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Elizabeth Weintraub
Can a Sacramento Real Estate Agent Guarantee Service?
How can you guarantee a client will be perfectly happy with your services? I mean, you might be providing extraordinary service and your client could be half bonkers, unable to recognize this gift of superior excellence. Or, you could be a crummy Sacramento real estate agent or doesn’t give a crap what others think — rendering any guarantee of happiness and satisfaction totally worthless. I believe a guarantee of satisfaction means the person providing the service will make it right. It’s not like if one finds a fly in one’s soup one can be served another bowl of soup, but it’s a similar concept.
I offer my clients a 100% guarantee of satisfaction. If they are unhappy for some reason, I will go to any lengths to make them happy. The secret is to try to not let it get to the part where they are unhappy. Sometimes, it’s beyond an agent’s control. For example, let’s say I explain over and over to a seller that when we get the short sale approval letter, we will most likely be given 30 days to close escrow. I explain the entire short sale process. I talk about how quickly we’ll receive an offer, the 6 to 8 weeks it will probably take to get the offer approved by the bank, and then the 30 days to close.
I’ve been selling real estate long enough to know there are some words a client does not hear, and if the words are heard, they might not be understood. Thirty days to close is one thing if a client is thinking about the 30 days between March 1st to March 31st. It’s quite another when she realizes if a sale closes on March 30th, she might not find a place to move because most rentals are available on April 1st. That’s a dilemma.
Fortunately, I have an answer for that. Another agent might say, nope, you’ve gotta close on March 30th. The bank said so, and the bank rules. This agent whose blog you are reading will, on the other hand, work to make her seller happy. I promised her.
So, now we have a closing date of April 11th. It’s not just lip service or meaningless words I stick into my biography. I really mean it. A personal guarantee of 100% client satisfaction. That’s my mission.
Is Your Refrigerator Running?
I am tempted to ask what’s wrong with kids today but then a) I’d sound like that old man waving my fist and hollering: Get offa my lawn, you kids and b) I know what’s wrong, so why ask? Because I was a kid once. I know a thing or two about pranks. That’s the thing many of us older people tend to forget. Of course, I never walked down the path of my mother’s curse: Wait until you have children of your own, and she instead got to see the results of my curse, which was: Wait until you’re old enough for an Old Folk’s home.
You read about these little scoundrels who call the police and report made-up crimes at homes of celebrities. They even have a word for these pranks. It’s called swatting. These are serious crimes, too, like bomb threats at Ashton Kutcher’s house. Although, just sayin’, if a celebrity had to go I don’t know if I would much miss him.
When I was a kid, before I grew up to become a responsible Sacramento real estate agent, my siblings and I took great delight in calling people at random from the phone book, that big fat ol’ thing that sat next to the Sears catalog, and asking: Is your refrigerator running? Followed by, after the affirmative, well, you better go catch it. We’d slam down the phone and giggle with glee. Like it was the funniest thing ever. Is your refrigerator running sent us into spirals of doubled-over laughter. Then we got more clever.
It probably occurred to me from watching those Doris Day or Sandra Dee movies. Someone once said there are no original thoughts. Every thought stems from something else or we’ve heard it somewhere before. We’d look through the phone book until we found a man’s name who could have a great nickname. Married women weren’t listed in the phone book in the 1950s. Just the head of household, which was usually a man. If a married woman was listed, her name would be sub-indexed under her husband’s. So, if you were looking for her specifically, you wouldn’t find her if you didn’t know her husband’s name. See what a wealth of information I am about the old days?
But back to my story. I’d look for a guy named William or Thomas. Then, I’d call and when I was pretty sure it was his wife who answered the phone, I’d say: Is Billy home? Or, is Tommy home? You know where this is going, right? The wife would respond with whatever she would say, which usually ended with May I take a message? People were so polite; weren’t they polite? Unlike today, which would probably fall along the lines of what the hell do you want? To which we would blurt out in our sluttiest tone of voice: Well, you can tell Billy that if he stands me up again tonight at (name of X-rated club downtown), Desiree says it’s over! Then we’d slam down the phone and explode with laughter.
In retrospect, that was kind of mean. But it wasn’t like a bomb threat. It was just a prank. Like ringing a neighbor’s doorbell and running away. Not that I would know anything about that. Not like I do about is your refrigerator running.
Does Your Sacramento Agent Want to Buy Your Home?
I’ve heard from a couple of buyer’s agents lately who have been, in one agent’s own words, “hoarding” homes in Sacramento from their buyers. This is such a great real estate market in Sacramento right now that some agents are saying forget buyers, I want that house! Is your agent in competition with you? You might want to ask. Does your agent want to buy your home?
This is not to say anything bad about another Sacramento real estate agent because real estate agents have always had first shot at homes, and some of them go into the business strictly to get an upper hand. They want the best deals. There is nothing wrong necessarily if you find an agent who wants to buy your home, just like any other investor. But a buyer might not want to compete with an agent. Especially a first-time home buyer.
Heck, I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t say sometimes I was tempted to want to buy my own listings, but I don’t do it. It’s a conflict of interest to me. I don’t know how other agents do it. How can you tell a seller that you are trying to get the highest offer and then make it your own offer? We’re not that generous. People believe whatever they repeat to themselves long enough, I suppose.
Do you want your agent’s leftover crumbs? The homes your agent couldn’t buy at an attractive enough price? You might want to ask before hiring a buyer’s agent if you’ll be expected to compete. This is a strange market and strange times.
Road Rage and the Sacramento Real Estate Agent
I have a frame around the license plate on my car that features my name and the name of my brokerage. Other agents ask me if I don’t worry that identifying myself on the road could have consequences on my real estate business if I were to do something so rude as to cut off another driver in traffic. See, that thought never occurred to me because being rude on the road is not something I would do. I’d much rather be rude in person, thank you very much — just kidding!
The fact is if I see people waiting to cross the street, I stop my car and let them cross. Especially if they are standing in the crosswalk because pedestrians have the right-of-way in California. It also gives me 5 seconds to check email. I move far away from people on bicycles when I drive past them. When I spot a vehicle merging on the freeway, I either speed up to get out of their way or I slow down to let them in, but I don’t try to impede the merge. I am not an angry driver. Other drivers don’t make me mad unlike some people I know — whom I won’t name because I want my dinner served hot and not cold tonight.
My focus is to get from Point A to Point B in one piece. It’s nice if I enjoy the journey along the way but it’s not a requirement. It’s the same sort of focus I bring to my real estate business. There is no reason to let personalities clash when trying to focus on closing a transaction. I don’t let obnoxious people rile me up. The big picture is in my radar at all times. Just because I might have your number doesn’t mean I’ll dial it.
Like yesterday a neighbor from one of my listings called, very irate. He was spitting mad. He claimed the sellers’ kids were breaking into a house to party before they went to school. I guess it used to be their house. I think he wanted me to storm over to the house, rip my sign out of the yard and beat the kids over the head with it. He wasn’t happy when I suggested he call the police and pointed out I could not call the police because I am not a witness to the alleged crime. I could hear the venom spitting into the other end of the phone. I suspect when it comes time to put his home on the market, he won’t call me.
And that’s OK.
I passed along his story to the sellers.
If you’re thinking about putting your home on the market and need an experienced Sacramento real estate agent, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. You won’t get drama out of me. Just hard work.
Are Short Sales Over in Sacramento?
Are short sales over in Sacramento? I might recall the year of 2012 in years to come as a year-long Chinese celebration or maybe lost lyrics to an Al Stewart song; however, I am fairly certain that the short sale-blitz in Sacramento has pretty much gasped its last breath. I would know this because I list and sell a ton of short sales in Sacramento, among other types of homes in Sacramento. For the past 8 years, I’ve been very much focused on short sales because short sales have made up a big part of the home sales in Sacramento. It’s not like a Sacramento real estate agent who wants to do business in Sacramento can ignore 1 out of every 3 possible sales.
I think I can safely predict that when my inventory is switching to equity sales, then short sales are beginning to ease up. Most of my new listings are traditional sales for sellers with equity. In fact, very few phone calls are from sellers with a documented hardship for a short sale. Most of the people who call me about a short sale are either trying to sell a home for somebody else in the family who died and the home is underwater. Or, something just happened to create a reason to sell such as divorce, medical emergency or relocation, and the home is underwater.
Most homeowners in the Sacramento area who wanted to do a short sale have already done a short sale. Some of the homes that these sellers have closed as short sales have popped back up as a short sale for the new buyers who bought in 2008 or 2009. Yeah, there have been short sales completed on the same home twice! I’ve worked on a few short sales from sellers who bought in 2010. But that was pretty much the last defining year, and 2010 was on the edge. So, while there are still many homes (around 40%) in Sacramento underwater from the 2005-era, if those owners haven’t dumped the home by now, they probably won’t.
Throw into the mix we’re in the hottest real estate market I’ve ever seen in Sacramento. There is no way to describe the debauchery of this seller’s market. If interest rates were not so ridiculously low, the market would be different, I imagine, but cash buyers are definitely fueling the flames of the buying frenzy. I feel empathy for the buyers out there who can’t buy a home.
But I do believe the year of the short sale is over. We may find many short sales over in Sacramento. At last, the short sale train has left the station. So, don’t pay any attention to those guys in the party hats blowing streamers because they don’t have any tickets. They’re just hungover.
