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Elizabeth Weintraub
Make a Commitment to Your Sacramento Short Sale
If you’re committed to doing a short sale in Sacramento, you should be committed to the long haul, just like your Sacramento short sale agent. It’s kind of a two-way street. A seller promises to provide financial documents over and over until her eyes spin, and an agent promises to submit those financials to the short sale bank while keeping her personal opinions to herself. OK, maybe not that last part. The point is nobody gives up and splits.
An agent called me yesterday to say she had received short sale approval for a seller on a file she started working on about a year ago. She had struggles like we all have struggles. It was tough to get the home in marketable condition, and one of the parties to the short sale was not exactly cooperable. The agent had put the home on the market but could not open the short sale with the bank because she was missing documents. Her solution was to cancel the listing.
This is the thing about short sales and life in general. You can learn from your own mistakes or you can learn from somebody else’s. It’s easier to learn from somebody else. My suggestion to the agent was to put the home into temporarily off the market status, but don’t give up on your seller. Don’t look at the seller who isn’t cooperating, focus on the seller who is agreeable and committed to the short sale process. The other guy will come around.
Sacramento short sale agents have a responsibility to many parties in the short sale. As a listing agent, we have a fiduciary responsibility to the sellers. If there are two sellers, that responsibility extends to both parties, even if those parties are divorced and not speaking to each other. As a short sale listing agent, we have a responsibility to the buyer’s agent and the buyer, too. If an agent has reason to believe the short sale will not happen, the agent should not list that short sale nor present it for sale to the marketplace. It’s not fair to a buyer to sit in escrow week after week waiting for approval when it’s not gonna happen.
The agent took the home off the market and put it into limbo status in MLS. She continued to work on the short sale. She didn’t throw in the towel and walk away. She honored her commitment to the Sacramento short sale. It took a year but both parties finally cooperated and she received short sale approval.
I keep telling people this secret but they don’t believe me. The secret to a successful short sale is commitment. Don’t give up. Not every short sale will close the first time around. You might have to submit that short sale for approval a second time or a third time or a fourth time. My longest short sale was almost three years but we closed. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to close a short sale; it matters whether one is made from the material to see it through to fruition.
Make a commitment to your Sacramento short sale.
Welcome to the Sacramento Fall Home Selling Market
The Fall home selling market in Sacramento starts today! Aren’t you excited? Many people don’t even realize that Sacramento has two real estate markets. Some concentrate only on Spring home selling without realizing homeowners get a second chance to sell in Sacramento, and that season starts in the Fall, the day after Labor Day weekend.
After the vacations are over. After the kids are back in school. After it’s no longer considered cool to wear white, that’s when your real estate market in Sacramento takes off. The only problem with this is the market was already steamin’ hot in August. It’s a seller’s market in Sacramento, for those of you who have been living under a rock. It’s no longer a buyer’s market and hasn’t been for some time.
The conditions in Sacramento are tough, almost as tough as driving down the hill from Lake Tahoe after Labor Day in crawling bumper-to-bumper traffic. I swear, we probably would have been better off if we had turned off at the intersection and drove out of our way to Jackson than continuing to inch along Highway 50 from Tahoe. We have tough conditions in Sacramento because we have about 10% of the number of homes for sale that we had 5 years ago. Mix that with low interest rates, below 4%, and throw in first-time home buyers on top of cash investors, hit the chop button, and you’ve got a blender full of something inedible.
I’m doing my part to help. This Sacramento REALTOR has a handful of new listings today hitting the market. Fresh-faced and scrubbed. Priced right. First-come, first-serve. We don’t play favorites. There’s a home in the Pocket that’s been pre-approved by Bank of America as a Cooperative Short Sale. There’s a newer home in Natomas under $150,000, offered as a short sale. How about a hot little number in Arden Manor as a starter home? We also have another Cooperative Short Sale with 4 bedrooms near Elk Grove, passed over by a confused soul. Coming attractions this week include a home near College Greens that is a traditional sale, offered by a seller with equity, and a third Cooperative Short Sale in East Sacramento’s River Park.
I tell Sacramento home buyers to look on my website for new listings, and to stay away from the dated inventory they find elsewhere. But do they listen? What do you think?
Your Home Inspection Won’t Uncover a Devils Postpile
Little is worse in a Sacramento short sale than hearing from the buyer’s agent that the buyer is canceling the purchase contract. Well, I guess it beats having a buyer ask for repairs, because at least this buyer had the good sense not to even try. I find my silver linings where I can these days. In this particular short sale, the buyer canceled because her home inspection revealed defects. No joke, all home inspections uncover defects.
Home buyers often cancel because they don’t want to fix things. They get upset over a broken window or because the AC isn’t working. I question whether these buyers should be homeowners, because stuff breaks and stuff stops working after escrow closes, too. It’s called home maintenance. You deal with it.
This buyer needed a 4-bedroom home for her three recently acquired kids. She needed the home in this particular neighborhood in Sacramento. It had to be priced around $160,000. Not to mention, this short sale is a preapproved Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale, so there is no maybe about this escrow — seller, property and price is preapproved. In this market in Sacramento, this buyer is probably not buying a home now. There is very little inventory. The odds of her finding another home like this are almost nil. We had many offers for this home, and the seller personally selected the buyer among dozens vying for the home. It’s sad and unfortunate that a few problems uncovered in a home inspection are causing this buyer to lose out on home ownership. Her three children will most likely grow up not knowing what it’s like to own your own home.
A home inspection is a report for the buyer’s edification. It is meant to uncover and disclose things a buyer might not be able to see simply by looking at the home herself. It gives a buyer a clear picture of what she might want to do to improve the home. It exposes the unknown.
Talk about a discovery. If you want to see something truly magnificent that was uncovered, take a trip one day to Mammoth Lakes and visit the National Monument Devils Postpile.
Many years ago, this area was a hot lava bed. As the lava cooled in the lava lake, cracks formed. These cracks ran vertical and formed columns of basalt. Usually you don’t see this because it’s underground. At Devils Postpile, the area of basalt columns was exposed after the glaciers excavated and then polished the formation. Devils Postpile was established in 1911 a National Monument.
Photo: Devils Postpile by Elizabeth Weintraub
Sacramento Home Buyers Can Learn a Lesson From Mono Lake
Just as we returned from a hard day of running amuck at Mammoth Mountain yesterday, a buyer’s agent called. She was breathless because she believed her buyer was writing an offer on one of my very few listings that are still available in this hot, hot, Sacramento seller’s market. There is such a huge demand for property right now, it’s almost a little daunting to put a home on the market.
It’s kind of like throwing raw meat into a pond of alligators. You don’t want to get too close to the action, if you know what I mean. Home buyers can bite off your fingers, they are so hungry to buy a home. However, just as I was pondering whether it was too late in the day to call my seller, the buyer’s agent emailed to say her buyer had a change of heart. She no longer wanted to make a purchase offer. It’s better she make her mistake upfront than to get into escrow before she discovered she had cold feet. It makes everybody miserable when a buyer cancels a purchase contract.
You don’t have to undo a mistake if you are committed when you make an offer to buy a home. If you cancel a purchase contract, you may or may not be within your contingency period. If a buyer has released all of her contingencies, she might place her deposit at risk. There are consequences to actions.
Take a look at the consequences of stupid actions at Mono Lake. This is an alkaline lake that contains its own unusual ecosystem. The water is slippery because it contains chloride (salt) and baking soda (bicarbonates), which form these unusual underwater structures called tufa. It’s very salty, almost 3 times the salt content of the ocean. Many streams and tributaries feed the lake. In 1941, Mono Lake covered more than 4 million acres. Today, it’s less than half that size. Why? Because the LA Department of Power and Water diverted the streams that flowed into Mono Lake. They drained half the water out of Mono Lake!
Mono Lake is home to the second largest gull population in North America. There are thrashers, towhees, warblers and shorebirds such as grebes and phalaropes, more than 118 species of birds breed at Mono Lake. The lake provides a home to brine shrimp and alkali flies, which in turn provides food for the birds. It also supports an abundance of natural habitation and vegetation. When you take away the water, all of this dies. The system collapses.
After years of long legal battles, the LADPW was ordered to restore the lake. But it will take many years to build the water level back to anywhere close to its 1941 levels. There are consequences for bad decisions. Rather than restore, it’s better to not mess it up in the first place.
Photo: Mono Lake, by Elizabeth Weintraub
Tuolumne Meadows and a Rocklin Short Sale
One of the things about hiking in the wilderness is it gives one time to reflect. With me, though, I tend to think about my Sacramento short sales. Other people might reflect on the purpose of life, why we are here, where we are going. But I think about why so many people seem to believe that discharging mortgage debt in bankruptcy makes that debt go away, because it doesn’t. It’s secured debt. This must happen because some bankruptcy lawyers don’t fully explain to clients how real estate works. Or, maybe these lawyers don’t understand real estate?
In the case of a Rocklin short sale that just closed, I think the lawyers were betting on a foreclosure. When a foreclosure takes place, title is involuntarily transferred. But if the bank doesn’t foreclose, title will stay in the borrower’s name. Not to mention, the other twist, if a second mortgage is discharged through bankruptcy, only the liability is discharged; the debt remains until it is released. Enter the short sale solution.
Try explaining to an energetic and knows-he-is-right borrower that his debt is still there. It’s hard to say yes, your debt was discharged, but your obligation still exists. Those are words coming out of an agent’s mouth that make no sense to them. Because, gosh darn it, their lawyer said it was discharged. You know what? I am not a lawyer. I’m just a Sacramento short sale agent who will do your short sale for you if you want to do it.
That Rocklin short sale was a Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale. The bank had called the borrower, and it was the bank who explained to the borrowers that foreclosure had never taken place. Yeah, 3 years later; they still owned that home in Rocklin. The bank did not want to do a deed-in-lieu, either. It wanted the sellers to do the short sale, and it would pay the sellers to do it. The sellers found this Sacramento short sale agent. I’ve closed a lot of Cooperative Short Sales through Bank of America, and I knew exactly what to do.
We faced a few challenges. There was that slight problem of the water being shut off. Oh, and no other utilities, either. Did you know that Placer County will place a temporary water meter on the property for $300? A temporary water meter will allow a home buyer to do a home inspection. The sellers chose a VA buyer. Buyers who obtain VA loans often get the short end of the stick when trying to buy a home because sellers and some agents tend to believe that VA loans are nothing but trouble when just the reverse is true. Why is that? Why do we say we honor our veterans and then do the opposite thing by rejecting their purchase offers?
That’s what I was thinking about yesterday as we hiked to Elizabeth Lake in the Tuolumne Meadows at Yosemite National Park. It was straight up for 2.3 miles. Totally silent. You could pause on the trail to catch your breath — it’s over 8,000 feet in elevation — and hear a sound in the distance. It is a low hum, and sounds a little bit like freeway traffic, but you know there are no roads nor freeways nearby. Then you realize it is the sound of the wind through the tree tops. If you stand still for a few more minutes, the gust of wind heading your direction will arrive and blow through your hair. You’re connected to nature. There are no cellphones, no computers, no bank negotiators, no short sales.
Then, an older fellow comes bounding down the path, wearing a button-down shirt, shorts and hiking boots. He’s talking on his cellphone about his prostate. Discussing his doctor’s diagnosis and at least acknowledges the existence of other people within earshot by telling the person on the other end of the phone that complete strangers are now privy to his medical condition. My first thought was you can’t get away from them. My second thought was who was his carrier? Why does he have service and I do not?
Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub, Elizabeth Lake, Tuolumne Meadows
