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Elizabeth Weintraub
Why Do Sacramento Homes Come Back on the Market?
Just because you spot a home in the Sacramento MetroList MLS with a “back on market” status does not mean there was something wrong with the property; yet, that assumption is the first premise that some buyer’s agents and their buyers attach themselves to. The problem with many back-on-market listings is the buyers (or the buyer’s agents) did not understand what they were doing when they wrote the purchase offer. It’s like they embarked on a wild bender and woke up face down in puke. OMG, what did I do, they wonder, I bought a house.
I try to follow the rules of MLS, and unlike some agents, I actually read the MLS manual. MLS rules state we listing agents have 3 days to change the status in MLS from Active to Pending. However, there is also the real world, and the real world says if I’ve got buyer’s agents showing my pending listing for 3 days straight when I knew it was pending and did not inform them, my name in the real estate community would turn to mud. It’s unethical to purposely not change the status in MLS and to misrepresent what’s going on.
The problem that arises is we might be led to believe that the buyer is steadfast and then we discover, no, there is a problem with the buyer. Meanwhile, the listing is sitting in pending status. When we put back the listing on the market, now everybody wants to know why, what went wrong — when it was the messed-up buyer or agent that was the problem.
In one instance, we moved a perfectly beautiful home in Elk Grove from its fresh active status to pending when an Elk Grove buyer with a criminal record hoodwinked the seller into accepting an offer. The buyer’s agent was absolutely steadfast that the buyer could perform until it turned out that the buyer, oops, had no money, no car and no job. Yet this home went back on the market, and it’s not the same.
In another instance, the buyers, with the buyer’s agent’s permission, wrote multiple offers to buy a home and ended up in contract on two homes at the same time. The buyer’s agent did not immediately notify the listing agent. Meanwhile, status changed from active to pending in MLS. A few days went by before the buyers bothered to decided which home they wanted to buy (ultimately the answer was neither). That buyer’s agent learned a hard lesson, but still, the seller’s home ended up in back-on-market status.
Recently, a seller accepted a contingent offer, meaning the buyer had a home to sell, and the buyer asked for, let’s say, 7 days to sell her home. Her agent noted the home was on the market and should quickly sell. Before advising my seller to accept the contingency to sell a home from the buyer, this Sacramento real estate agent checked the accuracy of the listed price, and it seemed very reasonable. The seller accepted the offer. We changed the status in MLS to pending.
Then, the buyer’s agent did a double take when when we asked for the contingency release within the specified time period. Turns out she did not correctly write the Contingency of Purchase. She made a huge mistake. She had meant to ask for a much longer time period, consisting of a few months. I guess now I have to add to my repertoire of insulting questions to ask buyer’s agents: Does your buyer understand what she signed?
This Sacramento spring market seems so squirrelly. It’s bad enough that I have to personally call banking institutions to verify funds on deposit (because the loan officers and buyer’s agents don’t always give a hoot), and interrogate the buyer’s agents as to whether the buyer wrote two offers. I don’t mean to insult anybody. But this back-on the-market business is damaging to sellers, and I have to look out for my seller’s interests. I might also change my policy now to leaving the status modifier in ACTIVE for a few days, just to make sure everybody is on the same page. If buyer’s agents want to know whether we have any offers, they’ll just have to find out the old-fashioned way.
Why This Sacramento Agent Carries a Display Key
There are days in Sacramento real estate when it seems like one just can’t use enough technology or have enough electronic gizmos at one’s disposal. The gift of magic always come with a price, though. Sometimes digital wonders don’t work. They can go haywire. Or, something else malfunctions. Like the other day when gmail went down and thousands of gmail users went bonkers.
As a Sacramento real estate agent, I maintain a half dozen email accounts through various service providers and online sites, yet I take great precautions that no one will ever find my email address online. I utilize a variety of devices to access the Internet, and I have more than a few ways to get online, which means short of an asteroid hitting the Earth and wiping out all communications, I can always reach out and touch someone.
This is why I don’t subscribe to an eKey through my cellphone. I don’t like putting all of my eggs into one basket. If it doesn’t work, I’m hosed. Agents need either an eKey or display key to access a Supra lockbox, which contain keys for showing a home. An agent on another website wrote a cute blog yesterday about playing an online game and in order to earn extra points, had set his cellphone clock ahead by 24 hours. Then, he tried to show homes to a busload of passengers and his eKey would not work.
Hey, a person can drop his cellphone into the toilet or she can flip it out the car window. What happens if the cell tower is down or a Sacramento agent is showing a home in the foothills without cellphone coverage? There are must too many variables. For me, it’s much safer to just subscribe to a display key and forget about using my cellphone to access a lockbox. That way, if I experience a little hiccup, I can call the Supra toll-free number and an extremely patient person will explain how to straighten a paperclip, stick it into the hole in the back to reset the display key, and all is well with the world.
To have it not work once is too many times. Yeah, it might cost a little bit more, but this Sacramento agent prefers to be safe than sorry.
Don’t Make These Sacramento Home Buying Mistakes
It can be a slow process, trying to buy a home in Sacramento, but it’s even slower if you don’t know where you want to live. Home buyers just starting out might have unreasonable expectations, and those types of expectations can lead to disappointment.
Before engaging a buyer’s agent to show homes, it’s common for buyers to identify and target a few communities. Agents can be a great resource, but buyers should really ask an agent to show homes when the buyers are ready and able to write a purchase offer. That’s not to say that an agent can’t help buyers to choose a place to live because that’s what we do. However, there are plenty of open houses every Sunday in Sacramento where buyers can go to look at homes, talk to other agents, get a feel for neighborhoods, without a personal escort.
Agents don’t hold all of the information anymore regarding homes for sale, but we do have access to MLS, which a buyer does not. We can send a buyer listings in certain areas defined by custom searches or however a buyer would like to receive the information. The best home buying website is generally the buyer’s agent’s own website or a feed directly from MLS.
Here are some of the common home buying mistakes I’ve heard about over the past few weeks that can easily lead to disappointment and frustration:
- Looking at homes with sales prices way above the buyer’s affordability point. It makes no sense to look at homes priced at $400,000 if your pre-approval letter maximum is $300,000.
- Dragging your agent through the same square-foot model home over and over, which a buyer does not like. If you really hate that closet and bathroom, it won’t look any different in the same model with different paint on the walls.
- Expecting a buyer’s agent to immediately respond to your email questions about new homes you just found on another website when she is showing homes to another client for a few hours.
- Asking personal questions of a seller to satisfy idle curiosity that have no bearing on whether the home is suitable for you and your children.
- Finding a home that fits your needs and pricing but not buying that home because you wonder if there might be some other home that is better for you. There is always another home.
Bottom line, if a home buyer needs to personally inspect 200 homes before buying a home in Sacramento, that buyer is probably not yet ready to buy a home. And that’s OK. But let your agent know and discuss expectations before asking an agent to show homes.
Super Bowl Sunday 2014 and Sacramento Open Houses
Home buyers in Sacramento were out in droves over the weekend, attending open houses, touring new listings and writing offers. This was the one weekend in January to do it because we got a break in those football games. Granted, I am not a person who watches football. I am probably in the minority but football doesn’t interest me. Not even if I imagine the team players as short sale negotiators at various banks — oh look, Bank of America just swiped the ball from Green Tree, and Wells Fargo bashed PNC in the head. Nope, still doesn’t do it for me.
Next weekend, of course, will be Super Bowl Sunday 2014, and it’s just not a good weekend for an open house. Oh, sure, there are Super Bowl widows and widowers who will be out and about, but the bulk of Americans will be focused on who will win the Super Bowl. Big Super Bowl parties everywhere except at my house. I’m not even sure who is playing, I think Denver and . . . After we get past this next weekend, it should be clear sailing through spring into summer for Sacramento real estate.
A negotiator at SLS called me this morning to ask when we would record on a short sale scheduled for closing. I told her it would be tomorrow. But what TIME, she persisted, almost in a whiny voice. Well, Sacramento has 5 recording times — it will be one of those, I offered. One of those 5 times. Don’t know which one. She probably would have smacked me if we were sitting across the table from each other.
But then I’d throw a football into her face and break her nose.
Pay Attention to Noise When Buying a Home in Sacramento
Don’t buy a home near an airport.
When buying a home in Sacramento, you need to pay attention to the noise factor, even if you’re half deaf, which I partly am. When I was in third grade, I stuffed a soda straw into my right ear canal. Why? I don’t know. Why do little kids ram crayons up their noses? I don’t even recall doing such a stupid thing but the pain afterwards was particularly memorable. My mother did not believe I had an ailment and sent me to school anyway, and I spent most of the morning with my head on my desk, quietly sobbing. Next thing I knew I had a large vacuum hose attached to my ear, which caused a great deal of pain as it sucked out the straw at the doctor’s office.
That soda straw pierced my eardrum. As a result I have a slight hearing loss in my right ear, which means when I sleep, if I want to block out sound, I simply sleep on my left ear. There is somewhat of an upside to this mishap, especially since I once lived in shared quarters with 17 other guys in Nederland, Colorado. When you throw loud rock-and-roll from my younger decades into the mix, it’s a wonder I’m not deaf, but I suppose there is still time.
I do find that the older I get, the more sensitive to sound I become. Because the older I get, the more I appreciate silence. (Silence is golden but my eyes still see . . . with the help contact lenses for old people.) I treasure the sound of nothing. Absolute quiet. Peaceful. Tranquil. Silent. No sounds of the freeway, children screaming, dogs barking, no helicopters overhead or planes, no logs crackling in a fireplace, no water running through a sprinkler system, no birds singing or crickets cricketing or frogs croaking, not even a sound of wind blowing through treetops.
Home buyers don’t want a lot of noise, either. A friend of my husband, a former editor at the Sacramento Bee, once said the thing she disliked about Sacramento was the sound of the freeway no matter where you were. She is right, it is hard when buying a home in Sacramento to stay away from neighborhoods where noise does not exist on some level. Even though my home in Land Park is at least a mile from Old Sacramento, I can still hear the train on the weekends, but dual pane windows blocks out all other sound.
My sister lives under a flight path in Minneapolis. You can practically identify what the first-class passengers are drinking, the belly of the plane flies so low. My husband lived 2 blocks from the El in Chicago. Home prices in those types of neighborhoods are much lower than in areas where noise is reduced.
If you’re in the market to buy a home in Sacramento, stand in the yard for a while and listen. Go there at different times of the day and different days of the week and listen. Ask yourself if you can adapt to the noises you hear. Because when it comes time to sell — and there will be a time you will want to sell — that noise factor will influence the price a buyer will pay. You just don’t realize it now because you’re surrounded by sound and noise every day, and you’re probably much younger than me. Not to mention, that noise-polluted home is probably very affordable. I always say the best time to think about selling a home is when you’re buying a home in Sacramento.
