Email Elizabeth
Elizabeth Weintraub
This is What Sacramento Real Estate Agents Work For
The public doesn’t really know why people choose a career in real estate and what Sacramento real estate agents work for. They see the financial rewards and sometimes that’s as far as they get with their thought process. They think the end result is that paycheck, and while money helps to pay the bills, it’s not the reason we sell Sacramento real estate. It’s not what we live for and work for.
Most Sacramento real estate agents, believe it or not, are really in the business to help people. We have a specialty, a knowledge, a skill set and experience to guide our buyers and sellers to a successful closing. There are those of us, we hate to say, who sometimes don’t perform, like the agent who was previously working with a buyer who just closed escrow this week with Barbara Dow from the Elizabeth Weintraub Team.
When the buyer called about this particular home, I asked if she was working with an agent, just like I always ask. She said yes, and continued to clarify before I could disconnect. I listened. Turns out she was pretty unhappy with her agent and felt very disappointed in her search for a home. She no longer wanted to work with that particular agent. She also had been watching the For Sale sign installation in the front yard of this particular listing, and said she was planning to sit in that yard until an agent drove by to show it to her. That’s determination.
I checked with my team members and Barbara was available to immediately show the home. She explained Agency and that we would probably receive multiple offers so the buyer needed to be very aggressive with her purchase offer. The sellers were thrilled and accepted the offer. They were happy. The buyer was happy. And the transaction closed early. The buyer wrote to Barbara after closing and said this (with personal information removed):
“You have been so awesome! You made this experience more perfect than I could have ever imagined! Seriously!!! Now I am going to brag that I have the best Realtor / Real Estate Agent (not sure what the preferred title is) EVER!!!
“I grew up thinking that happy dreams were for everyone else, but thankfully I’ve been learning . . . that I deserve happiness and happy dreams, too! Thank you for being a part of this with me. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to help me. I think that the thing I like best about you is that you are genuine, Barbara and . . . that is a quality that is not easy to find nowadays, so thank you for being YOU! And being so awesome at your job!!!”
This is what we work for. This is what matters in a real estate transaction. And it doesn’t get any better this.
Biggest Peeves Among Home Sellers in Sacramento
There are 3 things I do that other agents don’t seem to do on a regular basis, which is how this Sacramento real estate agent keeps her home sellers happy and content. I know there must be times when an agent looks at my new listing in MLS and wonders how I got that listing and why didn’t he get the listing. What is it about this agent, they may ask? I will tell you. Not only will I tell you but I do so without worrying that oh-my-gosh, now every real estate agent knows my secrets and will steal all of my business in town — because it won’t happen. I’m not bragging, it’s just the way things are.
Deep down my competitors know they should do this, they often just don’t do it.
It’s consistency, overall. Which agents can adopt if they want to badly enough.
The first secret is respond quickly. Don’t take all day to get around to answering an email or return a phone call. People don’t have all day. I don’t have all day. When a potential home seller contacts me, I answer. Naturally, if they leave me a message after hours, that is, after 7 PM or they send an email at 3 AM, they won’t get a response until the morning, but I do address concerns and questions with the fastest speed humanely possible.
The second secret is to answer the phone when it rings. Sometimes, we agents are on the other line when the phone rings and can’t disconnect. But for crying out loud, if an agent is talking to her hairdresser or one of her kids or friends, hang up and take the darn phone call that’s coming in during business hours. What the hey?
The third secret is to keep sellers informed about what’s happening with the sale of their home. Ever since the market shifted 2 years ago and short sales stopped being the dominant sales driver in Sacramento, it’s been a wild ride with those regular home sales. They close so quickly, and often tend to sell quickly, too, if they are priced right. If I hear anything about a home that I think the seller would like to know, I immediately pass on that information. I keep sellers informed. I’d hate for a seller to wonder what’s happening.
How do I know sellers want a Sacramento real estate agent to perform in this manner? Because they tell me so. My mission is to consistently perform.
Home Staging is Back in Sacramento and Elk Grove
Another sign of our slowly recovering real estate market is home staging is making a big comeback in Sacramento, especially among Elk Grove homes. For years, we had so many short sales in the midst of a down real estate market that many sellers did not stage their homes because they didn’t have to, wasn’t needed. How do you know if a home needs to be staged? Because some homes don’t.
First and foremost is how hard will it be to sell that home? Are there other factors about the home that could discourage a buyer from making an offer such as bad condition, horrible location, unreasonable price? It is a home that most buyers don’t want to buy? I also look at the competition. What else will a buyer see when they tour other homes nearby in this same price range. If other homes are staged, yours better be, too.
It’s not really the buyer’s fault that a buyer can’t visualize potential or, more important, feel the emotional tug of a home. Door opens, they walk inside, they immediately know whether they like the home in 3 seconds. The rest of the tour reinforces that original perception. It gets better or it gets worse depending on their first emotion.
Buyers try to “rule out” buying homes just as much as they “rule in” buying homes. Some believe in fate, whether or not you may agree with that premise, a perception of fate might be the buyer’s reality and you go with the flow. Curb appeal hits them first and the interiors second. Third they tend to look for the amenities they have told their agent they want, but they’re not nearly as analytical as sellers might expect. Staging a home helps to overcome barriers.
This is why it’s generally a good idea to make that home as attractive as possible and set the stage to encourage an offer. Just sold today another home in Elk Grove that was on the market for almost 3 weeks without staging at an attractive price point. After home staging, whammo. Two offers. It works like this all of the time. This is not an isolated situation. You’ve gotta remove all of the objections, and one way to do that is to stage the home.
How to Pick a Sales Price Without Comparable Sales
Trying to pick a sales price when there are few to none comparable sales is a little bit tricky in our Sacramento real estate market, but this is when an experienced real estate agent can be very helpful. Sometimes it comes down to relying on gut instinct, mixed with a bit of pixie dust sprinkled on top of those dusty old comparable sales, to come up with an accurate and reasonable number.
Further, I might do goofy things that are right on target such as grab a random sales price from 2005, divide it in half, multiple that result by 50%, and then slap another 25% on top to arrive at an estimate of value, which is often much closer than Zillow’s screwy Zestimate and computed about in the same fashion. But that’s just to double-check the ballpark. It’s not to pick a sales price.
When talking with a seller who just closed escrow yesterday on a fixer home I had listed, we had discussed the sales price and reviewed how we arrived at the final number. I confessed that it wasn’t based entirely on the comparable sales. My input was based a lot on how much I thought we could get for the property, resulting in the intrinsic market value of that home. The seller laughed and said he realized I had grabbed it from thin air when I made the recommendation.
Well, I wouldn’t say thin air. But it was an educated guess. It was an educated guess because although I had examined the comp prices for turnkey homes, I had not arrived at a value for the unknown condition of the property, which was basically trashed. I had been expecting to see a home in move-in condition. These types of homes are a bit difficult to price when the home has so much wrong with it that you can’t even figure out which part of the house you’re standing in. Oh, this must be the living room, I muttered to nobody, when it dawned on me where I was as the floor suddenly sloped down under my feet.
After hitting the market, lots of agents called to give me push back and to complain about the price. They thought it was too high. Many offered substantially less. They moaned and groaned. Hey, give the sellers what they want, I suggested; it’s simple, just do it. Don’t yak at me about the comps and your honorable intentions. Put up or shut up. Then, two buyers submitted offers that were very close to our asking price, and those were the two buyers we worked with, closing with the best offer and zero renegotiations during escrow.
Sometimes, you just get lucky trying to pick a sales price, but it helps to have experience on your side when you’re the seller.
An Accepted Purchase Offer in Sacramento is Only the Beginning
When buying or selling a home in Sacramento, the parties often don’t realize that it’s hardly over when both sides sign an accepted purchase offer; in fact, the process is just beginning and anything can go wrong. This is where FSBOs (For Sale By Owners) tend to struggle and where real estate agents with less experience can mess up as well.
Think of this point in time as that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy, all freshly scrubbed and sporting her sparkly ruby slippers, is merrily laughing and singing with her gangly companions, setting out from Munchkin Land to skip down the Yellow Brick Road, just before Glinda vanishes in a puff of twinkly fairy dust. Everybody is happy and excited, looking forward to arriving in the magical Emerald City. They have no idea what lies in store for them.
And neither do most Sacramento home sellers and buyers.
This is when your Sacramento real estate agent can make a world of difference to you. Selling a home in Sacramento is a lot more than just finding a buyer. It means qualifying the buyer, thinking ahead and predicting what could happen, and taking steps to prevent the trees from strangling you and throwing apples at your face. It means fighting off the winged monkeys.
And, if it’s necessary, making it snow.
Keeping everybody on the path to closing. And happy. It’s not the money, either, because a commission check can lose its luster fast if the seller or buyers are unhappy when it’s all over. This is no easy feat. But it’s what I do every day, and I believe I do it well. Going into escrow is just the beginning. If you’re looking for a veteran Sacramento real estate agent, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759.
