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Elizabeth Weintraub
Sampling of Spring Birds in Land Park Sacramento
My goal to show you spring birds in Land Park Sacramento was to capture a few white-crowned sparrows, which are migrating over the flyway in Sacramento right now. Can’t really show you spring birds in Land Park Sacramento without the white crowned-sparrows. However, they had all departed for greener pastures by the time I grabbed my camera and headed out to the back yard.
This little fellow is a juvenile Black Phoebe. They congregate in our front yard maple tree every April. Sometimes the females build a nest on top of our home security box.
Scrub jays we enjoy year round. They nose dive critters in the yard and make a lot of noise. Not as much as the myna birds in Hawaii, though. Spring birds in Land Park Sacramento make their own chatter when sending out mating calls. This guy is perched at the top of our tree.
Most people will immediately recognize a male house finch like the one above. These spring birds in Land Park, along with the goldfinches, tend to hang out in my neighbor’s yard because they feed them. There are pros and cons to feeding birds, and some people believe feeders give the birds too much reliance on humans for existence. Not to mention, the seed droppings sprout all over.
Here is a mourning dove. They make a soulful cry and are ubiquitous in Land Park. Mourning doves also run around on the ground, pecking at seeds. It seems like it takes a lot of energy for them to take flight, and they make an old woman sound as a group arrives and departs.
This is one bird I am not sure I can identify, much as I hate to say it. At first, I thought maybe a banded tail pigeon, but it seems more like a dove than a pigeon. It fits the ruffled neck, beak structure, shape and black mark on the neck, but I cannot see the edge of white wings, which would be a white-winged dove. Even the juveniles have white tips on the wings, and there are none on this bird.
And while this photo is not spring birds in Land Park Sacramento, it is the azaleas growing in our front yard. Such a beautiful display of colorful floral that live such a short life before biting the dust. Our yard looks gorgeous for about 3 weeks in the spring, and then they are gone.
Back to Sacramento real estate for me. This week so far I’ve been on four listing presentations. Three I believe I will accept. One I am on the fence about. While taking advantage of a break in the action, I quickly dashed into the yard yesterday to shoot these photos. Could not have been worse timing because I managed to miss the delivery of important merchandise from Mt. Hood Winery. Ha! Usually the delivery guy texts me. Oh, well.
Sacramento Agents Who Do Not Answer Their Phones
Sacramento agents who do not answer their phones are a pet peeve of many real estate clients. I know this because clients routinely tell me how happy they were that I answered my phone when they called. If you can imagine it, a seller decides it’s time to sell, so she calls an agent. Then another agent. Then a third agent, and nobody, not a single agent answers her phone. I imagine the seller gets kinda tired of leaving the same message over and over. That’s not to say agents are always free to chat because there are times we are with a client and cannot break away.
But clients soon learn fast enough about Sacramento agents who do not answer their phones when they call a second or third time and nobody picks up. It’s downright annoying. I usually try all three methods when I am calling a buyer’s agent, for example. I’ll leave a voice mail, send a text and follow up with an email. Still, often nothing but crickets.
The only thing worse than Sacramento agents who do not answer their phones are agents who say they will only return calls during certain windows of time on any given day. Hate to be their client with an emergency. Excuse me, my home is burning down; my dog ran away, my mother died. Whatev. And the agent still doesn’t call back.
I’ve worked with some buyer’s agents in Sacramento whom I’ve never spoken to because they never pick up the phone. Once they slip a buyer into escrow, they often assign a TC (transaction coordinator) to “manage the transaction.” They wash their hands of the transaction and leave it up to an assistant to close it for them. Some of those TCs are not even licensed, so they’re all breaking the law.
When a seller works with Elizabeth Weintraub, that seller can be assured he or she will have top priority. I will answer my phone, respond to that email and follow up on that text message. In fact, just yesterday, a seller texted me the name and phone number of an agent who had made an appointment to view her home. Knowing that this seller’s particular situation is a bit complex for many agents, I called the buyer’s agent to answer questions he might not have known he had. Somehow my call went to voice mail, but this is an agent who does answer the phone.
He called right back to ask if I had read his mind. He had been reviewing the property information in MLS, questions developed, and there was my voice mail asking if I could answer questions. How is that for timing? Now, I don’t claim to be telepathic, but maybe that’s an additional service I can advertise, LOL. At least I will never be one of those Sacramento agents who do not answer their phones. No matter what I’m doing, if I’m not with a client, I’m picking up when my phone rings.
Full-Service Realtors Means Sometimes Going Beyond With Service
Full-service Realtors in Sacramento offer sellers so much more than just higher prices, fewer renegotiations in the middle of escrow and expert analytical skills. We sometimes have to go beyond what most people expect with service and sharing our knowledge. Oh, we’ve had it hammered into us that we can’t give legal advice and can’t give tax advice, anything that departs from our skillset of real estate and that for which we are licensed. After all, we are not accountants nor lawyers. We are full-service Realtors.
But what does that mean to the public we serve? It means we are judged every single day by what we do and how we do it, and our performance darn well better be excellent. We need to anticipate what a seller needs before she or he asks. Often, it also means we go beyond what other agents might do.
One of the aspects of my full service for sellers involves giving advice as to improvements. There are often little fixes a seller can do to make a property much more saleable. Left to their own devices, sellers will fix things that are inconsequential to a buyer but which the sellers think are important. That’s generally a waste of money. I don’t advise sellers based on my personal preferences, I advise based on what sells. What buyers say they want and expect. My advice is based on my vast experience spanning four decades in real estate.
But I don’t just throw out advice, like: paint that wall a dove gray. Since I spent 10 years of my life fixing up homes and flipping them, doing the work with my own two hands, I know quite a bit about home improvement projects. Not only that, but I know which products to recommend, which vendors to supply those products and the contractors who can do the actual work. And I don’t even watch HGTV, heh, heh.
Discount agents are often too green, too new, and honestly, many of them don’t care. They can’t help. I shared with a friend the other day what I do to attract multiple offers and drive up the sales price versus what a discount agent does. A discount agent’s advice is: take the offer. Sellers make more money through full-service Realtors, and they get more qualified advice from an experienced veteran vs. a newbie. A discount agent will promise full service but they can’t deliver. It’s impossible.
Looking to sell your home? Before you wander into Lowe’s, give Elizabeth Weintraub at Lyon Real Estate a jingle at 916.233.6759. I’m happy to help.
What is the Amount of Earnest Money Deposit in Sacramento?
When you’re ready to make an offer, you will need to consider the amount of earnest money deposit required for a purchase contract. Although the amount of earnest money deposit is not specified, and could be just a $1.00 or even simply “love and affection,” consideration is part of the essential elements of a purchase contract. Because back in Real Estate 101, we had the essential elements of a purchase contract drilled into our heads. Do you know what those elements are? I’ll tell you, in case you have forgotten.
Amount of Earnest Money Deposit and
Essential Elements of a Purchase Contract
- A legal purpose
- Competent parties
- Offer and Acceptance
- Consideration
- Validation
While there is no minimum amount required, most buyer’s agents try to keep the earnest money deposit under 3% of the sales price. The reason for that is in the event of default, the seller might be entitled to liquidated damages, and that amount is limited to 3% of the sales price. Any amounts deposited over that sum would be returned to the buyer. Unless, of course, the seller refused to release the earnest money, and then there is a penalty that can be imposed for refusing to release. To get that penalty, though, and to get the rest of the money released, well, it could involve an expensive court case or Small Claims.
Rather than fight that battle, it’s safer to limit the earnest money deposit to less than 3%. But how low can you go is what some buyers want to know. Now, considering how the seller will interpret the buyer’s eagerness and willingness to buy the home, it might be wise to put your money where your mouth is. If the amount of an earnest money deposit is $1,000, that doesn’t show the buyer is very serious, even if the buyer is. Especially if the sales price is $400,000. 3% of that is $12,000.
Another twist that plays into this, which was mentioned at one of our office meetings at Lyon Real Estate, is some listing agents are getting sued if the buyer later bails and the deposit was puny, inadequate. I can see that. A judge might question whether the agent was protecting her seller by not asking for a larger earnest money deposit.
From a Sacramento listing agent’s point of view, 1% of the sales price is the bare minimum, but I really prefer 2% to 3% for my sellers. It shows the buyer is genuine and committed. All buyers, unless otherwise agreed to in writing, have a contingency period in the contract that provides for cancellation and a release of the earnest money deposit.
Land Park Seller Bought and Sold Concurrently Without Listing First
Another satisfied Land Park seller closed escrow last week. The incredible thing was we didn’t even have his house listed when we helped him to buy a new home contingent on his existing home closing concurrently. Sometimes we can pull off that remarkable type of sale. How we do it when other agents cannot is an interesting story.
For starters, I’m not saying this will work 100% of the time but usually it does. First, it helps to have a desirable home to sell, and it doesn’t get much better than owning a vintage home on a fabulous street. Second, if the listing agent of the home the seller wants to buy knows me, well, they know I will sell that home, whether it’s on the market right now or not. I will find a way to sell the seller’s home because that’s what my reputation is built upon. In other words, we sell the listing agent being Elizabeth Weintraub to the other agent.
I always tell my sellers it is better overall to put their home on the market before going off to buy a home. We can make the sale of their home contingent on finding a home to buy. But I also understand that they don’t always care what is best. They don’t want to sell until they find the home they love, which ultimately is their motivation for selling. In this particular sale, the seller had found the home and started the negotiations to buy that home prior to finding our buyer.
But in the middle of everything, we suddenly were prepared to go on the market. No grass grows under my feet. The house was painted, everything cleaned up and ready to go. When I told the Land Park seller how much he could get for his home, he was fairly blown away. He could not believe he had acquired that much equity since I sold him the home almost 10 years ago. We priced the home very attractively, right at that sweet spot.
After the open house, we received an aggressive offer through an experienced Lyon Realtor I’ve closed other sales with. It’s always wonderful to work with a competent and skilled agent on the other side. My team member Amy McMullan jumped in to help this Land Park seller purchase his new home. On the day before closing, a series of events popped up that required immediate attention, and Amy got on the horn and made it happen. I thought she was gonna have a heart attack. But no, she got the job done professionally and efficiently.
This Land Park seller sold his home for $23,000 over list price. He closed on his new home the same day, and we negotiated an extra day for him to move out. We do the impossible just about every day on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. If you’re thinking about buying or selling a home in the Sacramento area, please call Elizabeth at 916.233.6759.
1731 Bidwell Way, Sacramento, CA 95818 closed escrow on April 12th, 2018 at $572,000.
