Turn off all ceiling fans.
- Make the beds.
- Don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink.
You would think I would not have to tell people to clean up the house and put things away, but I do. If you are in a rush to prepare your Sacramento home for professional photography, just stick everything inside the garage. Buyers don’t spend a lot of time in the garage, and it’s a good place to stash extra furniture.
I recall a while back when I was shooting the home of a doctor in Campus Commons. When I was upstairs, the bed was made and everything was tidy. When I came back upstairs, he had pulled back the bedspread and dumped all of his dirty underwear from wherever he had been hiding it right in the middle of the bed. For photos! The bed looked a little lumpy as I smoothed the bedspread out the best I could, but I was NOT touching that pile.
What to Know Before Selling a Sacramento Home
What HGTV tells you and what a Sacramento Realtor knows is different.
My phone rings constantly with sellers who do not know what they need to know before selling a Sacramento home. They think they know because they watch HGTV, which is not a documentary. Hate to say. It’s a reality show. Not necessarily real. But it’s good entertainment, and sometimes I watch HGTV for its amusement factor, but I would not rely on it. People have all sorts of ideas of what they need to do before selling a Sacramento home. From replacing the carpeting (and I want to scream no, no, no) to painting all of the walls white. Both, not necessarily good options.
I see so much wasted money on fixing up a home before selling. It’s not really the seller’s fault. They are fixing up the home they way they might want to buy a home, and the two are not mutually exclusive. Trends change. Times change. And all real estate is local, btw. Sacramento real estate is different than, say, selling homes in Pasadena or Miami. Yesterday I spoke with potential sellers who are investing in landscaping. They replaced the fence in the back yard and think they should get all of that money back upon resale. They probably won’t. Most of their ideas about preparing the home for sale won’t payoff.
While putting a concentrated effort into improving curb appeal is always a good idea, curb appeal can often be accomplished through good old fashioned sweat equity instead of spending money on landscaping or trees. Trim the bushes back from the windows, trim the trees so you can see the house; mow the lawn, seed dead grass. Plant a few colorful flowers. But don’t dump $20,000 into landscaping in hopes you will get it back.
Most home buyers today want to see granite counters, and granite is relatively cheap. They want clean lines, neutral colors and with few exceptions, white kitchens are not always the best way to go. I would not remodel a kitchen simply because it is white. But if you have a choice between stainless or black appliances over white, pick one of those two options. Install a few hanging pendants. Put in a pre-rinse faucet and redo the floor. Replace the hardware on the cabinets for a fraction of the price of replacing them.
But don’t take all of this verbatim because every home is different. Your best bet is to call an experienced Sacramento Realtor who can give you accurate and up-to-date information on what do to before selling a Sacramento home. But be sure this is the agent with whom you intend to list. Agents don’t work for free. If an agent comes over to your home to help you out, it is because you intend to hire that agent as your listing agent.
Saigon Street Eat is Vietnamese Fast Food on Broadway in Land Park
Saigon Street Eat is now open on Broadway in Land Park.
Saigon Street Eat has picked up where Pho Bac Hoa Viet left off. We noticed the place had closed over the summer, and I’ve heard rumors that Pho Bac Hoa Viet Restaurant’s lease had expired. This was not my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Sacramento, but it would do in a pinch. I actually liked its hole-in-the-wall-ness about it. A bit of grunge and neglect. Service was often slow but the food was fairly decent. So we were curious to see what Saigon Street Eat had to offer over its predecessor.
The new owners opened on September 1, but we were in Hawaii at Mauna Loa Observatory that day. Yesterday was out first free afternoon that we could scoot over to see what’s what. I was surprised to see the walls were not yet painted in their entirety, so there are still a few finishing touches. When we walked in, the hanging upside-down umbrellas were the first thing I noticed. Besides a woman sitting by the front door who told us to “just go sit down and somebody will be by.”
We grabbed a booth in the back. The space was a bit tight, but I like booths. You can sprawl out and throw your crap all over the cushion. A server came by and brought us a large pitcher of water and two plastic glasses. We tried to get her to take one of the plastic glasses back but she refused and insisted we might find a use for it. We checked our email. Talked for a while. I shot a couple of photos. Servers lingered in the front but did not look at us. The place was about 1/3 full. I finally asked my husband to see if he could find a menu.
The Saigon Street Eat menus are pink paper, take-out style, one page. Big change from Pho Bac Hoa Viet, with its glossy book of many pages. But the favorites were still there, a variety of Pho, spring rolls, dumplings, pot stickers. I ordered a cafe sua da. My husband said “make that two,” and she asked him what he would like to drink. The iced-coffee drinks arrived after our meals. Usually cafe sua da is served with the coffee dripping in a small metal cup over a tall glass filled with ice. This way you can press the coffee grounds down with your thumb and flip the whole thing over on the table, spilling hot coffee. But our drinks were ready to go and stirred.
Bun Thit Nuong is a vermicelli salad bowl with grilled pork, shrimp or egg rolls.
I figured you can’t go wrong with Bun Thit Nuong, vermicelli salad bowl with shrimp. I asked for only shrimp but I got fried pork along with 3 pieces of small grilled shrimp. By comparison, Pho Bac Hoa Viet grilled 6 large pieces of shrimp. The flavor of the sauce was perfect, and the pork tasty, if a bit fatty with too much gristle for my tastes. We pretty much finished our lunch specials by the time our appetizer arrived.
I tasted the pho broth in my husband’s dish, and the star anise seemed a bit on the weak side, but the broth was full-bodied. My husband had also ordered the banana leaf clear dumplings, which he likened to eating rubber cement, albeit tasty rubber cement. It’s just the nature of the tapioca flour paste. The pork and dried shrimp filling was yummy, once you get past all of that chewing. We’d probably order that dish again.
The prices were affordable. The food is served quickly, except for our dumpling appetizer. I imagine after a few months, they might pull it together and improve. The music system sounds like either boy bands or country, like Luke Combs. When you figure it’s just fresh Vietnamese fast food, it’s OK for what it is. It’s like the casual food you would find served at an outdoor restaurant in south Viet Nam, possibly at picnic tables, without the thousands of motorbikes whirling by. I’m betting Millennials will love it, too.
Just Tell Big Banks to Shove It and Join a Sacramento Credit Union
Chase Bank is the largest bank in the country and to me the worst.
Chase Bank just sent me a notice to say because my account balances have fallen slightly below its outrageous $75,000 minimum, it has now started to charge me $25 a month to keep my money in its bank. I complained and was told I should just deposit more funds. Now, I am not a huge fan of big banks. I typically bank at a credit union, The Golden 1. The problem is the maximum amount the FDIC insures. Meaning if a person wants to keep liquid funds, she needs to spread it around at various banking institutions. I realize exceeding the FDIC maximum is not everybody’s problem, and I’m not boasting about my own dilemma as some people would love to deal with this sort of specific issue, but I find that I just can’t stand Chase Bank anymore.
I’ve reached the end of my rope.
For starters, when I opened the account years ago, it was just a place to stash an overage of funds. The bank’s staff started hounding me shortly thereafter. I got the phone calls and letters asking me to choose a personal financial advisor so Chase Bank could help me to invest. I’ve already got a financial planner, and I don’t need some person at Chase to harass me. I asked them to please stop with the phone calls, but it continued until one day I let them have it. I yelled and ranted like a crazy person. It worked. They haven’t called me since about investing.
But Chase Bank does continue to contact me because, as it turns out, you cannot put money into a bank and let it sit there. No sirree. They think you’re either laundering money or maybe you’re dead. The bank continually pressures me to make additional deposits or withdrawals to show activity on the account. They have also threatened to seize my accounts and send the money to the state of California. A Sacramento credit union would never behave in this manner.
Last month, I stopped at Chase Bank near my house in Land Park to get a cashier’s check. I asked the teller to insert a specific clause in the memo line, and she flat-out refused. I zipped across Broadway to The Golden 1 to obtain a second cashier’s check and asked for the specific clause in the memo line, no problem. The clerk wrote what I needed on the check. This is the problem with big banks. They have policies and procedures. Employees have no leeway to make decisions for the customer.
So, thanks but no thanks, Chase Bank. I’m going to a different Sacramento credit union on Monday. Probably Safe Credit Union, since it’s near my Lyon Real Estate office in Midtown, and moving my money out of your bank. A Sacramento credit union cares if its customers are happy. We are all shareholders.
