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Elizabeth Weintraub
The Joe Cocker Short Sale in Rancho Cordova
Sometimes, I get a short sale to sell that throws me a curve ball. Especially when it’s a tenant-occupied short sale and the tenant won’t cooperate. Oh, they will promise to cooperate, and they’ll even give this Sacramento short sale agent a key for the lockbox and let me publish in MLS a cell phone number, but they have no intention of cooperating with showings. What is it? My smiling face? They can’t say “no” to my face? But behind my back they are thinking forget her and the horse she road in on?
I put this Rancho Cordova short sale on the market more than a year ago, and for the first 3 or 4 months, I couldn’t show it because the tenant refused to let agents inside. He stuck a big sign on the door: PITBULLS INSIDE, and refused to answer the door. I was very relieved when the seller finally booted the guy to the curb. Unfortunately, my lockbox vanished with the tenant.
The seller is in the military. Stationed overseas. He had been fighting his investor Freddie Mac for several years, trying to deal with his underwater home. There are several bright spots in this, actually. First, the military gets special treatment in a short sale. Foreclosure is generally not gonna happen. Not to mention, if one hasn’t made a mortgage payment in several years, one’s odds of getting a short sale granted by the bank are very high.
While I waited for the seller’s family member to mail me a key, I began receiving phone calls from eager buyer’s agents who were very anxious to show the home. Their options were a) crawl in through the bathroom window or b) wait for me to put a lockbox on it. The lock was broken on the bathroom window. One agent crawled through the bathroom window and called back to report that squatters were living in the house. Nope, that’s just the way it looks. Another agent yelled at me that she was most certainly NOT crawling in through the bathroom window and hung up on me.
Well, I guess she’s not selling that home then. Short sales present different levels of difficulty and challenges. Ordinarily, I would never ask an agent to crawl through a bathroom window, but this was the least of the problems inherent with this particular home. An agent who would not or could not navigate a small obstacle such as an access barrier probably would not survive dealing with the upfront repairs a lender would require just to get the loan funded, nor be willing to deal with a 203K for the roof and other repair issues. This was a fixer short sale in Rancho Cordova, which are not the easiest short sales to sell.
Finally received a key, I gained access, attached a lockbox and secured the back window. But by then we were in escrow. We were in escrow with the agent and the buyer who were willing to crawl in through the bathroom window. Obtaining short sale approval from IndyMac, now One West, and Freddie Mac was relatively fast, given that particular combination of servicer and investor. We received approval in fewer than 30 days! But that was at the end of April. We didn’t close escrow until the end of August. It took that buyer 4 months to fund and record a 203K.
Unfreakin’ believable. If this had been any other bank and any other situation, this short sale would have started over. Our negotiator at One West was such a nice guy. I don’t ordinarily use the words “nice guy” and “bank negotiator” in the same sentence. But this fellow was accommodating. Which was a good thing because the guy at the Franchise Tax Board was a far cry from a nice guy or even a guy whom I’d call a public servant, although our taxes pay his salary. He was more the male version of Lily Tomlin’s phone operator, one ringy dingy. He made us send him HUD after HUD after HUD and came up with a bunch of idiotic reasons why he would not issue the partial tax release.
But in the end, patience and teamwork won. Just like always. Just like every short sale I close in Sacramento. I think I had 6 days before my listing expired. Many happy parties. In this particular Rancho Cordova short sale, it took an army to close it. And some of us, still can’t get that Joe Cocker tune out of our heads this morning.
CITI Almost Thwarts Short Sale of East Sacramento Home
Do you know how hard it is to keep up a seller’s spirits in an East Sacramento short sale? I try very hard to make sure the first buyer we go into escrow with is the buyer we will close escrow with the first time around. I never want to say to a seller: “Look, we’ve got approval twice already, I am confident that buyer #3 will close this time.” Because sellers get exhausted when short sales drag on and on due to buyer cancellations. Not every seller has the wherewithal to hang in there. Some just give up. Throw in the towel. Walk away.
That’s why it’s important to close escrow with the first and only home buyer. It’s how we closed escrow yesterday on another East Sacramento home. This was a buyer who really fell in love with the home. Almost every agent says her buyer loves the home when the offer is presented, but buyers and agents tend to change their tune as the short sale progresses. The engagement process is often all fun and sparkly but some lose enthusiasm along the way. Not this buyer. She was a real trooper. She waited 6 months for this short sale to close. Homes in East Sacramento are worth the wait.
First, the bank decided it wanted a higher sales price. It’s the bank’s prerogative. Often when a home doesn’t move for whatever reason and we end up reducing the price, the banks put the price back where it was in the first place or close enough to it. That’s why it’s extremely important not to price an East Sacramento home too high when you’re deciding on a short sale price. But you don’t want to be too low because you might attract a buyer who can’t afford to increase her price if the bank demands it. It’s like Goldilocks: for homes in East Sacramento you want to be priced just right.
Then, when the buyer’s appraiser did her appraisal, she did not read the purchase contract. The buyer’s agent gave her a copy of the purchase contract and the price increase, but the appraiser was either too busy or she simply ignored the information. Pricing homes in East Sacramento is an art. Not every appraiser is up to snuff. Her appraisal came in at the list price and not the appraised price. It was $15,000 too low. This held up the closing while we scrambled to assemble comparable sales and push the buyer’s lender to reassess.
The second lender, Citimortgage, now One Main Financial, demanded an excessive amount to settle. Wells Fargo met most of the demand except for the last $1,200. It always seems to come down to $500 or $1,000 when we come to a standstill at the OK Corral. You gotta wonder what is wrong with these corporations that they would let a deal blow up over a few dollars, but they do and they will. I guess if you looked at $1,000 x 10,000 deals, that’s $10 million. But the buyer agreed to pay it out-of-pocket. Bless her sweet little heart.
Citimortgage had refused to extend this escrow. Because the appraisal review delayed the closing, we were past our approval letter date. By all accounts, the short sale had expired. We begged and pleaded but CITI denied our requests. They’d only given us 2 weeks in the first place, which is virtually impossible unless the buyer had moved forward on the loan as I had suggested and she, thank goodness, had complied. In the end CITI relented and gave us an extra 24 hours, which we managed to meet.
I like to examine my closings afterward to figure out what this Sacramento short sale agent can do to improve future closings. After 35-some years in the business, I still try to learn. Nothing is ever perfect. In this East Sacramento short sale, if I had changed the listed price in MLS, I could have prevented a clueless appraiser from making a mistake. I am reluctant to change a list price in the middle of an escrow just in case it falls out, but now that we have a seller’s market in Sacramento, there is really very little risk to increasing the sales price during escrow. And it just might avoid a future problem when the next appraiser screws up. It’s smart to be one step ahead at all times. That’s what I strive for.
Did Karma Close This Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale?
Do you believe in karma? You might be surprised. My husband and I had dinner last night at one of our favorite restaurants in Midtown Sacramento: The Waterboy. When the bill arrived, my husband whipped out a gift certificate. Who sent us that? Turns out it was a gift from a client. A husband and wife for whom I had done a Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale. They were a couple another Sacramento real estate agent might refer to as high maintenance. Agents call clients “high maintenance” if clients behave outside the norm or require more work, reassurance, or explanations than other clients.
I call it business. I’ve been around the block.
This couple had asked me to come into the office on a Saturday to talk with them. I ordinarily do not consult with clients about a short sale because I am not a lawyer. I don’t really give in-office consultations nor do I charge an hourly fee. I get paid on commission. Believe it or not, I do most of my real estate business via phone and email. Very little of it is in person. I am not high pressure nor would I ever try to force a seller into doing a short sale. Sellers typically need to come to that decision on their own, but I’m happy to help walk them through the pros and cons of their particular situation on the phone.
Although I do sell real estate on the weekends, I don’t do it in person. I don’t get dressed up, put on makeup and drive down to the office. I paid that price years ago, and I don’t do it today. If a client wants to meet with me in person, we meet during the week in daylight hours, like any other business person. It’s a misnomer that an agent must be on call 24 / 7. I am not ashamed to say that I have over $20 million in closed and pending sales so far this year, so if I’m telling you that I don’t have to go into the office on the weekends to be successful, it’s the truth.
Yet, this client desperately needed to meet on a Saturday. She and her husband lived out of the area and they could not meet any other day in Sacramento. So, I made an exception for them. It wasn’t a big transaction, either. It was a small short sale in Antelope. Around $125,000. I might have grumbled a little to my husband, but I went. You know why? Because these people needed my expertise. Who else would do a Bank of America Cooperative short sale for them? There aren’t very many short sale agents in Sacramento who know how to do this kind of transaction; in fact, I don’t know of any. I specialize in Cooperative short sales. They needed help. They were also really nice people. I like working with nice people.
Every client is different. They don’t always fit the mold we agents set. Some need a little bit more help and explanations than other clients. I certainly wasn’t expecting a gift certificate from them to The Waterboy, though. That was a surprise. See, karma has a way of coming around.
What Will a Sacramento Home Seller Take?
Would a seller take this to sell a house? Would a seller take that to buy a mouse? Would you, could you, in a car, take them, take them, here they are? This is what it’s like putting a home on the market in Sacramento today. Offers falling out of the woodwork and from all directions. I tell sellers that I’m almost afraid for them because I know what will happen, and they do not. Sam, I am. I am prepared. But sellers are freaking out. I know it before it happens.
There is a long parade of offers coming my way today. Thinking ahead, I had mentioned to a seller last week that we should go on the market on Monday so we can all enjoy a relatively quiet Labor Day Weekend. Meaning her home will probably be sold by this Wednesday, at the latest. What is a little bit wild are the calls and emails that I’ve been receiving from buyer’s agents. They all want to know what the seller will do and what the seller will accept.
The answer to those kinds of questions is I do not know. I am not the seller. I am just the listing agent. I’m not inside the seller’s head. I don’t make decisions for the seller. It’s the seller’s house, and she can sell to whomever she wants in this market. It’s a seller’s market. If your buyer is not a cash buyer, you’re probably at a disadvantage, but not necessarily. There are some sellers who care more about the type of person who is making the offer than the type of offer. But let’s not fool anybody, cash offers, as long as the buyer is not a jerk, are more likely to win.
Especially in a short sale situation. In the past, like a few months ago, a cash buyer might be a drawback and not as desirable to a short sale seller. That’s because cash buyers are often distracted by a new listing, something else shiny to buy, and they can bail with great ease. But today, they are very unlikely to walk away because there is nothing else for them to buy. So, that makes a cash buyer just as attractive commitment-wise as, say, my personal favorite, which are VA buyers. VA buyers will stick with the deal because they have no other place to go. But now, neither do the cash buyers.
This is a really good time to be a seller in Sacramento. If you’re searching for an experienced and straight-forward Sacramento real estate agent to help you get top dollar for your home, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. I’ll help you to navigate these crazy multiple offer waters and get the edge in the market. It’s what I do, Sam, I am.
Open House Etiquette for Home Buyers
Because I write for a national homebuying website on About.com, I get emails from people all over the country. This morning I received a note from Helen, a distraught homeowner: “I would appreciate your comments on homebuying clients upon seeing through your house for sale without asking to use the washroom, making a mess and using the clean hand towels. I cannot for the life of me think that a person could be so inconsiderate. My question is how would you handle the situation without being discourteous or rude?”
Dear Helen: I would chase their car down the street and beat on the trunk with an Armenian cucumber.
My advice is if you live in Sacramento and decide to grow Armenian cucumbers, please know they are very prolific. We have a garden bed of these cucumbers behind our garage in Land Park. The vines run the entire length of the garage to the south, turn the corner and are creeping along the west side of the garage. When you see an Armenian cucumber in the grocery store, the cuke is probably about a foot long and maybe an inch and a half in diameter. Some of our cucumbers are four feet long and four inches in diameter. You could play baseball with these cucumbers. Well, actually, you could only bat the ball once. The integrity would not allow a second foul ball.
But baseball season is heading into its final month as our Fall Open House season is almost upon us. Soon as Labor Day is over, we begin our second home selling season in Sacramento. September will be a fast and furious month for home sales. We still have no inventory and yet very low interest rates — although, I am working on a handful of new listings for next week. So, please check my website after Labor Day for new listings.
Until then, here is an article about Open House Etiquette for aspiring home buyers. And look on the bright side, Helen, in case you are reading this blog, at least your visitors thought to use the “washroom” instead of doing their business wherever they were standing. My mother was positive some people were born in a barn because that was one of her favorite questions. Although, why she would ask me never made any sense. I was fairly certain she was present at the time.
