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Elizabeth Weintraub
Beautiful Mansion Flats Fourplex Short Sale
When the seller first called to discuss selling her family’s fourplex in Mansion Flats, which is in downtown Sacramento, I could hear the emotion in her voice and suspected that selling was a difficult subject for her. I’ve had emotional attachments to properties myself and, even to this day, still ache for a home that fell into the ocean in Ventura, odd as that might sound. So, I understand sellers who have a hard time saying goodbye to their homes, even homes like this one, a place they did not live.
This is a beautiful time-standing-still Mansion Flats Victorian fourplex for sale as a short sale. Just walking around the building, you can see the love and care that went into maintaining the building over the years. The paint job still looks good. The stairs and railing are in pretty good condition. I did not go inside because we do not want to disturb the tenants until we receive final approval from Wells Fargo. We have preliminary approval on the price at $330,000.
There are two units up and two units down. The second-floor units are 748 square feet each and are 2 bedroom, 1 bath units, rented at $750 and $650. The first-floor units are 648 square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 bath units, rented at $700 each. The tenants pay electricity and gas. The seller pays for water, sewer and garbage, plus the seller gives one of the tenants a $50 a month allowance in exchange for maintaining the yard. There are no garages; the HVAC is window A/C units, and wall furnaces. Each unit has a washer and dryer. Three tenants are long-term.
There are no rent prorations / deposit credits through escrow as the buyer will be responsible for those, and the buyer will need to pay any overdue city utility bills. Call your downtown Sacramento listing agent for approximate numbers regarding this property in Mansion Flats.
DO NOT DISTURB THE TENANTS.
Inspection of units after final short sale approval from Wells Fargo. For more offer tips, call your downtown listing agent, Elizabeth Weintraub.
328 14th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814. Listed exclusively by Elizabeth Weintraub, Lyon Real Estate, as a short sale with a preapproved price by Wells Fargo of $330,000. Offers reviewed June 10th. 916.233.6759.
All information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
The Sacramento Real Estate Agent Who Shows 3 Homes
Not every home that comes on the market these days is a highly desirable home in a hot location. Some of them are ordinary homes in Sacramento, owned by sellers with a little bit of equity who might need every scrap of equity they can squeeze out. Every once in a while, one of these sellers might be close to short sale status but would be willing to pay a couple of dollars just to close the transaction. These homes seem to be overlooked by buyers or possibly used by real estate agents as “the home not to buy.”
Back in the old days, and quite possibly even today as I type, real estate agents used to show 3 homes:
- A home the buyer cannot afford
- A perfect home that meets the buyers’ needs
- A home so horrible nobody would ever want to live in it
And they would show the 3 homes in the above order. Because when the Sacramento home buyer falls in love with the first home, it can be heart-breaking to realize that it’s just a dream, and the buyer can’t really afford to buy that home. It’s similar to the concept that HGTV uses on House Hunters, except 2 of those homes are often not for sale. After the buyer’s heart is broken, it’s on to tour the home that’s perfect.
The buyer can’t believe her good luck. Everything is exactly the way she thought it would be. The living room is in the front, she walks through the formal dining — past the two rooms she will never ever use in her lifetime — and into the kitchen with the Wolf 6-burner stove — a stove she will never turn on, but wow, it looks magnificent. Which reminds, did you hear that Burger King is now delivering to select areas in Sacramento? Yes, it is true.
While the buyer is salivating over the perfect home, the agent takes her to the home nobody would ever live in. Maybe it’s nestled next to the train tracks, or under the freeway, or across the street from a graveyard, by a school, or maybe the home is just a mess inside, with torn-up carpeting, Corian counters and half-chewed cabinet doors in the kitchen. Most buyers do not want to buy a fixer these days and, if they do, they will discount heavily for repairs that they have no idea how to undertake or what the repairs will actually cost.
So, then the buyer goes to the agent’s office and triumphantly declares she will buy house number two.
Sometimes, though, your number just comes up. Sometimes, in this limited inventory marketplace, we run out of the homes that are too expensive and the homes that fit a buyer’s every requirement. Sometimes, all that is left are the unique homes with a defect. Did your agent show 3 homes? Think about it.
And that’s when we’ll get three offers in one day on the same house.
An Unusual Saturday for This Sacramento Real Estate Agent
It is not usual for me to meet with clients nor attend a listing presentation on a Saturday. I generally use this day for writing my blogs, articles and newsletters for my homebuying website at About.com. In between, I answer calls about listings, book future appointments, so it’s not like I’m totally tuned out to my Sacramento real estate obligations, but it’s mandatory that I set aside a little bit of time in schedule to write.
However, today, I have three appointments. They could not be scheduled at any other time, so I had to squeeze them into my Saturday. If I were a less organized person, this would not be possible, but I am flexible enough to be able to make last-minute changes. In fact, I seriously doubt another agent in Sacramento could survive the fast pace of my real estate business yet still maintain time to focus on each client individually like I do. Not one of my clients ever feel as though I don’t have enough time for them, because I make time for every client.
I’m meeting first with a couple who have a fourplex in downtown Sacramento, and I’ve already received preapproval on their short sale. I wanted to make sure they had no worries nor concerns when we go into the short sale. This meant juggling a few events for them so it better met their personal schedule. We have a preapproved price, so we’re basically meeting to shake hands face-to-face and sign the listing paperwork. This will go on the market on Monday.
Next, I have a seller who needs to sign a purchase contract and has no access to a fax machine nor a printer. She cannot scan documents. She could pop in to any of our 17 offices and I could email the documents to that office, but she prefers to come to my office, and that’s OK. I will bring the purchase offer with me and highlight the places where she needs to sign, just so we don’t miss any of those all-important initials.
Ending my day is a listing presentation for a seller in the Pocket. My team member Barbara Dow was out showing homes yesterday and called this seller to make an appointment to show her home. The seller said there were no showings. Apparently, the seller told her she was so mad at her agent that she had just dumped her agent. I asked Barbara to give me the phone number, and I checked MLS. Sure enough, the listing had been withdrawn. So, I called the seller and said: “Hey, I hear you’re looking for a real estate agent? Well, guess what? I am a Sacramento real estate agent! How lucky is that?”
I can always write tomorrow.
When Your Sacramento Short Sale Contract Expires
My transaction coordinator flags me when a short sale contract is about to expire. But it’s not really my place to ask the buyer’s agent to extend. As a Sacramento short sale agent who represents the seller, however, I do want to protect the seller’s interests. Generally, I will call the seller to ask if the seller wants to extend the contract with the buyer, and often the seller has no reason not to extend the purchase contract. But sometimes, for other reasons, a seller might want to cancel the contract and choose a different buyer.
What I find interesting is that buyers rarely realize their contracts are about to expire, and buyer’s agents are often in the dark as well. If an agent doesn’t sell very many short sales, an agent might not know that the short sale addendum sets the contract period. In Section 1A, the short sale addendum establishes the time frame during which a buyer and seller agree to wait for lender approval of the short sale.
It’s funny because upon contract inception, agents often miss inserting a time frame. The default, if no other number of days is entered, is 45 days. That’s laughable because very few short sales are approved in 45 days. I wonder how many short sales completed between other parties have expired by the time they close escrow? I imagine a lot. Because so many professionals tend to overlook the power of Section 1A.
Up front, buyers often balk at inserting 90 days, which is almost always my recommendation. But when those 90 days are over and the seller is about to cancel the contract, all of a sudden the buyer is willing to extend for as long as it takes.
Why don’t they just do that upfront? They wouldn’t have this problem if they put, say, 360 days, in Section 1A. It’s unlikely their contract would expire by the time they receive approval.
If Your Home in Land Park Doesn’t Immediately Sell
It’s pretty frustrating in a seller’s market for a seller to wonder why all the houses around his house are selling but his is not. Especially a gorgeous home in Land Park, listed by a Land Park agent. There are basically 3 reasons why a house doesn’t sell:
- location
- price
- condition
If the location is questionable or of concern to a buyer, then the price needs to be adjusted accordingly. It’s difficult to get the same price for a home like that as compared to a home in a highly desirable location, but sometimes you can.
The trick is to correctly position that home among the others offered for sale. A seller might want to think like a buyer before putting his home on the market. He should look for trends in the marketplace such as how long does it take each home to be exposed to the market before it sells? This is known as Days on Market. Any Land Park agent will know the approximate days on market when asked.
But more important, the seller should examine the competition, just like his Land Park agent will do. For example, if he were a buyer looking, say, in the $350,000 to $400,000 range for a home in Land Park, what else is available for sale? What can he buy for that price? How do those homes compare to the one the seller intends to put on the market? If his listing is the only available listing, he will get a lot of action, maybe even multiple offers, even if his home is not in the best location.
I’ve seen this happen over and over. Might have a home that sits on the market for a few weeks with no offers but generating a lot of showings. Getting showings tells this Land Park agent the buyer’s agent put the Land Park home on a tour for a reason. Was it the first home or the last home? Is the buyer’s agent using that home as the bad house nobody would ever buy? Agents often show a bad house to use as comparison. We might have no offers but one day three offers show up. If I were to check MLS, it would probably tell me there was nothing left to buy. Not in Land Park, nor Curtis Park nor East Sacramento, which are three areas a Land Park buyer might look if she wants to buy in Land Park.
Sometimes, your number just comes up. But wouldn’t it be easier to just reduce the price in the first place?
If you’d like to chat with an experienced agent who lives and works in Land Park, call Elizabeth Weintraub, at Lyon RE, 916.233.6759.
