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Elizabeth Weintraub
What the Home Warranty Company Won’t Tell You
You’d be hard pressed to find a Sacramento real estate agent who won’t ask a seller to pay for a buyer’s home warranty plan. About the only instance I see in which buyers don’t get a home warranty plan when buying a home (unless they want to pay for it themselves or their agent is in a generous mood), is in a short sale. And that’s because most short sale banks will not authorize a home warranty payment for a buyer. Those short sale banks squeeze every dime out of the transaction. So, the message you’ll hear from short sale banks is no home warranty plan for you.
The reason agents like home warranties and why sellers will pay for it is because it’s like an additional buffer between the buyers and the sellers when something goes wrong. And believe you me, something will go wrong. It always does. It might not happen a few weeks after closing or even after a few months, but generally during that first year of home ownership something goes haywire. When it does, buyers tend to jump to the conclusion that the seller knew about this stinkin’ defect, whatever the heck it is, and purposely didn’t tell them it was going to break.
This is where the home warranty plan steps in. The homeowner pays a service call fee and, much of the time, the rest of the work order is paid for in full. Unless it isn’t. Unless it is exempt from coverage, and you’d be astonished at what’s not covered or what costs extra to cover. This is where your home warranty representative can be your saving grace. I fought many a battle with the home warranty company because it did not want to pay for something as simple as replacing a sink faucet.
Now, after your home warranty expires — because it’s only good for a year, they didn’t tell you that? — well, now the company will try to get you to renew it. The renewal price is a lot higher than the one-year fee paid by the seller. Whether it’s worth it to you depends on what is likely to go wrong at your house and what it could cost to fix. If your policy costs you $500, and the AC condenser cost you $400, plus you paid a service call on top, you might be (gasp) better off without the home warranty.
My furnace is on the blink right now, and I don’t have a home warranty. We got up yesterday morning, and it was 62 degrees in the house. No heat. Brrrrr. That’s cold for Sacramento. Ten years of a home warranty payment would pay for a new furnace. But we’ve owned our home for 12 years, so, see, financially we’re ahead, no matter what. Fortunately our problem was just a $400 control board. Everybody has to weigh his or her own situation as to whether a home warranty is worth it.
Insight Into a Green Tree Short Sale in Sacramento
I know a Sacramento short sale agent or two who will not work on a Green Tree short sale, but I manage to get these short sales accepted. I will admit that it’s a bit easier when Green Tree is in first position (and perhaps just the servicer) than it is when Green Tree is in second position and say, hard money. Especially in California. Because those hard-money second loans carry recourse.
This means if the bank did not approve the short sale and the home went to foreclosure, a second lender may have the right to go after the seller and try to collect if that loan was not purchase money. It’s also a reason that some banks, not necessarily just Green Tree, might think twice about approving a short sale. Because if the bank approves the short sale, the bank needs to release the seller from personal liability. That’s not the case with foreclosure of hard-money loans. Moreover, sometimes banks are paid more money to go to foreclosure.
Green Tree’s policy is to approve a short sale in 90 days. It’s not unusual, depending on the negotiator, for Green Tree to issue the short sale approval letter in a shorter time frame. One of the troubles that can arise is Green Tree, when in second position, might issue short sale approval before the first lender. If the first lender takes too long, that approval from Green Tree can expire. If it expires, Green Tree might not issue an extension. A short sale extension is not always guaranteed, even though some people might think so.
On the other hand, if the short sale approval from Green Tree has expired, it might also send the file to its charge-off department, depending on the length of time that transpired after the last mortgage payment. Once the file gets to the short sale charge-off team, there is no guarantee that the department will accept the same terms as stated in the previous approval letter.
If you’re looking for a short sale agent in the Sacramento Valley to handle your short sale, you should select an agent with vast experience. I’ve sold more than $65 million in short sales since 2006. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Picking the Buyer When Selling Homes in Sacramento Could Violate Fair Housing
Regular sellers with equity — and even sellers of homes in Sacramento who end up doing a short sale — can choose their buyer and establish requirements that the buyer must meet. You know why they can do this? Because they own the home and, with some legal exceptions, sellers can decide what kind of person buys it.
This is not to say that a seller can discriminate against any of the protected classes under the Fair Housing Act. For example, a seller could not say I am interested only in selling to a family with kids or to a guy in a wheelchair. You can’t pick a protected class and exclude others or vice versa. This is yet another reason to hire a top Sacramento real estate agent because agents are supposed to know, understand and follow the Fair Housing Act, among other regulations.
I’ve personally had buyers say to me they did not want to buy in a neighborhood in which minorities of any color live and, believe it or not, I have stopped the car and told them to get the hell out. Fortunately, we were still in the parking lot and not on the W / X freeway. They can go find some redneck yo-yo to work with them, but not this agent. Sadly to say, there is always some doofus moron who doesn’t give a flying fig about Fair Housing, but I’m definitely not one of those.
Sellers are allowed, though, to choose an owner occupant, for example, over an investor. I asked our lawyers. That’s almost a moot point as most of the investors have left the market in Sacramento, which leaves a bit of breathing room for Sacramento home buyers now, but it’s good to know. Btw, if you see that sales are down by 1/3rd, it’s because the investors have split. But some are still hanging out, writing lowball offers in hopes that if they throw enough crap at the wall, something will stick.
If you want to ensure the quality of your neighborhood and care enough to please your neighbors when you depart, then you might want to consider selling to an owner occupant over a buyer who will rent out your house. Even if that home needs fixing up, a rental investor is not always the answer. Whenever there is an increase of rentals in a neighborhood, the value of the other homes around it tend to go down.
Are There Valid Reasons to Dump a Real Estate Agent?
I am rarely in the shoes of a first agent who listed a home that did not sell in Sacramento. Unless, of course, the seller was unreasonable on pricing or refused home staging. I’ve seen a handful of those sorry situations in which the seller dumps the agent, reduces the price, stages the home and then bingo, it sells with agent #2, with agent #1 left standing there wondering what am I, chopped liver? Why did nobody listen to me? But bottom line is nobody can really make another person do what that person doesn’t want to do without brute force, and few agents want to clobber a seller over the head, making him stare down the barrel of a gun with a foot up his neck.
More often than not I’m on the other side of this scenario. After a seller fired his agent — or took the path of least resistance and let the listing expire before hiring the next agent — namely in order to hire this top producing Sacramento real estate agent. That’s the position I love to be in because now I’ll get paid for another agent’s hard work, plus I am most likely working for a far more reasonable and seasoned seller.
I made an interesting point to a seller a few months ago when he was thinking about hiring another agent because he had not yet received an offer. Sellers can be impatient, I understand. I told the seller that he could certainly hire another agent but he’d be throwing away his money. He did not strike me as the kind of guy who wants to lose money, but that’s exactly what he would be doing by hiring somebody else. Another agent would simply capitalize on all of my efforts, duplicate my strategy and pocket my fee. He should reward the agent who has earned the commission and let her sell his home. Put that way, he agreed, and I sold that home for him.
Having said that, sometimes there are valid reasons to fire an agent. No iffs, ands, or butts about it, in this crazy profession, most agents are not on the ball. Read more on About.com today in an article I wrote about Top 10 Reasons Sellers Fire a Real Estate Agent.
Don’t Wait for Buyers to Tell You What’s Wrong With Homes in Sacramento
The colors of homes like these in the Netherlands do not work in Sacramento
What works for house colors in countries such as Italy, Ireland or Mexico, does not necessarily work as colors of choice for homes in Sacramento. Personally, I adore colorful homes and would love to see more Americans adopt color, but then again, pioneers tend to get arrows in their backs, so I don’t want to initiate the trend. If you’re expecting to put your home on the market, though, the color of your home down to the color of your carpeting can be the difference between selling or not selling.
Sometimes, these things are not evident to a homeowner nor necessarily apparent to the agent, either. But you find out what’s wrong by putting the home on the market and obtaining buyer feedback. You can do this on your own before putting your home on the market, which is what I advise. You can ask your neighbors and your friends and, what the heck, grab somebody you don’t know off the street and invite them on over. Ask for their honest opinions. Walk through the house and assess every room. Stand in each doorway and stare. What’s wrong with your house? Ask your agent, too. Some agents don’t want to tell you the truth for fear you won’t like them. Tell your agent: go ahead and offend me.
Because you know what? There’s probably something wrong with it. Not in your eyes, of course, but in the eyes of today’s buyers. Your eyes don’t count. You’re leaving and moving away where you can do the same horrible things to your new home. But this home, the one that you’re living in right now? This home needs to change to meet the needs of the buying public. Buyers have certain requirements that homes in Sacramento need to meet.
Yes, I realize you don’t wanna paint that wall or yank up that shag carpeting but you’ll pay for that stubbornness when selling. A neighbor of mine painted her Land Park home the same orange color as the light rail station over on 21st Street. I like it, I just wouldn’t buy it nor want to buy a home next to it because it doesn’t conform. It looks weird. People like homes in Sacramento to be similar and not stand out like a sore thumb. Trust this Sacramento real estate agent, you don’t want to be that weird home when you’re selling a home in Sacramento.
