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Elizabeth Weintraub
Photo Galleries of Homes in East Sacramento and Elsewhere
Every morning, before I start my day as a Sacramento real estate agent, I clear all of the spam and junk emails from accounts and try to respond to the people who contact me out of the blue. This is the thing about writing online articles and blogging for so many years is you never know when a person will read a piece and believe it was just published. That’s timeless writing, and evergreen, and while some things are very specific and change from year to year, stately mansions and historic homes tend to inhabit a sacred spot on earth.
Today a writer thanked me for publishing homes in NW Portland. I love Portland to pieces, and not just because we really don’t have to be on the lookout at all times for Wesen or because Portlandia is so hilariously amusing, but because it’s a great city. Sacramento often looks to Portland as a model city: modern, ahead of its times, progressive. And it boasts several historic districts.
Historic district preservation has its foes and its supporters in Sacramento. The supporters are generally people who love homes. I’m not in real estate just to list and show houses, I do it partly because I love homes. Period. All kinds of houses. I had dollhouses as a kid; I built playhouses out of discarded composition shingles at building sites, and I even once drew a diagram of a floor plan in the street in front of my house. I used drywall chalk. I lived in a new subdivision called Heritage Homes in the then Village of Circle Pines, Minnesota, and homes were still being built around us for years after my family moved from Saint Paul.
I drew a floor plan with bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. I had wanted my younger sister to go into the woods and play, but she didn’t want to let go of her teddy bear, and she couldn’t take it with us, for some reason. So, I put her teddy bear in the bedroom in the middle of the street and locked the imaginary door. Of course, when we came back from playing in the woods, her teddy bear was gone. She still speaks to me, though.
Here are photo galleries of homes in Sacramento, along the northern coast of California in Mendocino and in Northwest Portland, Oregon. I hope you enjoy them.
Homes in East Sacramento, Sacramento, California
Homes in Land Park, Sacramento, California
Homes in Mendocino, California
Homes in Portland, Oregon’s Nob Hill Neighborhood in NW Portland
Tax Evasion, Cash for Keys and Bill Bryson
Some concerned citizen and friend to a certain individual who had his home foreclosed upon sent me an email about cash for keys. So often these emails are from the individuals themselves — those who are directly affected by their own actions — but they are disguised as a mother, a girlfriend or a neighbor who is seeking an answer. They ask questions that make me wonder if they made it past the sixth grade.
The problem with relying on what you learned in school is so much of it is garbage. And that’s assuming in the first place that a) you paid attention in school and b) you absorbed the information given and c) you still remember any of it, especially when you get to that certain age in life. Finding out the real facts about what went on in history is a bit disturbing; it’s little like finding out everybody lied to you about Santa Claus.
No single person wrote a high school-mandated history book, and when you get committees involved, things get twisted. Oh, nooooo, we can’t put that negative thing in the book. So we’re spoon-fed a lot of fabricated details and shown only the bright and positive sides of our historical figures. If you really want to know the truth and what happened, you’ve got to read and you’ve got to give a crap, which a lot of people don’t and don’t.
So, this blog is not for those people who don’t and don’t. It’s for those of you who do and do. I am wholly engrossed in One Summer: America 1927, by Bill Bryson. Not just because I enjoy Bryson’s sense of humor, although, to be honest, he could write about a day in the life of an earthworm and I would read it. It’s about Charles Lindbergh’s extraordinary flight to Paris; how Commander Bryd never made it to the North Pole; what a slob and disgusting man the otherwise singularly talented Babe Ruth was; the illiteracy, stupidity and anti-semitism of Henry Ford; the idiocy and profitability of Prohibition; why the greatest flood ever in America of the Mississippi River carried so little weight at the time; and how it’s a major miracle that our country’s leaders managed to shepherd America, stay out of jail and survive the year.
Of course, I’m only halfway through, so I’m probably not even hitting the highlights. The other thing that strikes me about this book is its parallels to modern life. So many things remain the same. Just the names change.
Above all, the book serves as a reminder that it wasn’t being a cold-hearted murderer or a crook that brought down Al Capone. It was tax evasion that put that guy behind bars. His lawyers could argue all they wanted that the government should not be condoning criminal activity by partaking in its profits through taxes, but it didn’t work.
Just like it’s tax evasion facing the guy with the cash for keys question. He wanted to know if after his friend’s home was foreclosed upon and the bank came out to offer the tenant cash for keys, if he would have to pay taxes on the money he did not allegedly receive. Shortly after that email, I received another asking if the recipient must report the cash for keys payment as income.
He probably didn’t appreciate my sense of humor when I said if money rained down from the heavens and he picked up $20 bills in the street, that’s income, even if he did nothing to earn it. I didn’t explain that the bank reports cash for keys payments to the IRS and probably issues 1099s, because people who have to ask that kind of question probably don’t file a tax return.
But I am a Sacramento real estate agent; I’m not a tax accountant. Ask your tax accountant for advice, and pick up a copy of Bill Bryon’s: One Summer.
The Top 5 Real Estate Brokers in Sacramento
If you’ve ever wondered who are the top real estate brokers in Sacramento and our four-county area, the first place a person who is not in the business would look is the number of real estate signs in any given community. You will see Lyon Real Estate’s red-and-white signs everywhere. There is a reason for that.
On top of them are often SOLD sign riders. Sometimes we sell homes so quickly that there is not enough time to plop a sold sign on the post before the sign company comes out to remove the sign. Sometimes we run out of SOLD signs, too. Sometimes sellers want backup offers and don’t want others to know the home is sold. There is one thing you can pretty much count on though, and that’s the home will be sold. Look at this market leader chart below, covering our four-county area in Sacramento as of November of 2013:
The fact is a lot of inventory on the market in Sacramento is overpriced, maybe half of it, in what limited inventory we have. That means some sellers are realistic about what they can get because their homes are selling and some sellers are not. Some sellers will need to wait for a better real estate market, if there is such an animal, in which to sell.
Some buyers think we’re stuck back in 2010 with low prices, too. They don’t like to see prices going up, and they don’t want to pay them. So, the buyers who are closing escrow are the buyers who are meeting market value, and the sellers who are selling are those who are selling at market value. Nobody is really “winning.” That combination is difficult to put together in this market, and it’s becoming more difficult, even for us top producers, but that’s where we shine the brightest!
Who says you have to win? Some buyers just want a nice home and roof over their heads before the rains start.
It doesn’t mean the sky is falling or prices are falling or the market is going to hell in a hand basket, it means we have to work smarter and, yes, harder, as real estate agents to continue to provide excellent service for our clients. We can’t just stick a sign in the yard. But on top of this, there are still plenty of good reasons why sellers choose a Lyon Real Estate agent over any other real estate agent in the Sacramento area. They are illustrated above.
Does Anybody Care Who is the Top Real Estate Agent?
I was out a little late last night doing my second job, which is swimming as a mermaid at the Dive Bar downtown Sacramento. You think that’s the same mermaid in the fish tank night after night, well, I’ve got news for you. Have you ever stood up on the bar and cupped your eyeballs against the fish tank to verify that? Ha, I didn’t think so. And besides, that’s not really my second job, that’s Myrl Jeffcoat in a wig, just ask her.
But whatever I was dreaming about last night, I woke up late this morning. The cats were sequestered and obviously fed because they were quiet. We recently had replaced all of the doors in our house, so with some of the doors closed, I can’t hear a thing from another room in my bedroom. Asteroids could be blasting through the ceiling and tearing holes through the living room floor, and I would sleep through it. Which, by the way, just when you thought we were in the clear and not about to encounter any asteroids in our lifetime, we find out there are millions more — more than 10 times as many as we originally estimated — of undiscovered asteroids speeding toward our two-car garages about to hit Earth at any time and squash us like the pinheads we are.
Whose fault is that? Obviously, it’s the Russians. I grew up in the 1950s and I know where to point the fingers of blame.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. What I meant to talk about before I got so carried away is when I stumbled out of bed, rubbing my sorry eyes and realizing that for the first time in a week my jaw did not ache, although, I did leave the refrigerator door open after filling my water bottle at midnight, and it was open all night, even though it has a warning sound when left ajar, and this was the reason my husband elected to take this point in time to provide a lecture about energy costs and global warming and asking if my mother raised me in a barn, I spotted an email on my computer with a bunch of exclamation points in my inbox.
It stood out amidst the sea of morning emails like a sore thumb. It was titled: Hooray. From my transaction coordinator. My heart leaped a little bit, and I tuned out husband talking for a moment. The email was filled with heart-shaped words and uplifting praise. For just a moment, I allowed myself to feel a smattering of joy. It is possible? Could it be true? My eyes frantically searched the flowering language for the phrase I was so filled with mouth-watering anticipation to read.
It wasn’t there. This was NOT a short sale approval for a particular short sale in Natomas, for which we’ve been tirelessly fighting for forever and know from the bottom of my heart that one day it will happen.
Nope, wasn’t it. Darn, darn!
It was something else less expected. Something that has been happening once or twice a year for a little while now but is still very unexpected when it does occur.
I thought, what? Is Marilyn Goff on vacation? She’s not even in the top 3 agents for the month. Look, here’s #2 and #3. Yikes.
For the month of October 2013, Elizabeth Weintraub is the #1 real estate agent at Lyon Real Estate.
Sacramento Real Estate, TMJ and Linda Ronstadt’s Book
If I had to do it over again, I would not have let the dentist yank out 2 upper molars and 2 lower teeth at the same time. This is a person, mind you, who back in her youth had one wisdom tooth at a time extracted, yet, when it comes to implants, I tell them the more the merrier, just rip ’em all out. Hello, TMJ? I share this bit of over-the-top information with my readers so if you are ever in the same boat, and we are all getting older in this life, remember my advice.
Contessa the Ocicat
Yet, I still continue to work because the work is there and my clients count on me. I’m also addicted to real estate, as my husband will attest. Just because I’m staggering around the house like Dr. House, popping Vicodin and kicking little kittens to the wall with my cane, doesn’t mean I’m not hard at work, either. For proof, here is a photo of our new kitten, Tessa. Oblivious to the fact her toothless mom is in agony.
I can’t really concentrate on the agony or feeling sorry for my miserable self when there is so much going on. Despite everything, I managed to sell two homes: a home in Elk Grove and another in the Med Center. I also listed two homes, a condo in Arden Arcade area and a fixer in South Sacramento.
Then, yesterday, a third-party vendor for Bank of America called. I realize they have to read scripts and are reined in so tightly their elbows rub their cubicle desk-mates’, but they don’t have to talk like Lily Tomlin doing Ernestine. Fortunately, I have my iPad next to me in bed, where I was resting my jaw and could look up all of the information requested. The negotiators now call to let agents know that they’ve uploaded a counter offer in Equator. The used to just send an unending series of emails, but now they also call.
The counter offer was missing the payoff to the second. This was not a case of a miraculous second mortgage release. The second was still secured to the property. It also missed authorization for documentary transfer stamps. I could issue a counter to the negotiator’s counter, but see, then I’m labeled a troublemaker and they get irritated. It’s a lot more interesting to simply accept the counter and then point out the mistakes. Think about it. I’m just trying to comply with their wishes. I can’t help their bozo factor.
We now wait for the negotiator to fix the errors on her end so we can move forward. It’s not like this short sale will have its approval delayed because of this tactic because we’ve still got lovely Green Tree to contend with. Green Tree, if it wants to, can take 90 days to approve. I still close many short sales in Sacramento, although the volume of short sales has decreased and the volume of regular sales has increased dramatically this year, yay!
I have also managed to squeeze in some reading. Just finished downloading and reading Linda Ronstadt’s book, Simple Dreams . Simply put, it’s a simple book. If you’re looking for insight into Linda Ronstadt, what she thinks, hopes, her aspirations, opinions, dreams, any specific details from her life, you won’t get it from this book. It’s possible she has nothing to share. I read the book wondering didn’t she ever date anyone? Jerry Brown, for example? There was a photo of them running on the beach.
My husband and I saw Linda Ronstadt perform in January of 2009 at the Mondavi Center in Davis, California. She stopped singing a short 9 months later. Parkinson’s. Even though her book was a disappointment to me, Linda Ronstadt herself is inspirational.
At least I can hang my future on the fact that some morning I will get up and my jaw will no longer ache. My implants will be in place, and I’ll be experiencing chomper bliss. And Sacramento real estate will continue to move on.
