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Elizabeth Weintraub
Have Sacramento Short Sales Dragged Down the Market?
People think that short sales are dragging down the economy in Sacramento and messing up neighborhoods, yet little is further from actuality. Sacramento short sales are turning around neighborhoods and revitalizing entire pockets of homes that have been drowning underwater for years and years. In some areas, especially among neglected, board-up homes, a short sale is a chance for that home to live again, to bring life to itself and make a welcoming home that will begin to build memories for some lucky first-time home buyer.
I am on the tougher end of the rope, the more difficult side of the transaction, because I work on hundreds of Sacramento short sales. I’ve heard it rumored that some real estate agents have pointed to me and scoffed to their clients, saying I can’t sell traditional homes, although it’s not true because I do. I sell a lot of traditional homes with equity in the four-county area. They seem to believe, whether it’s through spite, green-eyes or ignorance, that an agent who is very successful at selling Sacramento short sales should never sell a regular home, and that’s pretty insane. Just because they can’t do two things doesn’t mean they should point fingers at those of us who can do more than one thing. Besides, before short sales, I sold traditional homes for decades, and I still do.
A Sacramento Business Journal article quoted me last week as saying that selling a short sale is like selling 5 homes in one. And that is true. If I can sell a short sale, by George, I can certainly sell any seller’s home with equity. A short sale is 5 times the work, and much more complicated. Selling a home with equity is an activity I can almost do blindfolded. Trained monkeys can sell a home with equity in Sacramento in a seller’s market, with buyers camping out in your yard. But an experienced Sacramento real estate agent is the person who bring you the most money and the smoothest transaction, and that’s what every seller wants.
I spotted a new home listing this morning come on the market in Carmichael. It’s a home I sold for $100,000 a year ago as a short sale. It’s also a home that took me 12 months to sell. I listed it in May of 2011 and it did not actually sell and close until May 2012. Well, it sold a bunch of times, and buyers flaked out. That helped me to get the bottom line from the bank, though, and I told every buyer who called the home could be theirs for $100,000. I had buyers who walked away completely and then came back crying, others who walked when we wouldn’t take their offer of $98,000. You ask yourself: What is wrong with people? Why do they let their egos get in the way?
I can’t count the number of offers we received that were between $90,000 and $99,000 but these guys just refused to inch over and join us at the winning $100K offer price. It wasn’t a secret. They knew they had to pay $100K, they just wouldn’t do it. They walked away due to a $2,000 or a $5,000 difference. Doh, doh, double-doh. But persistence prevailed, I don’t give up, no matter what, and it did sell at $100,000.
This particular home just came back on the market at $229,900. And you know what? That’s a good price. Those sellers will get it. I just wish I had this end of the listing, too, where the living is easy.
My Very First Job at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange
Today I want to tell you about my very first “real” job and the unfortunate battle that followed it. I wasn’t always a successful Sacramento REALTOR. I’m looking back at my first job because a) it’s a funny story and b) I am not that disconnected from my sellers in Sacramento, especially those who have lost a job and must do a short sale.
To buy a home, for example, most people need to work, to be employed, to qualify for a mortgage. If one is unemployed, it’s difficult to obtain credit for anything much less a loan to buy a car to transport oneself to interviews. Being unemployed is not always as much fun as people think it will be. They say things like if they weren’t working they would write a book or they would learn to play guitar. But time gets away from them. When you have all the time in the world, you have no time at all.
The year was 1971. I had been working as a secretary in the Minneapolis Grain Exchange building at Checkerboard Grain, a division of Ralston Purina. One day I came into work and looked at the woman chain-smoking across from me. Betty was in her late 30s, single, and had worked at Checkerboard since high school. I didn’t know what I wanted from life at that young age, but I knew one thing very clearly, I did not want to grow up to become a Betty. I said so, in no uncertain terms, to my boss. I asked for a transfer to the Ralston Purina plant in Denver, Colorado, to take a position with a bit more authority and chance for advancement.
Back in those days, companies would transfer employees if they liked the person enough to keep them. Today, not so much. So, I bypassed the Human Resources department at Ralston Purina in Denver and went to work as a production assistant. My department kept track of the packaging supplies, ordered new supplies when we ran low and made sure if the outside of the package offered a promotional coupon inside, that a coupon was placed inside the bag.
The ingredients that were used to make dog food and cat food in the 1970s depended on the price of grain. I don’t know if that’s how it’s done today, but back then, if the price of midds went up, the percentage of midds in cat food went down. The percentages of ingredients was listed on the packaging and needed to match the ingredients inside. This sounds like a simple task, but it was not.
I discovered that the plant was not putting the right ingredients into the right packaging. It’s my analytical mind. So, I devised a system that production managers out in the plant had to use to ensure that the right ingredients went into the right packaging. I should have been promoted to VP right then and there, but instead, I was given some kind of raise and told not to discuss my pay scale with others in the office.
The head of the Human Resources department did not like me. I didn’t like him much, either. I was the darling of the company who had slipped into employment without going through his department. He had power issues. One day, he ordered all new chairs for the office. We sat in an open room of about 60 people in rows of desks. No cubicles back then. The chairs this guy ordered were blue swivel chairs and orange swivel chairs. Remember, this was the early 1970s.
He put an orange chair at my desk. I was not an early morning person then, like I am now. I did not want to sit in an orange chair. So, I defied authority and traded chairs with another employee. A blue chair better suited my personality.
The next day when I came into work, the orange chair was back in its spot. I knew who did it. He knew I knew who did it. I switched chairs again. This little scenario went on for a few weeks. One day, I could not come into work because I had rolled my jeep down the mountainside and injured myself.
When I finally hobbled into work to pick up my paycheck, the guy from HR called me into his office. The first thing he did was threaten to take away my paycheck. I refused to hand it over to him. He began yelling obscenities. He was upset that I had taken time off work to recover and that I was getting paid for it. And like I mentioned earlier, I was not on his birthday card list.
I stared this jerk in the face and said the words that many employees at many companies in the world have probably longed to say:
If you don’t like it, you can fire me.
And he did. He fired me on the spot. Told me to go clean out my desk and turn in my keys. I did not cry, although I probably wanted to. I packed up my stuff and was about to head out the door when the HR Jerk waived at me to come back into his office. He had a second person in his office holding a note pad. He realized the pending liability, I suppose, and decided to document my departure.
He looked at me and said, Elizabeth, please tell this person to my right what you just said to me 10 minutes ago. He looked so smug.
I let my eyes tear up. My lips trembled. I raised my head to look up and said, “You said if I didn’t show up for work, injured or not, you would fire me.”
The Ease of a Sacramento Short Sale With Jennifer Kelly at Wells Fargo
A prospective seller called me yesterday to discuss a distressed property in Sacramento that she wishes to perhaps sell as a short sale. We didn’t have much time to talk before she had to leave for an appointment, so I will follow up with her today. I like to be prepared for my discussions with sellers, so I access all the information that I can find for our consultations. The more information that I can give to a seller, the better. Because an informed seller is a seller who makes the right decisions.
I know the answers to many problems that plague sellers. It’s my business as a Sacramento real estate agent to know the answers. I don’t have to go to somebody else for an opinion. Although, I would never give a client legal or tax advice because that is not my speciality, and I am not licensed to talk about such matters. But real estate advice or short sale advice, I’ll talk your ear off. And I’ll be right. You can trust the information I provide. That’s why sellers choose Elizabeth Weintraub as their real estate agent.
There is another person in the short sale business who is not in the limelight but is simply incredible. That person is Jennifer Kelly at Wells Fargo. She works in a certain department, and I don’t believe she handles all short sales, so please don’t call her for general advice or leave messages in her voice mail. No exceptions, people. I am mentioning her because she is superb and the standard to which all short sale service departments should strive to achieve.
I contacted Jennifer yesterday because the seller with the pending short sale situation fell into Jennifer’s department. I could tell by looking at the tax records that this was a short sale that Jennifer might be in charge of approving. I emailed her to verify that this short sale would fall within her jurisdiction.
Six minutes later, I kid you not, 6 minutes later, Jennifer sent me a complete package of documents that pertain to this seller’s particular situation, with specific instructions, on top of a preapproved sales price. In 6 minutes!
You can’t get somebody to answer the phone in 6 minutes at other short sale banks. You can’t get a short sale APPROVED at many banks in 6 months much less 6 minutes. Jennifer is a busy person. She’s always out talking to companies, managing those in her department, helping sellers understand what’s happening and making sure her short sales are processed correctly.
I don’t know anybody who measures up to the professionalism of Jennifer Kelly at Wells Fargo. She soars far above the crowd with superior customer service skills. Wells Fargo is lucky to have her and probably does not pay her enough. She makes me look even better to my sellers.
I cannot wait to tell this prospective seller today that I have every document she needs to complete and her short sale price is already preapproved, and I don’t even work for her yet.
Home Selling, Bird Poop and Crows in Land Park
I’d like to talk about selling homes and bird poop. I don’t mean selling bird houses, I mean selling homes in Sacramento where birds poop all over the grounds and decks. Especially on balconies. It’s so gross to be throwing open the French doors to buyers, announcing the gorgeous view of the golf course and hills, and then you happen to glance at the floor of the balcony to discover not just splatterings of bird poop droppings but huge piles of guano. Guano. Black and white and sticky and ishy.
This is not the way to sell a luxury home. You can’t just sweep your guano into a corner of the balcony and hope it will disintegrate or the rains will wash it away. Eventually, you’ll have to shovel it into a trash bag and hope the bottom doesn’t fall out as you drag it out to the trash. I’ve met sellers who have done precisely this, so I am not making this up. After you remove the bird droppings, it takes a brush and an almost industrial soapy cleaning liquid to clean the stain, and the stain might never go away.
The best way to keep birds away from your home is not to attract them in the first place. Some people affix rows of what look like upside-down nails to window sills and overhangs. You can also buy noise machines, imitation bird calls of prey, wind socks, or just turn on the water and spray them off. Don’t leave out food for them, either.
I am presently doing battle with black crows. For years, they hung out across the street in my Land Park neighborhood, and rarely came into my yard. But now, one of them has discovered our back-yard water fountain for the finches. We get house finches and gold finches this time of year. They sit on the rim of the water fountain to sip water. If they can’t all fit on the rim, they take turns waiting on the telephone wire overhead or in our crepe myrtle. The fluttering action is like bird TV to our 3 cats, who watch from the bedroom window, completely mesmerized.
They especially like to visit our lawn for an early morning breakfast after the sprinklers go off. The crows pull worms the length of my arm out of the lawn. One of the crows has taken a fancy to dipping his half-eaten worms into the water to rinse it off.?Yeah, worms are covered in grass and dirt, buddy, get over it. So finicky. Sometimes, he uses the water dish as a place to store his secret treasures. I found a 2-inch chunk of chicken from a burrito. I know it was from a burrito because the wrapper was on the ground. With it was a mushroom or maybe 2 worms intertwined; I couldn’t bear to touch any of it, so I looked away and scooped it out of the fountain water, flinging it with a digging trowel. Soon as I refill the fountain with fresh water, the crow comes back. He’s mad, too.
So, he flies up on our roof and starts pecking at the vent pipe cover from our stove’s exhaust. Peck, peck, peck, he is slowing chipping off the brown paint. I wonder where my sling shot is. My mother used to shoot BBs at squirrels. I am becoming more like her every day. That will teach me about flinging his treasures from my water fountain. I can hear him smirking up there. You don’t cross a crow. They don’t forget. They are smart.
I don’t forget, either. I remember incidences from years ago from which one day justice is served. But I also would not dream of showing my prospective home to buyers with bird poop all over the place. You shouldn’t, either.
Make Your Sacramento Home Appealing to Home Buyers
Most first-time home buyers in Sacramento want a home that is ready for immediate occupancy. They don’t want to buy new carpet or paint much beyond maybe one wall. First-time home buyers generally don’t have a lot of extra money to spend on such things as new appliances, either. Often, I hear sellers say they don’t want to fix anything because the buyer might not like it, so they’d prefer to leave it up to the buyer to do. What they’re really saying is they just don’t want to do it. The thing is they might have given that buyer a good excuse to buy somebody else’s house instead of theirs.
Now, it’s true that in this seller’s market we’re experiencing in Sacramento, buyers will overlook a lot of things. However, if you want top dollar, then you need to present your home in top condition. It doesn’t necessarily mean staging it, but if you want to get more than anybody else in your neighborhood, for example, then you need to give buyers what they want.
What do buyers want? Depends where the home is located. In the suburbs, like Natomas or Elk Grove or Lincoln, for example, buyers want immaculate, sparkling kitchens with newer appliances, modern cabinetry and slab granite. Indoor laundry. Separate family rooms and fireplaces. Soaring ceilings. An open floor plan. At least 3 bedrooms, and some kind of office space. A garage. Nice fenced yard with grassy lawn.
They don’t want to buy a single-story home that is surrounded by looming two- and three-story homes, which can block sunlight and offer little privacy. Little known fact: many buyers, if given a choice, would prefer one level over multiple levels.
If you are confused about what to do to sell your home, ask a Sacramento real estate agent to help you. An experienced agent can tell you what you need to do to sell your home and what you don’t need to do. Just don’t do it halfway. Don’t paint all the rooms in your house but leave one room a bright purple because you ran out of steam. Buyers might wonder what else you didn’t have the energy to do. Or, they will call it the purple house and probably not buy it.
