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Elizabeth Weintraub
Protecting Privacy When Home Selling
You know that scene in Mission Impossible where Tom Cruise is walking through a mall and inanimate objects are trying to sell items of commerce to him? And you think to yourself: no way. But . . . way. It’s happening every day and all around us. You can’t even click on a website without finding advertising that is geared to your tastes. If you’ve so much as clicked on a shopping site, those photographs will show up in your internet searches from now on in every site you visit. It’s frightening how your IP address discloses so much about you and your likes and dislikes.
You can minimize some of the damage by not giving out your location. When I sign on to DocuSign, for example, I don’t let it track me. It’s not anybody’s business if I am at my computer in Sacramento, on the oceanfront in Monterey or clear across the country in Hilton Head. If I want to tell you where I am, that’s one thing, but you’re not going to track me. I turn off my GPS on my cellphone, too.
There are little things that you can do to help protect your privacy while selling your home. But when you put your home on the market in Sacramento, you are opening a whole ‘nother can o’ worms. You can’t sell it without photographs. On the other hand, do you want every peeking Tom, Dick and Harry peering into your living room window? Isn’t it creepy to know that some stranger is staring at the sink where you shave your face? Selling real estate is intimate, and putting your home out there for others to see can feel like an invasion.
For this reason, as a Sacramento listing agent, I suggest that sellers remove all items of personal nature. If I shoot a photograph, for example, that somehow includes a photo of a family member or the seller herself, I will blur out the photo online. It’s nobody’s business. Take all your personal photographs and put them away. Put your jewelry and other valuables in a safe deposit box. Don’t throw your mail on the kitchen table for prying eyes to spy. People don’t mean to be snoopy. Maybe they’ll open a built-in drawer to check its depth, though, and innocently discover things they have no business looking at.
Before you let your agent put up a for sale sign, walk through your home like a stranger. Make sure there is nothing in view or within reach that could be considered too personal to share with others.
The Chicken or the Egg in a Sacramento Short Sale
The bickering that goes on between lenders in a Sacramento short sale remind me of kids. Maybe that’s because we don’t really grow up, we just get wider. Like, I don’t wanna eat it, YOU eat it. I know, let’s make Mikey eat it. Except Mikey is now all grown up, living in New York and earning a living hawking ads. But you know where I’m going with this, right? I’d like to talk about when we have two loans on a short sale. That’s when we run into what comes first: the chicken or the egg?
The first lender in this Sacramento short sale doesn’t want to issue approval until the second lender issues its approval letter. Of course, the second lender doesn’t want to issue its approval letter until the first lender issues its approval letter. And we can go around and around and around until we’re blue in the face, but nobody is gonna budge. They’ve got their positions staked out, and by golly, they’re not moving.
In California, I have to side with the first lender. Because it makes the most sense for the first lender to be reluctant, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. But first, let’s look at the second lender. The second lender is in a position of jack squat. The second lender, especially if it’s a purchase money loan, will get wiped out in a foreclosure and end up with nothing. It is in no position to negotiate. The only position it has is to disqualify the short sale and stop the short sale from going through, but that’s like cutting off your nose to spit your face. It’s just plain stupid. The second lender stands to receive funds, generously donated, I should point out, by the first lender. Otherwise, it would get nothing.
The first lender gives up certain rights upon short sale approval that the second lender does not. Those rights involve dual tracking. It’s the only part of the so-called dual tracking law that affects a short sale, unless you want to wait until 2018 when the law really takes affect. It says that when a lender issues a short sale approval letter, the lender must stop all foreclosure action and the lender can’t move forward on a Notice of Default or even file a Notice of Default. So, give the first lender a break. Issue the approval letter.
Sometimes, the only thing you can do if the banks won’t see reason is to hope the second lender elects to sell the note to somebody else so you can start over with a new lender. In fact, maybe you want to give them a list of lenders who buy these pretty much worthless scraps of paper — these no-equity seconds? Of course, this is presuming the second lender didn’t buy MI, which is another story for another day.
For Whom Does This Sacramento Real Estate Agent Blog?
Blogging is not the same thing as journalism. I mean, you know that, and I know that, but a few years from now, none of the young ‘uns will know it. There are people today who think online is the only place to get their news. They wouldn’t dream of unfolding newsprint from the front porch. Still, that doesn’t stop people from writing and asking me to write in-depth pieces that suit their own purposes, all in the name of public information, mind you.
They preface it with because I have so many readers, it is my civic duty to inform. I could have a lot of readers if I decided to tag the public sidewalk. Doesn’t mean a tagger should be delivering messages from public or private servants. A tagger’s work is self expression, much like blogging.
I write a blog because I write; because my computer is on my desk. It’s where I sit. Hopefully, I have something to say about real estate that’s not boring or stupid. Moreover, I hope that a client will read what I have to say and think we might be a good match to work together, but I also hope other types of clients will read what I have to say and leave me alone. That’s why I’m never afraid to say exactly what I think.
Just ask my husband; I offend him all the time. I asked for his help with an ad over the weekend. Given the changed real estate market, I decided it was a good idea to address the present day market. He fed me a line and asked me what I thought. I told him it wouldn’t work because it was stupid. This is not something I would say to a client, mind you. I would not tell a client if I thought her idea was stupid. I would use a different word. Like, impossible. Or, wait, how about inconceivable? Like that guy used in the Princess Bride!
Doesn’t matter because he stomped off and told me to do it myself. But the thing is his idea was kind of Donald Duck stupid on several levels. It just wouldn’t work. It was confusing, and it didn’t really address the point I wanted to make. Yet, my husband continues to try to help me when I need it. I tell you, he’s a saint. He also knows my heart is in the right place. Inside my body where it’s supposed to be, and not in a box stored in a vault waiting for some witch to crush the life out of it.
I have a new listing that came on the market today. It’s a gorgeous brick home in Curtis Park. Four bedrooms, 2 baths and over 1700 square feet. Updated kitchen. Spacious master suite. Hardwood floors, leaded glass, plus a 2-car garage. All for $369,000. Give this Sacramento real estate agent a ring at 916 233 6759, and I’ll get you a private showing before the open house on Sunday. Just don’t ask me to blog about your real estate cause because I’m trying to keep up with my own.
The Problems With Cash Investors in Sacramento
I’ve had investors call to ask if I was an “investor friendly” real estate agent. That seems to be such an odd question. You’ve got to wonder why an investor would ask such a thing. Because a Sacramento real estate agent is happy to list or sell a home for any type of person. It doesn’t matter if the person is a corporation, an owner occupant or a celebrity. We’ll do it because that’s our business. So, if a person is asking if we are “investor friendly,” you wonder what that means. I suspect it means they want something out of the ordinary.
When an investor is deliberately seeking out and talking to a Sacramento real estate agent who primarily handles listing — like this Sacramento real estate agent — it means the cash investors in Sacramento expect priority over other offers, and that’s just not gonna happen. To give an investor priority would mean I was breaking my fiduciary with my primary — my seller — and I won’t do it. It doesn’t mean other agents won’t, though, which is why investors ask. Sorry business this is sometimes.
But there are other problems with offers from cash investors in Sacramento. First, when I am representing the seller, and I see an offer from an investor, I look at the agent who delivered the offer. There are agents who are wholly intimidated by investors and the investors can push them around. Maybe it’s because the investors have more money than the agent or perhaps even more experience. Hard to say. But it’s not like the agent is most likely able to sit down and reason with the investor as an agent might do with an owner occupant. Lots of times the investor calls the shots 100% and is in control.
Second, sometimes the offers are written as all-cash and presented as all-cash offers and they are not. I question whether that’s legal. I don’t think it is. But it doesn’t stop them from doing it. Nobody gives a dang what I think. But a cash offer is an offer in which the seller presents proof of funds and those are the proof of funds the investor intends to use to purchase the property. It’s not supposed to be a smoke screen while the investor trots off and acquires a hard-money loan. A hard money loan is not cash. It doesn’t matter that there is no appraisal, it’s not cash. It doesn’t matter that the hard-money lender has always performed in the past for the investor, it’s not cash. Stop presenting hard money loans as cash offers, you guys. It’s a lie. It’s deceiving.
If you want to present an offer that looks like cash but is not, it is much better to reserve the right to obtain a hard-money loan. Otherwise, present the offer as cash only if you have the cash and intend to use it. This “reserving the right” works very well on short sales. If an investor presents the offer the other way around, as a hard-money loan with the right to pay all-cash, it weakens the offer in the eyes of the short sale bank. So, an investor can write an all-cash offer, present proof of funds for that cash, and then put a line in the offer that says he or she reserves the right to obtain a hard-money loan. Then, you’ve got disclosure, in my opinion. But I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
The third problem with all-cash offers from investors is sometimes the investors are writing a bunch of offers at one time, although they can only buy one or two properties. I advise my sellers not to get all excited when we receive an offer from cash investors in Sacramento, especially when the buyer’s agent says he will need the full 72-hours to get us an answer back. If he needs 3 days, he could be buying time for the other offers to respond so he can pick among them.
Which brings me to the fourth problem with all-cash offers. The home inspection. Every home inspection will disclose defects. A cash investor will say he or she is buying the home in its “as is” condition, but as soon as the home inspection is delivered, he or she might comb through it and pull out a number of items, assign a dollar figure, and then ask for a price reduction. Because investors don’t care; it’s just a business transaction to them.
You might read this and wonder why anybody would sell to an investor or that I am dead-set against investors, and that’s not true. I work with investors. Just sayin’, beware.
Constructive Criticism and Sacramento Real Estate
Some people think they are helping to improve a delicate situation by providing what they call “constructive criticism.” I have long been an opponent of constructive criticism. Not even somebody who hails from the South — with all of its sweet and enduring euphemisms — can pull it off. There is no way to tell a person that you’re about to say something really horrible about them, but it’s for their own good . . . and they’ll thank you later. Because it’s not and they won’t.
No matter how you cut it, constructive criticism is criticism. It’s judgmental. It says one person knows better than another. It’s one thing if it’s parent to child; it’s another if it’s peer to peer. In my own real estate practice, I try never to correct another person, because even though I might believe my way is the best way to do something, they might not. If another agent asks for my help, for example, I will give it, freely. But I don’t ordinarily try to fix somebody else’s problems without permission, and that’s what constructive criticism is, trying to correct a problem that you don’t have permission to address.
I don’t want to get involved in other people’s wars, either. I’m a good bullet dodger, and that’s what I do. I dodge bullets.
I love to sell real estate. I love to talk to people about real estate, I love the negotiation and the thrill of closing. There’s where I focus my time. So, it’s not that I’m avoiding those who call and want me to participate in their cause, it’s just that I’m focused elsewhere.
If you want to sell or buy a home in the Sacramento area, call Elizabeth Weintraub. I’ll be direct with you and brutally honest, but I’ll never offer constructive criticism.
