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Elizabeth Weintraub
The Guy Behind This Sacramento Real Estate Agent
People often ask me in amazement how I happen to have a life while being a successful Sacramento real estate agent. They want to know how I balance things because in this nutty world of real estate, sometimes, something’s gotta give. We real estate agents work wild hours trying to close business. Yet, those who know me, know I don’t want to give up anything that is important.
The first way I deal with the amount of business I create and close is to be organized. I’m pretty good at creating systems, methods and processes, plus I rarely vary or make exceptions. My priority is to keep my clients happy. I was thinking about this yesterday as I was getting ready to leap into my day and keep appointments, plus list two new homes. I listed a home in Antelope and another in Bridgeway Lakes in West Sacramento.
Yup, I concluded that a Sacramento real estate agent, no matter who she is or how much business she has, still puts on her deodorant one armpit at a time. I was standing in front of the mirror wrapped in a towel, looking at my deodorant when the thought crossed my mind that it’s getting low. I could begin to see the applicator below the white powder. It was then that it hit me:
I never have to worry about deodorant.
I don’t have to be concerned that I might run out because there will be a new applicator under the sink. I don’t have to look for it. It will simply appear. I do not have to go to the grocery store and stand there in front of the bazillion different types of deodorant to try to find my brand. I don’t even know if I have a brand, to tell you the truth, or what color packaging I would search for. I do have specific requirements in deodorant. You know, I want the antiperspirant qualities so I don’t drip all over my clients when signing documents. I want the deodorant but I don’t want a scent that annoys people, so I prefer unscented. I also don’t want to leave white powdery residue all over my clothes when I pull on a shirt over my head.
I am spared having to stand in the aisle and stare at these products. None of those thoughts ever enter my head. My husband knows what I want, and he gets it for me. I don’t know what a carton of eggs cost. Is a half gallon of milk $2.00 or $5.00? I don’t know. I would be a lousy contestant on the Price is Right. I don’t plan my meals or shop for my groceries or cook any meals apart from popping something into the microwave.
I don’t mow the lawn anymore or clean my house. I don’t do laundry or hand-wash any garments. When one of our cats gets sick, my husband takes the furball to the vet. Behind every successful real estate agent is a support system. Nobody climbs that mountain by herself.
My husband, Adam, has been doing freelance writing over the past few years, but that may all change soon. He has more than 25 years experience as a newspaper journalist and editor and, like many others in Sacramento, he’s looking for employment. He might get hired at U.C. Davis or at the State Capitol. Or, he might continue to do freelance writing for various publications, hard to say. But whatever path he choses, I know that he will continue to be my rock. I am so lucky and grateful that he is in my life. You want to know how a Sacramento real estate agent can be so successful? You should look at the man behind the agent.
Should a Sacramento Short Sale Agent Get Paid?
I received an obscure email yesterday from a person who was very upset because the writer realized a Sacramento short sale agent gets paid to do a short sale and, in his words, the seller gets nothing. At first, I could not believe my eyes, but as the words on the page popped out at me, I understood it was simply the frustration and anger of the person writing, and logic didn’t enter into it.
Because if pure logic entered into it, the writer would be upset with himself. He’s the one who, for better or worse, is saddled with an underwater home that he could no longer afford. Maybe it was bad timing, which is nobody’s fault, or maybe the person lost their job and can’t find another, which is also nobody’s fault. Or, maybe the person knew from the beginning the dangerous waters, hard to say, and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is where one is with the property now and what one intends to do about it. If a person doesn’t want to keep an underwater home, this homeowner faces two basic choices: short sale or foreclosure.
A Sacramento short sale agent really wants to help. It’s far easier to sell a home that is not a short sale, believe me.
For many homeowners, the short sale is the better solution:
- A short sale removes personal liability.
- Gives the sellers a clean break.
- Transfers ownership in a dignified manner.
- Relieves a seller of any further responsibility for the property.
- Provides a closure.
And yes, an agent who sells the home and negotiates a successful short sale earns a commission. All of the fees — to the listing and selling brokers, the listing agents, the selling agents, and the costs of sale — are paid from the proceeds of sale; there is no upfront or out-of-pocket expense to the seller.
Try hiring a lawyer to give legal advice for free. They won’t do it. Well, they might if you offer to buy a martini — dry, with a splash of vermouth and a couple of jalapeno-stuffed olives. However, agents don’t sell homes for free, either. A Sacramento short sale agent sells a home on a contingent basis. When finally the home is sold and the seller receives short sale approval, the agent gets paid for services upon closing. Sellers are not paying that agent in advance or writing a check.
Moreover, simply because the short sale agent is receiving a commission doesn’t mean a seller is getting the short end of the stick. If a seller wants to see the short end of the stick, stand back and let the home go to foreclosure. Don’t bother trying to buy another home in 2 years after a foreclosure, because it won’t happen. Every time a seller applies for credit for the next 7 years after a foreclosure, the seller will need to disclose the foreclosure and the credit will most likely be denied.
If a homeowner wants to stick it to the man, do a short sale. If a seller wants to do the bank a favor, then by all means, let the bank seize the home in a foreclosure. Sellers are very angry with the way some employees at short sale banks talk down to them and treat them. You wouldn’t believe some of the stories I hear from sellers. I bet most short sale agents and support staff who are involved with distressed sellers feel their pain; it’s hard not to.
However, to get angry with an agent because the agent is getting paid to perform a service is like getting mad that you get a paycheck when you go to work.
Trust and Your Sacramento Real Estate Agent
If a client doesn’t trust and believe in his Sacramento real estate agent, the two have no business working together. And vice versa. Wha-what you say? What does trust or belief have to do with anything? Plenty, I say. Whether it’s a seller and listing agent or a buyer and buyer’s agent, there is a legal document signed that creates what is called a fiduciary relationship between the parties. If the fiduciary relationship is broken, so is the business.
This point was so beautifully illustrated in Mad Men, Season 6, Episode 6. OK, maybe a bit of it was a trifle narcissistic, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Don is sitting in a restaurant with Herb, the slimy Jaguar account guy. Don is about to ask Herb about the reason for the meeting. Herb says, hey, there’s this guy at the company who is new and doesn’t know much, but he’s got some good ideas, I think. I’d like you to pitch your campaign to him and get his input.
Don reaches into coat pocket, retrieves a business card and hands it to Herb. What is this? asks an astonished Herb.
This is the guy who will be handling your account from now, Don replies.
When Don gets back to the office, his co-workers and partners are royally ticked at him for dumping the Jaguar account. Don defends himself by saying it was already over. And it was over. He was absolutely correct. There was no trust and no belief in Don’s abilities anymore.
Furthermore, when the office learns that they’re about to land the GM account, which I presume was the new Corvette — because let’s not forget I was growing up during the time period in which Mad Men is set and was actually there — everybody is ecstatic. Suddenly, losing the Jaguar account is not all that important anymore. You close one door and another door opens.
I have a client who started out a little bit wary with this Sacramento real estate agent. I could sense he didn’t quite trust agents, probably because he had had such a bad experience the first time around. Rather than walk away, though, I gave him my time. His friend had referred him to me. I explained to him how I work, how the business works, what he needs to do to sell his home and buy a new home, how I would help him to accomplish that, and I insisted on his trust — not blindly, I would earn it. He gave me that precious commodity. Trust.
We put his home on the market last week, sold it over market and closed it yesterday, while he is in a contingent contract to buy a new home. Sold and closed in fewer than 7 days. The buyers gave him up to a year to rent back at a greatly reduced market rent, with the ability to move out as soon as he closes on his new home. His new home happens to be a short sale. This seller did not want to move until he could move into his new home. Agents who work in this business will know a situation like this is almost impossible to do.
In case you’re thinking I knew the buyers for his home, I did not. I found them. They were investors from the Bay area and they had their own representation from San Francisco. I solely represented the seller as his Sacramento real estate agent. Trust and belief — it’s everything in real estate. If you don’t have it in your business relationships, fix it or cut the ties.
Sacramento Short Sale Approval Delays Can Raise the Sales Price
I wrote on Sunday about how I listed this Sacramento short sale from a remote corner in the world, using a spotty internet connection at Rangiroa Atoll during Christmas vacation. I also mentioned the fact that if a short sale takes too long to negotiate or a Sacramento short sale agent has to start over because a buyer walked, the price of that short sale can go up. In this particular short sale, the seller had received a short sale approval but some mismanagement or confusion caused, he said, by his previous agent, resulted in a cancellation. Hence, he hired me.
Of course, I could daydream that all sellers should just list with me in the first place and avoid those types of hassles, but the truth is I could not handle the volume of every single short sale in Sacramento, nor would I want to. And there are other good short sale agents in Sacramento, some of which work at my company and to whom I occasionally refer business.
We went on the market at the price the banks had previously approved for the seller. Part of the problem was one of the banks sold the servicing of the loan since then. This is a phenomena I am seeing more of — banks dumping underwater loans and / or servicing to the market that was created to purchase worthless debt, some of which the banks own. The bank ordered a new BPO, even though the previous BPO had not expired.
Whoa. Prices were bouncing upwards. Now the bank wanted 20% more than it wanted a month ago. It’s a seller’s market in Sacramento. I presented that counter offer to the buyer, and the buyer immediately canceled. I don’t know what that buyer thought he could buy now that he was no longer in contract. Not my problem, though.
Found a new buyer and put that buyer into contract at the higher sales price (which by now, I should point out, is much higher still but the buyer has the price locked). We thought everything was going smoothly until the new second lender decided it wanted a lot more money than what the first lender was willing to allocate. The investor was Fannie Mae, so unless that bank has never dealt with Fannie Mae before, the bank should know that Fannie Mae has its maximum, and that’s the maximum. Fannie Mae does not allow anybody else in a short sale to pay the second lender, either.
That was little battle with the second lender, to get the bank to understand a) the first loan was really owned by Fannie Mae and b) the max is the max per Fannie Mae. After what seems like another couple of months, the second finally agreed and issued its approval letter.
Right before the lender’s property preservation company called and was about to shut off the water and change out the locks. But fortunately, that did not happen, and we were able to move forward to close. If you’d like more information about a short sale in the Sacramento region, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Listing a Sacramento Short Sale From Anywhere in the World
The problem with some short sales today is if they take too long to negotiate, the value of that short sale could go up and the bank could want more money. This was not a problem with Sacramento short sales in 2012, but this year some banks are asking for updated BPOs before the 90-day mark. Not to mention, once a short sale is approved and falls apart, there is no guarantee the next go-around will mirror the first. A smart Sacramento short sale agent knows this and takes precautions.
We are closing a short sale next week that came into my sphere sometime around Thanksgiving of last year. The seller called to complain about his agent — for what, I don’t recall — and asked if I would agree to take his listing. He had approval from the bank, too, but at the last minute something went haywire. I agreed to take the listing once the seller and his listing agent terminated the existing listing and removed it from MLS.
I should point out that the reason a seller is unhappy with a real estate agent sometimes lies with the seller and not the agent. I am typically hesitant to pick up a listing from a disgruntled seller because that seller could be the problem. One thing being in real estate for so long teaches me is there are a lot of nut-jobs in the world and people who don’t take their medication. On the other hand, about 90% of all Sacramento agents sell fewer than one home every two or three months, so what does that tell you? But, in this particular instance, my gut instincts told me the seller was not at fault. I told him to let me know when he was ready to go on the market.
You know what day he was ready to go on the market? Christmas day. Yup, Dec. 25th. And there I was: lounging about in my gorgeous overwater bungalow, watching the waves gently lap the piers, gazing at brightly colored fish swimming about under my glass floor. I was on vacation at Rangiroa, the second largest Atoll in the world, located in a remote chain of archipelago islands called the Tuamotu in French Polynesia. This is a place where it’s a miracle we were able to connect to the internet through satellite. It was a slow connection, and proved too much to smoothly connect to CAR’s antiquated ZipForms.
Even though the internet was sporadic, I received the email from the seller asking to go on the market. I managed to whip up all of the required listing documents through a combination of working with my dedicated team members and emailing forms to prepare and forward. One of my team members volunteered to go over to the home on Christmas and shoot photos and send them to me. I then uploaded all of the documents to DocuSign, my seller signed, and we went on the market the day after Christmas.
You can count on Elizabeth Weintraub. I take care of my clients no matter where I am in the world.
. . . Part II of this Sacramento Short Sale to follow on Monday.
photo: Gauguin’s Pearl Farm on Rangiroa, by Elizabeth Weintraub
