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Elizabeth Weintraub
Who Benefits From Sacramento Open Houses?
I am a big proponent of open houses in Sacramento in certain neighborhoods and locations, don’t get me wrong. As a successful Sacramento real estate agent, part of my business benefits greatly from open houses, and so do some of my sellers. However, many sellers falsely believe that an open house is solely for the seller’s benefit, and it is not. We primarily hold open houses because our sellers ask us to and because it’s good for future business.
We get to talk to homeowners in the neighborhood who have no intention of buying the home but want to find out how much their home might sell for and to inquire whether we will list it for them. Holding a home open also tends to stop the phone inquiries from neighbors wondering how much the home is listed at, so it’s kind of a preventative measure, too.
We get to talk to home buyers who are not working with a real estate agent and want to find an agent to help them to buy a home. Many buyers don’t know how to get started buying a home, and they think going to open houses is a step in the right direction. They also might not know any real estate agents.
Buyer’s agents love open houses because they don’t have to call ahead and schedule an appointment to show their buyers the home. They can just come on over with the buyer in tow and feel assured that no other agents will try to snatch their buyer away. It makes showing a little bit easier for them.
The public adore open houses. In fact, in California, it’s like the state motto and state-wide pastime. Got nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon? Why not go tour open houses and see how other people live? It doesn’t matter if you’re not in the market to buy a home.
First-time home buyers are often directionless for the first few weeks of home shopping. Open houses in Sacramento help first-time home buyers figure out what type of home in which neighborhood they might want to buy. They can spend a lot of time in the home, picking it apart and finding things wrong with it. Most of them are not buyers for that particular home.
Then we come to the sellers. The sellers who often insist on an open house because they are hopeful it will sell the house. An open house will do a lot of things for a lot of people, but it doesn’t necessarily sell the house that day. A buyer might come back on another day to buy. You don’t always see the results immediately.
How to Get Rid of Email Spam
This morning I received a very odd piece of email. It would appear that a couple of years ago, a person signed up to receive emails from me for home listings in the outskirts of Sacramento metro. He did it through my company website, which is not my professional business website. You are at my professional business website for Elizabeth Weintraub if you are at elizabethweintraub.com. Apparently, this person grew tired of receiving emails or maybe decided not to buy a home, I have no idea, but whatever the deal, he complained to his internet service provider that he was receiving spam.
Spam that he signed up for and asked to get. That’s the part that blows me away. Not only that, but like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, he has always had the ability to unsubscribe by clicking his heels together and tapping the mouse on the unsubscribe link. Automatic unsubscribe. That’s all there is to it.
Major corporations do not entrap people or send them to virus-ridden websites or use the unsubscribe link to send out more spam, because there are laws against it. Reputable companies unsubscribe you, that’s why they send you the link. Because they are required to give you the ability to opt yourself out.
It’s bad enough if you’re the person who asked for the information and then you refuse to unsubscribe your own dumb self, but what if you never specifically asked for any information? Here’s how that happens. I should point out that when you buy things online, be very careful about giving out your email address as you’re not always required to provide it. Moreover, companies often design order forms that automatically check boxes to send you newsletters and more information (i.e. spam), and if you don’t uncheck those boxes, you will get crap from the company whether or not you think you asked for it.
But those companies can also send you unwanted emails even if you didn’t ask for anything because they will say they had a pre-existing relationship with you. Because you ordered something from them. So, if you give them your email address and, after you receive the product you ordered, emails are still arriving, then click the unsubscribe button.
Better yet, consider using a throwaway email such as yahoo or gmail for your online purchases.
Is Your Home for Sale at Too Low of a Price?
Sellers are often amazed when they immediately receive an offer after going on the market in Sacramento. Part of that amazement comes from not fully realizing the reach and breadth of our MLS and Internet marketing. Everything is instant nowadays. People have no patience for anything. They want it now, and two hours ago would be even better. However, when you consider the fact that we are now in a seller’s market — which means buyers are camped out in your back yard, lurking around the corner, ready to jump out at you when you take out the morning trash and shout SURPRISE, here is a full price offer plus a little bit more — it is not really amazing at all to get a fast response on your home for sale.
But there will always be sellers who genuinely believe that if they receive an offer as soon as the home goes on the market, they must have priced it too low. I don’t know where they get that idea. They could have priced that home in Sacramento at such a high price point where it won’t ever appraise until Honey Boo Boo grows up to become president, god forbid, but buyers still might make an offer on that home for sale. The price of a home can make or break a transaction, and homes that won’t appraise are unlikely to close escrow.
But then a seller will have the right to march around and tell all her friends that she got a whopping offer for her house but the appraisal just messed up everything. That appraisers don’t know what they are doing. And some of them don’t. That’s part of the problem, too.
I tell my sellers to respond to offers within 2 to 3 days. Buyers don’t like to wait more than a day or two at the most. It’s possible that subsequent offers might be higher but they might not. The best offer is not always the highest. Sometimes the best offer is your first offer and sometimes it’s not. There is no hard and fast rule for offers on a home for sale.
But just because you received an offer right away doesn’t mean you’ve priced it too low. It means you have priced it just right.
Two New Home Listings in Sacramento
Before I tell you about new home listings, let me share that I am sitting here in the waiting room in the basement of Mercy Hospital in East Sacramento. The hospital has WiFi. I am thrilled. My husband is here for a routine procedure, and I am not allowed to tell you anything about it. In fact, I’m not even sure he would want me to say that we are at the hospital. He says under no uncertain terms am I to say anything about his medical health, his checkups, his medical history or any kind of procedures that he may or may not be having.
Unlike woman, you know. We share everything with people. We go into excruciating detail. You wanna see photos? We’ll show you photos. Nothing is all that sacred. When the nurse poked her head through the door to inform me that my husband was comfortable and I could visit with him at bedside, I had my yogurt on my right, my cellphone at my left, my diet Pepsi on the chair rail and my laptop in my lap. Nope, I’m good. She picked up the Sacramento Bee from the floor and said he preferred to read the newspaper anyway and, besides, she looked at me sideways with that kind of smirking grin like she knows something I don’t, and added: “You’re addicted to that thing anyway,” and she marched away.
It would seem that my husband can talk about me and my quirky habits, but I am not allowed to discuss anything about him. Therefore, I am not going to talk about why I have to sit in the hospital waiting room as I type my morning blog, I’ll just get right to recent events.
I have two new listings that came on the market this morning. There is also an article that I believe will be published in the Sacramento Business Journal tomorrow that should feature some kind of insight from me and a photo of me with my Fair Oaks seller in his kitchen. It’s something about the market and the direction it is heading. I don’t really recall the interview because I talk to so many people every day. I just hope I said something intelligent that was selected for print and not one of my more doofus types of statements. I hope one eye doesn’t look bigger than the other in print, which sometimes happens to my eyes in photographs. Makes me look like an orangutan.
My Fair Oaks seller’s kitchen is beautiful, though. He just installed new granite counters, to complement the rest of the remodeling. The home is beautiful, but it’s the magnificent view of the forest in the back that will cement the deal for you. It will be open on Sunday from 2 to 4 PM. The address is 4552 Wawona Circle in Fair Oaks, and it’s offered for $359,000.
My second new listing is at 2636 Dobbins Way, just north of El Camino near Business 80. It’s located in a pocket of newer homes on a quiet cup-de-sac. The home features 4 bedrooms, 3 baths and was built in 2006. Best of all is the fabulous price of $159,000, and there is no HOA! It will also be held open on Sunday from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. If you would like information on new home listings, just give us a ring at 916.233.6759.
Sacramento Sellers Hounded By So-Called Short Sale Agents
I don’t ordinarily like to expose or discuss the underbelly of the real estate business, but I will if I believe it has value to the consumer. There are some agents who talk trash about other real estate agents just to make themselves look better by comparison, which is kind of scummy and throws a person into the same camp. But there are good and bad professionals in any business, anywhere you look. Sometimes, it just might seem like there is more disparity in real estate. Perhaps because there are so many of us — something like one out of every 35 people in California holds a real estate license.
Take one of my new clients, for example. While talking to this seller last week — who is about to embark on a short sale — he told me something must have happened recently to trigger all the calls from short sale agents. He said his phone had been ringing off the hook with offers of “assistance.” He was very surprised at the nature and tone of some of those calls and wondered how they got his number. The sad thing is, nowadays, falling behind in your mortgage payments can trigger such a flood of harassing soliciting calls.
First, nobody should attempt to do a short sale by hiring some agent who calls out of the blue or shows up on their doorstep. You should get your short sale agent from word of mouth or through research. Ever since the booming end of the colossal short sale era in 2012, agents have been frantically trying to grab that elusive golden ring of short sales. Even if they have no idea what they are doing or they have attended a half-day class and are now calling themselves an “expert” in short sales — how is a seller supposed to know if they are fakes?
Second, a seller should not be forced to do a short sale, pushed into a short sale or talked into doing a short sale. If a seller doesn’t want to do a short sale, why should that seller be harassed called by other agents who are trying to get some business? Agents typically don’t go around calling complete strangers and pushing them to sell. But some agents will do it to a seller who has an underwater home.
The way they get the seller’s phone number is by subscribing to a service that provides it or by getting it directly from the bank. Some banks such as Wells Fargo and Chase Bank have been reaching out (ack, I hate that term and look, here I am using it) to real estate agents and promising them short sales in exchange for a little mortgage business. They give the agents a list of sellers who are in default (behind in their payments), and agents cold call this list and try to persuade a seller to list with them as a short sale. It wouldn’t be so bad it were only one agent doing this, but it’s dozens of them and. in many cases, these are first- or second-year agents without a lot of experience. Because veteran real estate agents typically do not cold call.
The other way they find out is by asking a title company to provide them with a list of homes in preforeclosure or by subscribing to a private service that provides them with this very public information, or going to the office of the county recorder to find the information in person. Some agents belong to a program called HR 3648, which I suggest you steer clear from. A nonprofit director called me the other day to say she received a letter from HR 3648 that made it look like it was part of Keep Your Home California.Org. I did a search on that website and could not find Program 3648. No surprise.
If you’re looking for an experienced Sacramento short sale agent, ask for a referral, and you might very well be referred to me. I have a lot of previous satisfied short sale clients, hundreds of them. You can research my professional stats, or you can just call Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916 233 6759, Lyon Real Estate.
