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Elizabeth Weintraub
A Sacramento Mortgage Lender Can Make or Break the Escrow
The thing about primarily representing sellers in a transaction is a listing agent rarely gets the opportunity to recommend an excellent Sacramento mortgage lender to a buyer. This is normally handled by the buyer’s agent. That doesn’t stop lenders and their lender reps — the mortgage loan officers (MLOs) — from nonstop spamming / harassing and marketing to listing agents in hopes of attracting their business, but quite frankly they are barking up the wrong tree and going about it in the wrong way.
No veteran real estate agent is likely to recommend a mortgage loan officer due to a brief office meeting or over leisurely coffee breaks (what are those) at Starbucks. Agents recommend loan officers who have proven themselves worthy of a recommendation through performance. We put them on our list. They can’t ask to be added to our list because we won’t add them.
Sometimes I run into a situation with a buyer that is perhaps a bit iffy, which is a good way to describe some of the risky situations I spot. If I don’t recognize the mortgage loan officer in those instances, the sellers and I might suggest that the buyer get a second opinion from one of my preferred lenders. They are preferred because I know and trust them to thoroughly investigate and analyze a situation before issuing a pre-approval letter. They discuss options and make sure the borrower understands the mortgage choices at hand.
When a mortgage loan officer informs the agent, say, a week or so before closing, that the buyer can’t remove the appraisal contingency when an appraisal has been completed, a Sacramento real estate agent might rightly wonder why. Perhaps the mortgage loan officer will say something like the borrower was upset over all of the costs to get an FHA loan and decided to switch to conventional.
You know what that tells me? It tells me that the mortgage loan officer did not thoroughly explain the GFE to the borrower upon inception of the loan. It also tells me that the mortgage loan officer herself probably suggested the conventional loan as an alternative, not realizing that the buyer’s contract did not specify a conventional loan. The sellers will most likely consider this to be a contractual change, whether the MLO realizes it.
When presented with reality, the MLO might argue and say the conventional loan is better for the seller. Really? It might be for the buyer, but it’s not necessarily better for the seller. What if the seller had a former buyer in escrow who had an FHA appraisal previously completed, and what if that was the reason the sellers chose the present FHA buyer? No appraisal problems. Now that the buyer is changing financing, it changes the type of appraisal, and it could affect the entire transaction. Moreover, why would a mortgage loan officer who is hoping for repeat business leave the buyer’s agent out of the loop and overstep?
Perhaps the most endearing quality would be if the MLO desperately tried to justify the new financing by explaining to the listing agent how conventional financing works in comparison to FHA — especially to an agent who has been selling real estate before the MLO was born. Some mortgage lender reps set their own paths for failure, and they don’t need any help from anybody else.
Starting Over on a HAFA Due to Chase Bank Short Sale HELOC
What does it mean to start over on a HAFA short sale through Bank of America because the HELOC department (second lien holder) at Chase Bank messed up? That’s a question that is probably lingering in the minds of many frustrated home buyers across the United States right now because if it happens in Sacramento, you can bet it happens elsewhere. Let me be clear that a Chase Bank short sale, when Chase is in first position, actually seems to run rather smoothly in Equator now, it’s just those second liens that are a royal PITA.
Why, believe it or not, sellers and buyers can start a short sale in December and still be working on it at the end of March when the Chase HELOC department finally gets around to ordering a BPO. A Sacramento short sale agent can call 3 times a week and sometimes leave several messages a day and escalate, and nobody from Chase will return the call probably because they a) know an agent will call back or b) Chase doesn’t pay them enough to give a flying fig or c) they’ll quit or get fired.
Supervisors’ emails fill up with messages and they don’t return calls, either. Hello, Julio Escobedo?It seems that half the HELOC short sale department at Chase is either out to a 3-martini lunch, on vacation or sleeping in a broom closet. I hate to say this, but we had a much easier time with Chase when it was not using Equator for these second loans. Its performance today is dismal and disappointing.
But what else is new in a short sale? I’ve been closing them for 8 years now, hundreds of short sales. Now that we have approval from Bank of America on a certain HAFA short sale and we were able to beg, borrow and steal an extra two weeks to gain a short sale extension to close escrow, no matter how many hand grenades we toss at Chase, we can’t light a fire under its feet.
Chase will amble along, waddling like a fat walrus after a big lunch, drooling fish guts down its chin.
It’s not giving up to “start over” with Bank of America on a short sale. Because Bank of America is pretty streamlined in Equator. But then it’s been working harder on short sales than Chase, and that’s evident. Bank of America can approve a short sale 2 or 3 times in the length of time it will take Chase to issue one approval letter. Chase really needs to get with the program and clean up its work ethic. We’ll get a rush on the approval process at Bank of America and probably get the second approval for this HAFA short sale before Chase has had time to tie its shoes.
See, and this is why I buy stock at Bank of America and not Chase.
Finding a Replacement Property for a 1031 Exchange
Lots of investors from the Bay area call top-producing Sacramento real estate agents when they decide to sell — which is how I end up working with many of them — and the shift I spy on the horizon now is to 1031 exchanges. You might not know this, but I got my start in real estate in the 1970s by working solely with investors, many of them first-time investors. I sold investment properties exclusively for about 9 years, and I moved into real estate from my certified escrow officer position, during which I processed and closed a large number of 1031 tax deferred exchanges.
It’s funny how some things can come full circle. Now that the market in Sacramento is picking up, more investors have equity and some of them want to put that equity to work elsewhere. They don’t want to pay taxes on the sale of their investment property if they don’t have to, and most of them don’t as long as they find and identify a replacement property within the 45-day period and effect a 1031 exchange. (There are minor sub-rules that don’t apply to very many, so I won’t go into those.) The more important rule is an investor has 180 days to close escrow.
My new clients have a rental home in Elk Grove they want to exchange. They don’t live in the area and have discovered how difficult it is to manage an investment property without family nearby. A drive into Sacramento from the Bay area can take 2 to 3 hours each way. Some investors might prefer to move their equity to another town.
A 1031 Exchange wouldn’t be such a nagging problem if we had more inventory in Sacramento. I try to explain that investors actually have about 75 days, if you look at this systematically. Once an offer is received to buy the investor’s rental property, that escrow period is about 30 days, give or take. That means 30 days + 45 days = 75 days. But people, being people, sometimes look to the worst case scenario. Like, what happens if they can’t find a replacement property?
Being in real estate, I know they will find a replacement property for a 1031 Exchange, even if they’re looking out-of-area, because I know real estate agents and how the business works. But that doesn’t help the investor if they’re not standing in my Jimmy Choos, and looking at this from my viewpoint.
This is yet one more reason why we need more inventory in Sacramento. To give investors an assurance that they can find that replacement property, and two more properties along with it as a backup. If you’re thinking about deferring taxes on the sale of your investment property, talk to your accountant and then call this Sacramento real estate agent, Elizabeth Weintraub. I’d love to help you to locate a qualified intermediary and sell your investment home, 916.233.6759.
All Sacramento Real Estate Agents Are Not the Same
Joining the ranks of Sacramento real estate agents and selling real estate in Sacramento was never an industry that I set out to find nor really considered as a career. It was not plucked out of the clear blue sky, either. I fell into the business by accident but it’s almost like it was planned. It was a gradual thing. First, in the early 1970s, I needed a job. Unlike today’s kids, I wasn’t living at home, and I didn’t want to sleep on the street, so getting a job sounded like the best idea yet. I went back to college, and took a full-time job as a title policy typist. That job drove me insane.
I couldn’t stand it. Sitting in front of a typewriter for 8 hours a day pecking away, inserting little bits of carbon paper to fix my mistakes, typing the same thing over and over. It made me want to scream and rip out my hair, but I sat in my chair, kicked off my 6-inch heels and massaged my nylon-clad feet. I could recite a Schedule B of an ALTA title insurance policy by heart. Eventually, after delivering an ultimatum, I was promoted to title searcher, moved up the ladder again to escrow officer, then became a certified escrow officer who specialized in creative financing and tax-deferred 1031 Exchanges.
One crazy day in the late 1970s, I looked up from my messy desk into the eyes of a doofus agent sitting before me who was whining about his buyer not qualifying anymore because Downey Savings and Loan raised the interest rate on his buyer’s loan, and I realized I could do a better job than this joker, earn substantially more money and not have to work for the Man (i.e. corporate environment, for those of you born after 1985).
New clients asked me yesterday for the secret to my success over the last 40 years. They sort of hit me off guard because I wasn’t expecting that question. Mrs. Seller shared with me that she is a psychotherapist and is thinking about getting her real estate license. That sounds like an excellent idea to me, I replied. Because then she could counsel clients properly:
- You know why you’re so stressed out? Because you need to buy a house.
- Or, kids driving you nuts? You need a tri-level so you can stick them on all the third floor.
- Or, you know what your problem is? You need a four-car garage.
I always wonder why other people go into real estate. Most of us have had another career and either got sick of it or were fired, or maybe I should use the correct term, downsized. Very few people, I suspect, looked around at a tender young age and said, you know, real estate is the place for me to be. Very few people evolved into a real estate agent like I did. It was such an obvious path for me to follow, like Darwinism. There is nothing better than being a real estate agent. Well, I could own a company, but I’ve done that, and I prefer selling real estate. I’m very comfortable with my career, and that makes me confident. Confidence brings me clients.
Plus, I answer my darned phone. I guess I’m successful because I am careful where I spend my time, because my time needs to be spent on clients. My focus is not on “prospects.” I talked with a seller yesterday from Fair Oaks who is interviewing 4 or 5 agents, including an agent who initially sold her the home as her buyer’s agent, but is not a strong listing agent. I pulled that agent’s production in MLS and he listed 3 homes over the past year and a half or so and sold 3 homes, and that low production didn’t seem to faze the seller. The seller said her reason for interviewing an enormously large number of agents is to get different appraisals.
I explained why that approach was not exactly useful because it only encouraged agents to come up with higher and higher numbers in hopes of getting hired. Did I see value in plucking 2 to 3 hours out of my day to prepare a presentation, go to her home in Fair Oaks and talk about selling that entry-level home so she could hire the agent she probably has decided that she already wants to hire — which does not take into consideration performance standards, service excellence, negotiation skills, experience level nor even competence?
All agents are not the same. I will fight to the death for my clients. I don’t feel that way about prospects.
How to Fix a Vessel Sink That Doesn’t Drain Completely
Need to fix a vessel sink that doesn’t drain?
Need to fix a vessel sink that doesn’t drain? If you are a homeowner who has recently remodeled her master bath, odds are you have probably installed a vessel sink and might have now noticed that your sink does not always promptly drain or drain completely. OK, for me, I hate to admit, it took me 6 years to get fed up with the sink not draining and to acknowledge we had a problem. I imagine it’s because I’m preoccupied, either in a rush to get out the door, or I’m too tired and I’m heading for bed, to focus on the problem of slow drainage.
The need to fix a vessel sink that wasn’t drain completely was one of those things that caused minor irritation but not enough to register on the brain waves in such manner that I needed to find a solution for it. It was just a small PITA, not a huge one. The thing about human nature is after a while, those constant nagging voices in your head that say you should do something about this manage to ripple to the surface, and then I pay attention.
Of course, we tried other things first. Like pouring caustic substances into the drain, hoping maybe it was a hair clog. Although, I replaced all of the horizontal plumbing pipes in my home with copper and the vertical under the sink has been replaced, along with the sewer line, so that was actually kind of a stupid thing to do. Not only that, but the acid tarnished part of the brushed nickel pop-up drain, which had replaced the previous grid drain, because we initially thought the drain itself was causing the problem.
As a result, we had to replace the drain a third time. Since I’m too busy these days as a Sacramento real estate agent to replace the drain myself, I decided to hire a plumber. I hate working on plumbing because things can leak — with plastic you can’t tighten it too much or you’ll break it and with metal you really need more arm strength than I possess. If a plumber had to come out to do such a small job, then he or she may as well fix the drainage issue, too. The time had come. After much research, it became apparent to me that the problem was ventilation. There was no ventilation, no air hole in the vessel sink. If you plugged up the drain with a wash cloth and quickly pulled it, the suction would force the water to drain.
To fix a vessel sink that doesn’t drain, install an air gap, on the left, with a black cap.
This is the same principal as the unhygienic backwash that can happen with a kitchen dishwasher and no air gap, and is why home inspection reports will note the absence of an air gap like a defect. An air gap can be installed under the sink or on top of the sink. In my bath, I opted for under the sink. This means attaching a piece of plastic plumbing that resembles a Saguaro cactus arm, like a right-hand turn signal bike riders use. You stick it in below your sink drain with a piece of plastic that connects the sink drain to the plumbing pipe below leading to the P-trap portion, and to this connecting piece of plastic, you screw in the arm. Then attach an air gap at the top.
Bingo! The sink drains perfectly now. I hope this solves your vessel sink draining problems. If you need to fix a vessel sink that doesn’t drain, this is the solution. If you have a real estate query to solve, I also hope you will call Elizabeth Weintraub, the #1 Sacramento real estate agent at Lyon Real Estate. *Nobody sold more homes in Sacramento last year at Lyon. 916 233 6759.
*per Trendgraphix 2014
