Email ElizabethReal Estate Tips
Buyers Do Not Care What You Tell Them as Long As You Do
Buyers don’t care what you tell them as long as you tell them. That’s my opening statement when I hand home sellers a package of disclosures to complete. It’s the things you don’t tell a buyer that can come back to haunt you, not what you do say.
You take a neighborhood where I live and work like Land Park. Because I live in Land Park, I have intimate knowledge about the neighborhood, which agents who live outside of Land Park probably don’t know. If they don’t know, they can’t disclose those facts to a buyer. Although, it could probably be argued that they should know or should at least have asked questions of the seller.
On the front end of my marketing, I sell the delights of living in Land Park — the friendly neighbors, tree-canopied streets, fabulous restaurants and our special attractions such as William Land Park, the Sacramento Zoo, Fairy Tale Town, the Rock Garden, and Vic’s ice cream.
But there is also a downside — as there is with any neighborhood, I don’t care where you live. For example, I know which areas in Land Park routinely flood during a hard rain. I know where the feral cats, skunks, opossums and raccoons roam. Which streets get foot traffic and the origination of that traffic. When noise factors such as trains or freeways can be present. Parking ordinances. Which trees are protected. Selling homes in Land Park means more than what we used to call selling real estate in the old days: selling carpets and drapes. That used to be the definition of residential real estate sales in the 1970s.
The thing all Land Park agents know is after escrow closes, odds are something in that buyer’s new home will probably malfunction. And the minute it does, the buyer is likely to immediately jump to the conclusion that the seller knew about it and purposely withheld that information or concealed that defect. It’s human nature. We’re a suspicious bunch of people.
So, how do you bump up the odds that you won’t get sued after escrow closes? You hire an agent who can explain the inherent problems with some types of seller disclosures and can give you the right documents. You find an agent who knows the nuances of your neighborhood. I tell my sellers to disclose all material facts. If I know a material fact, I disclose it. I go into great detail about what a material fact is and why it’s important. I help sellers to recollect and disclose. We talk about the Transfer Disclosure Statement. Because buyers don’t care what you tell them as long as you do.
The other day a seller objected to a point I made in a disclosure. She wanted me to remove a sentence about the possibility that a neighbor’s dog might bark. No can do. The tenant told me the dog next door barked. I don’t know if the dog barks. The dog wasn’t barking in my presence. I noted that I did not hear the dog barking but the tenant said the dog barks and I will not investigate. This disclosure doesn’t appear in my marketing materials. It appears on the agent visual inspection, on which I obtain the buyer’s signature, along with a pile of other documents after offer acceptance.
I’m always thinking one step ahead of ways to protect my sellers yet conform to the law. That’s my job, and I take my job seriously.
The point is it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. I don’t want my sellers ever ending up in court. Not if I can help it. And I can. Because buyers don’t care what you tell them as long as you do.
Elizabeth is traveling today.
How a Sales Background Helps Real Estate Agents
A friend on another real estate board talked in her blog yesterday about out how a sales background helps real estate agents. Her research revealed that many real estate agents had no sales training before joining the real estate profession. She commented on how much her corporate sales background helped her in real estate. And boy, can I relate to that. I did not become a top Sacramento Realtor by chance.
From an early age, I won sales contests. Taught me to be competitive and to win. Even today, at my age, going on 67, I still like to win. When I no longer really need to win. It’s ingrained.
One of my first jobs was selling flower seed packets door-to-door in Circle Pines, Minnesota. In fact, I engaged in a lot of door-to-door sales, maybe because I wasn’t old enough to work in a stores. Also, there were not a lot of telemarketers on party-line phones in the 1950s.
Some of my sales background was acquired and some naturally inbred.
When I sold flower seeds, I would engage the person who answered the door in conversation. Oh, I’m not selling anything, lady. Like, where I lived in relationship to them, so they knew I was a neighbor who went to school with their kids. I wasn’t beyond begging them to buy my flower seeds. Or using my mother’s name in the community. The problem with that job was I wasn’t really motivated by money. I simply enjoyed selling every seed packet I had. Creating answers to handle rejection on the fly. Most neighbors could not say no to me.
Did not realize at the time how much a sales background helps real estate agents. I sold newspaper subscriptions for the Circulating Pines (a suburb of Minneapolis) and won a brand new Schwinn bicycle! My parents sure as hell were not buying such an expensive toy for me. I sold more newspapers that year than anybody.
While supporting myself through my senior year in high school, I sold magazines over the phone. People would say, “Oh, I don’t have time to read a magazine.” Oh, really? What about when you’re stitting at the breakfast table, eating a bowl of Cheerios? You’re probably reading the back of the Cheerios box when you could be reading Playboy, for the articles, of course. I take my cues from the conversation. Smile and dial was the name of the game. And not surprisingly, I made good money doing this.
When I moved to Denver, Colorado, at age 18, I sold Grolier’s Encyclopedias door-to-door. Something people would “value, use and appreciate, not only now but forever through the years.” See, I still remember the lines. I memorized a 90-minute presentation and was very good at ad-libbing my delivery. Changing it up in the middle of my performance. Complete strangers let me into their home, and for the next 90 minutes, they were all mine. Very similar to a listing presentation today.
Having a sales background helps real estate agents, no doubt about it. For a short time after moving to Ventura, I became a headhunter. The company sent me for training at IBM, to learn sales techniques. I learned how to sell benefits over features, like a duck to water.
The mere fact that I came up the ranks through working as a title searcher and later as a certified escrow officer boosted my analytical nature. Knowledge is power. But that sales background helped mold me into the top producer I am today. If a person says to me, I don’t think this is a good time to buy, for example, I will die trying to change that thought.
Most agents would shrug, say OK and get on with their lives. But I like to change minds. Just ask my husband what an argument with me is like.
Formula to Exceed Client Expectations in Sacramento Real Estate
Whenever I am a customer, I pay attention to those who exceed client expectations. Mostly because that is my personal goal in every Sacramento real estate transaction. While many agents can perform an adequate job, how many achieve stellar reviews from an ecstatic client? I like my clients to believe I have outperformed and gone above and beyond. Granted, I could bribe them, I suppose, but what’s the fun in that? Nope, honest reviews from thrilled clients is where it’s at.
I thought about how to exceed client expectations when I came back from taking a friend to Kaiser in Honolulu for a colonoscopy. The workers from Lowes were at our house when I left, tearing out the kitchen cabinets. Part of my instructions was for them to leave the microwave on top of my desk. After all, apart from the grill, it’s my main cooking apparatus. Especially since the kitchen would be demolished.
When I walked into the house, everything in the kitchen was gone. The master bath was also gutted. As I had requested, the microwave was on top of my desk. But it was just dropped there. It wasn’t plugged in. The clock wasn’t set. It wasn’t immediately useable.
Not that I expected the guys from Lowes to do this, but after they swept up after themselves and left the house relatively clean, I had nothing to complain about. However, the thought did occur to me how much more thrilled I would have been had the workers anticipated me finding the microwave and my reaction.
How hard would it have been to find a way to plug it in and set the clock? Those two little things would have meant they cared about my reaction and happiness. They didn’t just perform a job. They want a step further. Except they did not.
For my own real estate business in Sacramento, I want to exceed client expectations. And the way you do that is to anticipate what the client would like. How a client will react. What a client will think. And then you can do so much better.
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.
What Does it Cost Sellers to Close Escrow in Sacramento?
Before listing, most people want to know how much it will cost sellers to close escrow. That’s a pretty loaded question because the largest expense is not always the commission. The way it works is you generally get what you pay for. If you want a top producer to focus on your home and maximize the profit potential, you will pay more in a commission, but you net more than the difference paid. For example, when top producers like myself charge 6%, we also pay attention to ways to reduce closing costs. On top of trying to attract multiple offers to increase the price. If we weren’t worth it, sellers would not pay it. They see the value. I show it to them.
So, actually the commission is not the biggest expense. The biggest expense is hiring a cheap agent who doesn’t know what he or she is doing. Or falling victim to the home inspections’ scam of a bloated request for repair. This is when the buyer bids over list price and then tries to grind down the seller after inspections reveal, guess what? That the house is like every other house of its vintage and has a few defects. Inexperienced agents can’t really explain repairs to buyers, and inexperienced listing agents are no better. Many just tell the seller to pay the buyer’s demands. That’s the extent of their so-called service, but that’s also why those listing agents don’t make the big bucks. Not like this elite club of top producers who get paid more because they are worth it.
Otherwise, to figure out how much it will cost sellers to close escrow in Sacramento, a seller would also need to add back all the money the seller didn’t lose after inspections. In addition to adding the higher list price because we grabbed a buyer from the Bay Area. Those sorts of specialities performed by top producers.
But an easier way to compute how much it may cost sellers to close escrow is to take the sales price times 7% and deduct that number. Then deduct the unpaid balance of your mortgage. What’s left is your net profit, assuming you have hired a top producer to list your home. If you haven’t, you can probably deduct another 5% to 10% for inexperience. If you have hired a top listing agent, then your net profit is 93% of the sales price, less your existing mortgage balance. My wacky way produces a result within $500 or so with this off-the-cuff method.
Of course, the sellers I work with get an estimated closing statement upon demand. But if you wanted to figure this on the fly, that’s how you do it. If sellers prefer a breakdown of itemized deductions, as a former escrow officer, I can certainly explain each item.
It reminds me of selling real estate in the 1970s. Yes, I am that old. I started in real estate when I was five, LOL. With seller financing — and I was a huge proponent of seller financing / creative financing back then — I often sold homes for a mere 7% down. Because that amount covered the seller’s closing costs and commission. Sellers carried owner financing for the balance. I can even see those days coming back.
