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Elizabeth Weintraub
Is the Era Over for Sacramento Front Lawns?
Are front lawns in Sacramento over? Experts are saying that the era of the lawn in the West has seen better days. Some cities in the Southwest have front yard ordinances that prohibit lawns all together. Lawns are a pain-in-the-butt to maintain. I became so busy in real estate over the years that I no longer have time to mow our front lawn, so we hired a gardener. Then, after staring at the crabgrass and all the other crap that has inched into our 1/4 acre of grassy paradise over a few decades, we decided to kill it all, spray RoundUp everywhere, and put in a brand new lawn, specifically designed to be drought tolerant.
Except our gardener, with his fancy riding mower that he just bought, transfers seeds and bits of other neglected lawns into our pristine environment. In days of extreme heat, I can practically watch the weeds grow and spread. Crabgrass especially. The stuff nightmares are made from. The only way to get rid of the crabgrass is to grab a spade and dig them up myself. Which turns me into fanatical lawn woman — which I don’t want to be.
In fact, as I’ve been reading books about moving to the Big Island on Hawaii, a lawn filled with big ol’ piles of lava seems a better choice to me. I know you probably can’t imagine why a person of relatively sound mind would want a yard to look like the day the Earth blew up after a nuclear holocaust, like in the movie Tank Girl, but there are good reasons for it:
- Reason #1, you don’t have to water it.
- Reason #2, you don’t have to mow it.
- Reason #3, you don’t have to spray chemicals and pesticides.
Lava rock just sits there. True, it doesn’t support the vegetation that people move to Hawaii to gaze upon such as palm trees and exotic anthuriums, but it’s maintenance free. It would be almost like living in Las Vegas, with an ocean but without the casinos and extreme heat. You might not know this, but because the weather and soil conditions in Hawaii can cause trees to grow 10 feet a year, you might have to mow your lawn 2 to 3 times a week!
I was thinking about that when I looked at a lawn in Roseville this weekend. I’m listing more homes in Roseville. It was crabgrass city. In fact, if one dug up all of the crabgrass, I don’t think there would be any lawn left. It would be dirt. The seller asked if it was worth replacing the lawn. Well, in that price range, probably not, because although a new lawn would make the house sell faster, the cost would not be returned 100%. So, look for a new listing, a home in Roseville, to come on the market later this week. Just don’t spend any time staring at the lawn, OK?
Here is a link to read up on Sacramento front lawn ordinances: what you can and cannot do to your Sacramento front lawns in the city. These ordinances do not apply to Roseville.
Whose Listing Is It Anyway?
If a Sacramento real estate agent doesn’t spend much time online, the agent is kinda hosed in this business. Many agents and their sellers are unaware that a listing can show up on a popular website without the listing agent’s name or contact information. It happens every single day, as there are many homes for sale in Sacramento on the internet without the name of the listing agent or listing broker. This means not only does the listing agent remain unknown, but a potential buyer will probably call a buyer’s agent at a competing brokerage.
On the Elizabeth Weintraub website, through my MetroList-partner IDX feed, buyers can search every single listing among homes for sale in Sacramento. Every listing brokerage is identified in this listing feed because that’s the way our Sacramento MLS works. It complies with the law because it makes up its own rules. It’s pretty much the god of Sacramento real estate.
Try explaining this to an annoyed real estate agent who can’t figure out why my picture and contact information shows up on his listing. I regularly get those kind of calls. Agents need to monitor and work on their internet presence. I’ve been working online since 1991. It’s pretty much second nature to me. I go back to Bulletin Boards and squealing dial-up modems.
So, yeah, my listings enjoy great exposure. Put my name into Google and you’ll find almost 1,000,000 results. I challenge you to go to a website and not find one of my listings among the homes for sale in Sacramento. I plaster my listings everywhere and treat each as the individual piece of gold that it is.
At the same time, I provide every listing on all Sacramento homes for sale and beyond on my website. If you’re looking for Sacramento homes for sale, the website for Elizabeth Weintraub is the place to be.
You can call me at 916 233 6759. I answer my phone.
The Worst Sacramento Short Sale
A bouquet of daisies can brighten up just about any old dreary situation — whether it’s a Sacramento short sale that’s driving you nuts, the fact you’re living back home with your parents as 36.4% of Sacramentans adults aged 18 to 31 are according to 2011 Census Bureau data, or maybe you feel too sick to go to work because you’re just plainly sick of work. I have a lot of daisies growing in my yard in Land Park, which I didn’t plant, but they’re thriving in the back yard gardens just the same. So, I hope you like the photo I shot of the daisies I picked.
Daisies perk me up. You can’t help but smile when looking at them. Daisies are probably the happiest flower there is. Even when they’re twisted and growing weirdly to reach upwards toward the sun because some person, I’m not saying who, has not weeded the crap around them, daisies are still joyful. Dancing. Spreading glee.
Unlike the poor soul who called yesterday about doing the worst short sale ever. I looked up the property in the tax records first because that tells me a lot about the seller, the property and what’s happened over the years. Let’s say this condo is in Roseville. It was enough to ascertain that the homeowner had probably been involved in a loan modification for a while. Yup, I was right about that. Plus, he last made a payment 2 years ago. Those things are actually pretty good aspects for a potential short sale in Sacramento.
On the other hand, an interrupted bankruptcy not yet dismissed, another bankruptcy petition on the horizon and a hard-money second mortgage without a loan number, which has most likely been charged off, are not good things. A homeowner can’t do a short sale when a bankruptcy is pending. His Sacramento short sale agent can’t negotiate a second mortgage without a loan number. Hard-money lenders play hardball, if they play at all due to the nature of recourse. And, let’s not even talk about the potential for federal income tax liens or that the homeowner’s association is threatening to sue for $25,000.
Buyers will pay for a lot of things in a short sale. Some buyers will even pay delinquent HOA dues on behalf of the seller, but it’s got to make financial sense. I finally had to ask the caller if he would like to look at the situation objectively. I mean, let’s just isolate one aspect such as the delinquent homeowner dues. First, I don’t know how a homeowner’s association can claim it is owed $25,000 when the dues are around $300 a month. Are they demanding a percentage of equity?
But let’s just say that number is correct. This person’s Roseville condo is worth about $150,000. So the question is if a buyer is paying $150,000 in cash to buy this condo, is there an incentive to pay an additional $25,000? The Sacramento market is hot, but it’s not that hot. The seller agrees. He has questions he needs answers to and more information before choosing a course of action.
Actually, his short sale could be worse. I can think of more things that would make it worse, but why make myself or anybody that miserable? If you’re wondering about a short sale or maybe just selling a home in Roseville, you can call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759, and we’ll analyze your situation together. Every short sale is different. Even the worst ones.
*Some of the facts have been changed to protect the homeowner’s privacy.
If Real Estate Clients Don’t Embrace Technology, It’s OK
Repetition is the key to learning, not only in the real estate business but for almost anything. I think back to my early guitar teacher: You must play this song at least 6 times in a row without a mistake to master it. Yes, grasshopper, but I wanted to play The Monster Mash not Red River Valley. To retain what you learn, you’ve got to use it, and that’s where consistency plays an important role. Doing the same thing over and over, yet improving on it.
I mean, I can fly by the seat of my pants as well as the next Sacramento real estate agent, but it makes more sense to have a rhythm and way of doing business. Not to mention, if one has a method, there is no question as to whether a task was completed or even how it was completed, because it’s always done the same way. It takes all of the guesswork out of it. But that doesn’t mean the method can’t be improved.
We really ought to strive to be continual life-long learners to fully participate in the world, while we’re still here. Not just in our personal life but particularly in our business life. Because things change. It’s not easy always keeping up with change. One day you’re told that, oh, for example, gluten is good, and you should read the fine print on every loaf of bread you buy to make sure it has gluten in it. Next day, gluten kills you and is evil. Or, how about the niacin and cholesterol thing? Do you know how it feels to take 3,000 mg of niacin? Ask the 8-year-old who insisted on taking it. I watched him. First his body turned red from waist up, then his head turned beet red, his ears quickly inflamed and his eyeballs exploded, just like in the cartoons.
I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking whaaa, niacin, you can’t take big ol’ gobs of niacin anymore? Yeah, 3 or 4 years ago, I don’t recall, new research showed that niacin wasn’t helping cholesterol and, in fact, could be bad for you when ingested in large dosages. You can’t take a fact, stick it in your head and rely on it forever. Which I find hugely distressing after going to all of the trouble to acquire it in the first place. If you don’t believe me, take a look at what happened since I was in school and learning about continents. Continental drift was a contested concept. Ditto Super Continent. Today, kids learn about Pangaea and watch videos of India slamming into Asia without batting an eye.
I’m constantly staying on top of things that change in Sacramento real estate and adapting, which means new technology and learning curves. A seller complained the other day I was too high-tech, what with my iPad shooting video of her home instead of taking notes. An iPad is just a convenience to doing more work better and faster. When it’s time for you to hire a Sacramento real estate agent, you should probably consider whether your agent works with the technology of 2013 because that’s how the industry interacts.
However, if you don’t like to use technology, that’s OK, too. I can still press my Bluetooth device to call you on your land line phone. I have a car, a driver’s license and I can drive over to see you.
Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759 for your real estate needs. I answer my phone.
The Rules for an FHA Short Sale
All short sale transactions in Sacramento, especially the FHA short sales, are handled from the perspective of the short sale agent and thus limited by that agent’s experience and education. The more an agent learns, the more an agent realizes in horror what the agent doesn’t know, or at least one would hope it works that way. But some agents take a 3-hour class and proclaim themselves to be certified short sale experts without closing any short sales.
Moreover, short sale seminar classes seem to be gearing up at the moment, even though short sales are on the decline. To sell those short sale classes, the promoters proclaim that banks want to hire short sale agents to move underwater inventory but that’s not entirely true. As long as homeowners are making payments and unlikely to default, the bank doesn’t care. Also, banks have no shortage of real estate agents at the bank’s disposal.
Agents can be such suckers. I know this because I worked in the real estate seminar business some 35 years back. That well known real estate guru is dead now.
I audited a short sale class a few days ago and was astonished at the crap thrown out. Some of the information touted as fact was completely wrong. I won’t name the class except to say that I understand agents have few places to go to get this information and, if one is starving to death, even a handful of sand tastes good.
A big deficiency exists in the FHA short sale field. I see this by the questions asked online from frightened buyers. An FHA short sale happens when the existing financing is an FHA loan and the sale at market value is underwater. HUD (Housing & Urban Development) has set forth very specific requirements and guidelines. The first is to obtain the Approval to Participate in the short sale program outlined by HUD. To get that ATP, homeowners must be first be examined and evaluated to see if they fit other foreclosure alternative programs offered through HUD.
This happens even if there are no other programs that fit that homeowner’s situation. This happens even if the homeowner can no longer live in the home because all of the interior walls have been ripped out and the plumbing stripped. After evaluation of such a situation, which sounds completely insane, then the servicer will request a variance. You just have to know the rules and follow them. The short sale guidelines make sense to HUD. The strict rules don’t have to make sense to anybody else.
FHA also offers loan modifications, for example, only to owner occupants. If a potential seller does not occupy the home, the loan modification will not be granted. No investor loan modifications. End of story.
Yet, that did not stop a homeowner who rented out his home in Sacramento from trying. Even after I sent him the particular HUD guidelines, he still hoped they might give him a loan modification. Who am I to stomp on a homeowner’s desperate attempts to keep a home? I won’t squash those dreams, even if the dream is impossible. It’s not my house. Besides, the owner, even though he was not an owner occupant and has long since moved away, still needs to be evaluated for other foreclosure alternatives.
In my most recent Bank of America FHA short sale, we waited to receive the go-ahead on the Approval to Participate before putting that Sacramento short sale on the market and obtaining a short sale offer. It is the sensible and smart way to do an FHA short sale with Bank of America. Even so, it still took another 90 days to obtain short sale approval. And I’ve been working on short sales since the market crashed in 2005. I’ve closed hundreds, more than a 120 short sales last year alone. This Sacramento short sale agent is always looking for ways to streamline the short sale process.
If you’re sitting in a FHA short sale in Sacramento that seems to be dragging out and going around in circles, you probably have a listing agent on the job who doesn’t close very many FHA short sales. Experience is everything in this business.
