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Elizabeth Weintraub
Cannot Wait for Brunch at Alaro Craft Brewery in Midtown Sacramento
Alaro Craft Brewery got its name in part from a Mallorca municipality in the Balearic Islands of Spain. It used to be Rubicon Brewing Company in that location at 2004 Capitol, but that 30-year institution in Sacramento closed its doors last year. We had been reading about the opening of Alaro Craft Brewery. I’ve been craving Spanish food. Especially Spanish cheese, since my team member Josh Amolsch texted a photo of a trio cheese package I had served when he visited me in Kona last August. Yum, Manchego, tipsy goat and Iberico cheese.
When we read in the Sacramento Bee a review of Alaro Craft Brewery, it was iffy to wander down for a late lunch. Reason is every time the Sac Bee reviews a restaurant, they are generally flooded with business. It was about 1:30 on Sunday when we suddenly decided we were starving. Too hungry to walk, needed to drive, park in my husband’s parking lot for the State and wander over. Sure enough, we were able to score one of the last outside tables available.
Inside was a zoo.
In part it was noisy inside because a couple of the Brew Bikes were parked outside and waiting. There were so many people we couldn’t even see the type of seating arrangement inside. Only that it was too loud.
You will love the small plates. I really don’t see any reason to order anything else when such delectable treats are available at such reasonable prices. We ordered the Gambas Al Ajillo, which is shrimp with garlic (a bit greasy, not enough napkins) yet surprisingly accompanied by those hearty small loaves of bread; the lamb meatballs (heavenly), beets with pistachio-caper relish sprinkled with feta (my favorite); eggplant caponata, which also featured cauliflower; and a roasted pepper filled with a cheesy potato and fish mixture.
Then, there is the craft beer. Not to go hog wild on a Sunday afternoon, I ordered a high-octane IPA, but a small glass at 10 ounces. My husband chose a pale ale. Both selections were excellent. Can’t wait to come back to this place when brunch begins. Just sit outside when the you spot the Brew Bikes nearby and you’ll be fine.
After that, you can stroll over to the R Street corridor to visit all the new shops, including WEST ELM, which is now open!
How to Say No to Lowball Offers from Home Buyers
We’re not gonna go all Nancy Reagan on you by insisting we just say no to lowball offers from home buyers because words matter. Just saying no doesn’t cut it. Doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. I mean, let’s say a home buyer calls out of the blue. Upon further discussion, the buyer’s agent learns the home buyer has made several offers already through different agents. Every time the offer gets rejected, the buyer fires his agent. And now the buyer wants to work with you. This is where Wally says, “Golly, gee, Beaver, that’s swell.” Sure, how lucky can we get?
Pretty darn lucky, this Sacramento Realtor says. Because we have something those other two agents don’t have. Perspective and information. They came into this blindfolded but our eyes are wide open. The buyer has already told us what he expects, including what he will do if he doesn’t get it. This is where being an experienced Realtor really shines.
Means, we can just say no to lowball offers from home buyers, or we can choose a different plan of action. We have plenty of options available before us.
One option of course is to just say no to lowball offers. Tell the buyer we cannot work with him and send him on his merry little way, but that doesn’t resolve anything. It just puts more distance between you and the problem.
Another option is to hang in there, do what an agent would ordinarily do and hope for a different outcome. That’s not an option I suggest. Sets up the agent for failure. And the buyer. Because his present way of thinking is not working very well given the facts he is not buying a home and popping from agent to agent.
Question, Clarify and Educate is the best way to say no to lowball offers from home buyers
The best option is explore why the buyer expects to get a lowball offer accepted. To dive into the reasons the buyer feels the need to make such an offer. What does the buyer think of his percentages of success? Does he give himself 50 / 50 odds? 70 / 30, what? Where did he come up with this strategy, a strategy that leads him to failure?
An agent can produce comparable sales and show the days on market, list-price- to sold-price-ratios, but you might not get a logical response. It’s better to ask enough questions to determine motive. An experienced buyer’s agent will try to understand and empathize with the buyer. Empathizing is not the same thing as sympathy. Empathizing is putting yourself in the shoes of the buyer. Not feeling sorry for them. That would be sympathizing and no buyers need our sympathy. They need our empathy.
When a buyer throws out, “What harm can it do just to ask?” Instead of mumbling, an experienced buyer’s agent will not agree with that question and will explain the harm it can do. Sellers don’t want to be blindsided by lowballs. It ticks them off. Makes them angry. Selling is an emotional issue.
There can be isolated circumstances that call for lowball offers and markets that do not. This is not a market for lowballs. Besides, most lowball offers are just a cry to meet in the middle. Buyers don’t want to show their hand out of the gate. They don’t want sellers to know how much they will pay. Most offers in a normal market get accepted when the sellers come down a little bit and buyers go up from that initial offer. Which means buyers today expect a counter offer.
When Will Mortgage Interest Rates Go Down?
When will mortgage interest rates go down, the caller asked yesterday. Sure, he’s just doing construction across the street or maybe he lives in the neighborhood. Not really a buyer, he says. After a much longer discussion, turns out the caller is actually a vet with a VA eligibility. What he really wanted to know was is it a good time to buy a home?
But like so many other first-time home buyers today, he asked the question of when will mortgage interest rates go down. As though that is some kind of secret measurement of the gateway to homeownership.
Never. That’s my answer. Our days of historically low interest rates, oh, please dear, God, let them be over. Interest rates have been superficially suppressed for almost 10 years and are not an indicator of a strong economy.
You live long enough, you see everything. Why, in 1995, I recall feeling almost giddy that I was able to score an interest rate of 8%. Also, when making the transition in the 1970s from escrow officer to real estate agent, I saw first-hand the days of 18% to 20% interest rates.
So when rates hover around 5% today, which gets buyers fretting and wondering: when will mortgage interest rates go down, part of me says they have no idea how good they have it. It also makes me want to ask: hey, have you looked at your VISA card statement lately? Making the minimum payment, are we? How much is that interest rate?
Quentin Fottrell, personal finance editor at MarketWatch, says making minimum payments on a credit card is insane. He offers the following: “A $2,000 credit balance with an 18% annual rate, with a minimum payment of 2% of the balance, or $10, whichever is greater, would take 370 months or just over 30 years to pay off.”
Yet, you don’t hear anybody complaining about that 18% credit card interest rate. Instead, they focus on a 5% mortgage interest rate and wonder when will mortgage interest rates go down.
Further, what do borrowers have to show for paying on that 18% credit card rate? Not a house, that much I can tell you. Generally, it’s impulse purchases or depreciating items. For some borrowers, all living expenses are financed, like gas and groceries.
However, facts are prices are soft on many homes as inventory rises, which makes it a great time to buy. Our Sacramento housing trends for September 2018 show double the number of homes for sale since January. Plenty of selections. Just lock in that interest rate. Because every one-half of a percent drops your purchasing power by about $25,000. That means if you had hoped to buy a $400,000 home, you can only afford $375,000.
Sacramento Fruit Trees Under Quarantine for Oriental Fruit Fly
Bad news yesterday from Soil Born Farms that the city is under quarantine for Oriental fruit fly. This means the Harvest Sacramento program through Soil Born Farms will not happen this winter. Big bummer for many reasons. Harvest Sacramento is made up of volunteers who go to individual homes throughout the city of Sacramento, one neighborhood at a time, to pick fruit. Yes, they pick all of your fruit, for example, so you don’t have to, but they do much more. Harvest Sacramento donates the fruit to charity to feed the hungry and they give you a tax deductible receipt.
We signed up for this program years ago when we discovered we don’t eat enough oranges to really justify an orange tree in our yard in Land Park. They are big, fat juicy naval oranges. But we are too lazy to make orange juice and we just don’t consume a lot of citrus.
Further, just for the record, we did not plant the orange tree. It was a young fledgling tree, still staked to prevent falling over when we bought the house.
One day it did fall over. I was shocked. Looking out our kitchen window, I witnessed a big tree that had fallen face first into the mud after a rain storm. Fearing it was dying, I ran out and staked it up again. Somehow, it survived and now it is mashing our fence, hanging over into the neighbor’s yard. Nobody likes it. But we keep fertilizing and allowing Harvest Sacramento to pick the oranges every winter.
The quarantine for oriental fruit fly means you can eat your own fruit but you cannot throw it away in green waste. If you need to dispose of your fruit, you need to double bag it in plastic bags and put it into your garbage.
Below is a map of the area under quarantine for Oriental fruit fly. The quarantine prohibits sharing or sales of fruit. For more information, call the California Food & Agriculture Pest Hotline at 800.499.1899.
Image: California Department of Food & Agriculture
Authentic Realtors Display a Voice of Reality and Reason
Authenticity seems to be a rare commodity in a search for authentic Realtors. You seem like a real person to me, is what many of my clients say when they call for the first time. Of course I am a real person. Do you think I am a robot? An alien? A cat reincarnated in human form? But what I think they are trying to say is I don’t seem like a salesperson.
As though a salesperson is an evil creature to be avoided at all costs. Because you know what a salesperson will do, right? They will sell you something you don’t want. Which is a real fear of many people when dealing with agents. People worry that a salesperson will take advantage of them. So they search for an un-salesperson, what we call authentic Realtors.
Grounded is another term I’ve heard tossed about. But that’s just trendy. Besides, if you’ve been following the massive 7.5 earthquake in Indonesia, you will learn about liquefaction. This is when the ground turns into soft mud after an earthquake and swallows up people. In Petobo, in the Palu area, when the soil turned into mud, it caused houses to change direction, slide miles away and many sunk below the mud, with only the roof tops poking out of the ground. There is no such thing as grounded. It’s simply a perception.
But authentic Realtors are a reality. These are people who don’t read scripts because they don’t need it. They’ve been around the block enough times to know what to say to people and how to say it, which is with kindness and respect. So many agents I know are afraid to counter a client’s belief or statement. Because they are trying way too hard to be “friends.” They don’t want to make an enemy or cause bad feelings, so the bad news doesn’t reach their clients. The bad news is whatever they think the clients should know but are afraid to disclose.
Give it to a person straight and then offer solutions, that’s my method of operation. Yet some Sacramento Realtors will say: well, it sucks to be you and walk out. Which is what an agent is doing when they know a client is thinking the wrong things and, by extension, doesn’t possess enough information to choose the right moves. When that agent could deliver the information the client needs, but she doesn’t.
Authentic Realtors share information freely. Real agents aren’t worried about competition or how other people will view them. They are not self conscious; but they are self aware. Delivering the truth about a situation is not always easy, but it is necessary. If the client still rejects the notion after that, well, at least her Realtor extended the effort.
