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Elizabeth Weintraub
Introducing Weintraub & Wallace at RE/MAX Gold
Meet Weintraub & Wallace of the Sierra Oaks office of RE/MAX Gold. Yes, we have merged our teams to create a Super Team of Realtors in Sacramento. If Lyon had encouraged JaCi Wallace, she and I might have stayed at Lyon Real Estate. But as it is, she was already at RE/MAX Gold, after relocating a few years ago, and happy enough not to budge. Since she was not returning to Lyon, it meant my team and I would move to RE/MAX.
But that is not the only reason to join RE/MAX nor to team up to form Weintraub & Wallace. RE/MAX Gold was founded 25 years ago with just two offices and 40 agents. Today, the company has 63 locations, and over 1,350 of the industry’s most productive agents. Our new location is at 3620 Fair Oaks Boulevard, near the intersection of Fair Oaks Boulevard and Watt Avenue, but we are also free to work from the Midtown office next door to Waterboy on Capitol Avenue.
Our reason to form Weintraub & Wallace is to expand our business to help more sellers and buyers in the Greater Sacramento Region. By combining the strengths of two strong listing agents, we offer sellers more alternatives and better service. Weintraub & Wallace combined years in the industry are enough to make your head spin. We also have the best exclusive buyer’s agents in the business: Barbara Dow, Josh Amolsch and Carol Crestello.
Elizabeth Weintraub began her real estate career in 1974 as a title searcher, eventually becoming licensed in 1978 after a few years as a certified escrow officer. JaCi Wallace entered real estate in 1980, with a background in law enforcement, and she serves on the SAR Pro Standards Committee. We have both earned the status of Outstanding Life Members of the Sacramento Association of Realtors.
Together, that is almost 80 years of unprecedented experience from Weintraub & Wallace! Further, since there is no real estate school and agents learn by doing, imagine how much we know after all of these years. Don’t know of an agent team who can hold a candle to that. Our sales since I moved to Sacramento in 2002 involve almost 1,200 transactions, totaling more than $387 million. MLS shows 1,173 sales but we have sold homes that are not in MLS.
We are thrilled to move forward our careers at RE/MAX Gold and deliver to our clients unsurpassed luxury marketing at an affordable price. The RE/MAX Gold brokerage model offers our clients a global reach, with national and international exposure, cutting-edge technology and the type of support required in our fast-moving Sacramento real estate market.
Our number one goal is to continue achieving 5-star reviews, because we will never stop providing exceptional service.
Why the First Offer Often Wins in Sacramento Real Estate
As a big listing agent in Sacramento, I know first-hand it is common that the first offer often wins in Sacramento real estate. But buyer’s agents tend to disagree. Not sure why except that they are vested in having their buyers win, and perhaps they are not thinking through the entire situation. You hear it in their voices when they say, “Oh, maybe we’ll wait until after the open house.”
For what? For more buyers to submit offers? To become a speck of dust in the pile of offers? What are they waiting for? Offers, no offers, makes no difference.
Not only that, but sometimes agents sabotage their efforts from the get-go. A buyer’s agent called another listing agent recently to disclose that his client was part of a profession known for causing problems. Followed it up by asking about the cracks in the exterior stucco (all stucco has cracks), and making other comments that made the agent feel like this guy was gonna be a PITA. Not a smart move, you know, telling the listing agent you are a PITA and your client is a potential PITA, too.
If agents would just think through what happens, it would be easier for them to properly advise their clients. Be the first offer. The first offer often wins.
Say a home goes on the market on Friday with an open house scheduled for Sunday. Buyer tours on Friday and loves the house. But the buyer’s agent wants to wait to write an offer. I say no, write the offer right now. Write that offer although it is already Sunday afternoon and there are 2 other offers, because that could very well happen. Submit it now.
As a top listing agent, I am likely to advise my seller to wait until Sunday before making a decision. Because that is in my seller’s best interest. But the seller might love the offer and not want to wait. There is always that possibility. Odder things have happened.
However, if the seller takes my advice and waits, what do you think the seller will think when she wakes up on Saturday morning? She will second-guess her decision, wonder if she made the wrong call. Further, she will spend most of the day and the following day thinking about this wonderful and patient buyer, probably feeling a bit uneasy that she is making the buyer wait.
Come Sunday, even though there are several other offers, which buyer does the seller feel closest to?
Bingo. The first offer. Because the first offer often wins.
Damned if You Do and Damned if You Don’t
When a stranger calls for free advice, the common dilemma of damned if you do and damned if you don’t, makes it difficult not to hang up. Because hanging up is my solution for handling most irritants. Way back when I moved to Sacramento and was so excited just to get a phone call, I would even talk to telemarketers. I was polite and sweet and asked them to put me on the national do not call list. Today, not so sweet. Today I get so much crap, so much spam and solicitation calls, the best response I can muster is to hang up.
Why? Because if you mutter one word, #1) it’s a time waster, and #2) they will use it against you later and 3) nothing good can come from a conversation with another’s agent client in a foreign market. Further, if it is an unsolicited sales call, little is all that new or fabulous that you need to hear it described to you from a stranger you do not know and from a person whose sole purpose for continuing the conversation is to profit from YOU.
However, being in real estate, you’re pretty much damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Because if you don’t answer your phone, you could miss a call. Many potential clients will just call another agent if you send the call to voice mail. They have little patience, and they want an answer now. Hell, if I called some random agent who did not answer, I’d call somebody else, you can bet on it . . . and I know the value of good agents.
The problem comes into play when a caller asks if they can ask you a question. You think to yourself, sure, I have plenty of answers, perhaps one of them will fit this particular situation. And then the question has to do with an existing transaction. Sure, the caller may say it’s a hypothetical situation, but it is understood by both parties it is a real situation. Which means it is not a hypothetical situation.
If, as a Sacramento Realtor, you take time to explain the Realtor Code of Ethics and why we are prohibited from interfering in another’s transaction, you may come to realize the caller does not care about you nor your integrity. Nope, the caller wants an answer from you. No matter how it is phrased, you still take a chance they will run over to a profile somewhere and post a mean-spirited “review.”
There is no upside to it.
None. Whatsoever.
If you try to educate, the caller will argue. Then, they tend to get their knickers in a twist because you won’t cooperate with their demands. So, in these damned if you do and damned if you don’t situations, agents would be much better off just to hang up. Don’t offer anything. On the one hand, you don’t want to be accused of violating the Code of Ethics, on the other, there is no money in it for you. And a bad “review” is just waiting to happen.
People experience dropped calls all the time. THAT they can deal with. Explaining why you cannot help a stranger, big waste of time. Some of these people can make you regret that you even answered your phone. Remember, too, you are not a white knight.
So right in the middle of delivering a warm, lovely and inviting sentence, hit the red button. Then go to Recents and block.
Realtor.Com and Opcity Sell Out Realtors Nationwide
Everybody knows that Realtor.com was late to the party online but few expected Realtor.com and Opcity to sell out Realtors nationwide. There was this fragile part of many agents who desperately wanted to hold out hope for Realtor.com and looked at this particular website as representing Realtors everywhere in the country.
Instead, Realtor.com and Opcity is beginning to charge agents a hefty referral fee in order to receive buyer inquiries. This Sacramento Realtor is not entirely sure how it works yet but I can tell you that News Corp (owned by Rupert Murdoch) now owns Realtor.com. News Corp also bought Opcity. I know, you’re thinking why doesn’t the National Association of Realtors own Realtor.com? Why did they sell it to such a horrible person?
It’s a long story. Involving Move.com, a company I cannot seem to get rid of although I have diligently tried to stop it from spamming. As for Murdoch, he’s pure evil.
The whole affiliated relationship picture of Realtor.com and Opcity is ugly and repulsive to me and to many other agents. It doesn’t do any good to lament Realtor.com and what could have been because it never happened; crying over spilt milk doesn’t help.
From now, leads will be monetized and I predict that Realtor.com and Opcity will enjoy a fruitful relationship from milking morons for years to come.
OMG Our Hawaii Orchids Bloomed in Kona
Definitely was not expecting our Hawaii orchids to have bloomed already. I stuck an old orchid plant in our hibiscus tree at our house in Hawaii about a year ago. Forget all about it until I noticed the orchid was attaching itself to the hibiscus tree in the photo below.
A friend had assured me that to grow Hawaii orchids, all you need to do is throw them into the trees. Keep them in a shaded environment and ignore. No fertilizer. No watering. No fussing over it.
OK, I figured, what harm could it do? Once the orchid has finished blooming, throwing it into a tree is not much different than throwing it out. It will either live or it won’t. A bunch of spent orchids I had placed on the ground under the mango tree did not make it. But the one I stuck into the hibiscus tree attached itself, as evidenced by the photograph above of our Hawaii orchids.
It’s kind of creepy, in a way.
I left Hawaii 3 weeks ago, and the Hawaii orchids didn’t even have buds at that time. Our gardener sent us this photo with the tag line: your orchids have fired! Isn’t that amazing?? Where else in the world can you throw orchid into a hibiscus tree and it rewards you a year later with all of these blooms? Nature is fascinating.
