Email ElizabethReal Estate Tips
Why Sacramento Real Estate Teams are the Future
Sacramento real estate teams working together can work in the best interests of clients.
When I look back at my start in real estate in the 1970s, I would never have predicted that today I would lead one of the most successful Sacramento real estate teams in the state of California. In fact, back then I represented only buyers for the most part, and if I had a seller in my portfolio of clients, I matched that seller with a buyer in my portfolio. Dual agency? Who cared? My career began as a real estate consultant, and selling real estate was just a byproduct of an intensive counseling process.
Almost every client was an investor. I helped them to tap the equity in their homes to buy rental properties. Eventually I opened 3 real estate offices in Orange County as the managing broker / owner. I operated that way for 12 years before I decided I did not want to own a real estate company. But I still focused on buyers. Fast forward to my relocation to Sacramento in 2002, via Minneapolis. I volunteered for a year on the Building Unity in Oak Park committee, briefly worked as the marketing manager at the Sacramento SPCA, while eventually hanging my real estate license in 2003 at Lyon Real Estate.
My real estate career in Sacramento began slowly, too tediously. At one point, I asked the managing broker if perhaps I should join one of the Sacramento real estate teams. Her reaction was absolutely not! I can see why she responded that way today, but at the time I didn’t really understand how Sacramento real estate teams operated, so it was confusing to me. I just knew I could do so much more than I was doing. It was an unfulfilled yearning.
It took at least another 5 years of selling Sacramento real estate, working with both sellers and buyers, before I figured out that Sacramento real estate teams are the future of California real estate. My friend, JaCi Wallace, pointed me in that direction. I am grateful to her. Now, many Sacramento real estate teams are different. They don’t all follow the same protocol or rules. I set up my real estate team the way that I feel it benefits everybody on the team. We each pursue our own specialities. I dare say that we have redefined the way to sell Sacramento real estate.
Sacramento Listing Agent Speciality in Sacramento Real Estate Teams
For example, I work closely with sellers as a listing agent. With very few exceptions, I handle all of the listings for the team. Turns out I have a passionate calling as a top producer listing agent. Who knew? I love working with sellers exclusively. It’s easy to make sellers happy. I know what they want. They want maximum price / profit, minimum hassle and excellent communication. I can give them that. That is my focus. I love marketing homes, the creative aspects, and I excel at fine-tuning negotiation strategies. Being a listing agent hits all of my hot buttons. My 40+ years of experience obviously pays off for my sellers.
Sacramento Buyer’s Agent Speciality in Sacramento Real Estate Teams
On the other hand, my team members are free to work madly on their own passions, which is helping buyers purchase a home. We cover four counties. My team members find homes for my sellers who want to sell and move up. They spend countless hours scouring inventory, escorting my clients to view homes and treating them to white-glove service, just the way that I would. We truly complement each other. We probably do twice as much business as any one of us could accomplish alone. Clients always have an agent available to them. We cover each other’s backs, too. The Elizabeth Weintraub Team members are buyer specialists.
No longer do I have to worry: am I representing my sellers fairly? Because without dual representation, my focus is on my sellers. It’s a freedom for me and an absolute joy for them. Teams within a real estate brokerage are the upcoming thing in California. I’ve been managing my team for just about 7 years now. It’s the best of all worlds for everybody. When you only do one thing, you tend to do it really, really well. If you’d like to know more, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
How to Tell if That Sacramento House is a Craigslist Rental Scam
If it looks like a Craigslist rental scam in Sacramento, it probably is a scam.
Odds are high that a Craigslist rental scam is in your future, especially if you’re a prospective tenant searching for a house to rent in Sacramento. Probably the best place to find a house for rent in Sacramento is through property management companies, and you will find a list of those companies in that link. Yet many tenants comb through the internet searching for a place to rent, and Craigslist is one of those websites. It’s an easy place to post rental listings and anybody can do it. Which means crooks are over Craigslist like giant pandas on bamboo.
It’s not really the fault of Craigslist. It can happen on any free website. Many of the crooks who try to rip off people on Craigslist do not read English very well. They also hop over to another free website to swipe photographs and descriptions of homes for sale in Sacramento and they convert those listings into rentals on Craigslist.
I know that is how many a Craigslist rental scam happens beyond a shadow of a doubt. That’s because I embed my name in my Sacramento real estate listings, along with my telephone number. The crooks know enough to remove the phone number, but my first and last name are just letters forming words they do not comprehend, so they leave it in the description. For all they know, Elizabeth Weintraub is a type of house, like a Tudor.
It is easy to find Elizabeth Weintraub on Google. If you put my name into Google, almost half a million pages come up. Yup, today it returned 442,000 results. A few of those are a vet in Illinois but most are about this Sacramento Realtor. Plagiarized articles show up, too, meaning people have republished copyrighted material without permission, thinking as long as they include my name it is permissible. It is not. But the first entry takes a person directly to my website, which is how tenants find my cellphone.
Your first clue to a Craigslist rental scam should be if you spot the name of Elizabeth Weintraub. If you do, it is a scam. Real estate agents do not handle rentals in Sacramento, unless they work for a property management company. Sacramento Realtors also don’t find rentals for tenants like they do in other metropolitan cities.
Your second clue to a Craigslist rental scam is whether the home is also for sale on other websites. Just put the property address into Google and note what pops up. Of course, you will find my website, too, because I list many homes in Sacramento and am prominently featured in Google but, like I mentioned, I don’t handle rentals.
Your third clue to a Craigslist rental scam is whether the instructions to forward money seem a bit weird or are oddly worded. If it sounds like the scammer struggles with English, that could be a clue that they are based outside of the country. Often it’s Nigeria where these scammers exist. Or, it could be a homeowner for whom English is just a second language, so don’t judge all people by an inability to read or write English.
Your fourth clue to a Craigslist rental scam is the rental amount seems incredibly low for what you get. If you were expecting to pay, say, $2,000 for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home in Land Park, for example, and that home is advertised as available at $800 a month, it is most likely a scam. Remember what you parents told you about something that seems too good to be true. This is not your lucky day.
Your fifth clue to a Craigslist rental scam is the poster will want you to send a check or wire the money immediately. It is possible they could meet in person to rip you off, but most likely it will happen starting with email and sending money elsewhere.
If you have been ripped off already, you can file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (providing this crucial governmental arm survives the incoming 2017 presidential administration) or the FBI, which investigates internet fraud. Above all, flag the posting on Craigslist.
Working With Sacramento Realtors Who Are Not Full-Time Agents
Communicating can be difficult when working with Sacramento Realtors who are part-time.
Before you end up working with Sacramento Realtors who are not full-time agents without your knowledge, you can fix that by asking your agent if she is part-time. We have more than 5,000 Realtors in the Sacramento Valley, and not all of them are full-time. I don’t think there are any agents who begrudge another person the opportunity to supplement her income, but some of the problems inherent with being a part-time agent can be very challenging for a full-time agent to deal with. If full-time agents struggle with this kind of relationship, what does that say about their clients?
This also brings up the question of whether a part-time agent should disclose that status to the full-time agent. I’m sure many will say as long as they can do the required job, it doesn’t make any difference. But doing the required job means answering your cellphone and responding to urgent matters on a daily basis. It means communicating with the other side in a timely manner. It means taking care of your client as if you were full-time.
I’m not picking on part-time agents because this is also true of many full-time agents. A little known fact is an agent can work full-time in Sacramento real estate and sell only 3 or 4 houses a year, like about 90% of the agents in our Sacramento MLS. I am not making this up. I ran the stats in MLS. What are they doing the rest of the time when they are not working? I don’t know, I guess family things, perhaps gardening, volunteering at other jobs, pursuing personal interests that are not real estate related. Many are retirement age.
The public has this image of working with Sacramento Realtors who are full-time. To the public, full-time means agents should be available when the client needs them. That agents should work regular hours. It doesn’t mean an agent needs to be available at 10 PM but one should at least answer her phone during the day and / or respond to communications.
When you are working with Sacramento Realtors like the Elizabeth Weintraub Team, our goal is to ensure your needs are met and we stay on top of the transaction because we are all full-time Realtors. We work at minimum 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. We will do the part-time agent’s job, if necessary, to the extent we are allowed under the Realtor Code of Ethics. We also help new agents, when the need arises. We don’t discriminate. But maybe, just maybe their clients should.
A Twist on Buying a Home Using the Listing Agent
Buying a home using the listing agent is a rookie move.
Are you thinking about buying a home using the listing agent? Sometimes buyers in Sacramento arrive at this silly thought process through desperation and not necessarily through dishonest intentions. Especially in our present market of low inventory in Sacramento. Stats from our trade association says buyers typically have to write two offers to buy a home, meaning they are successful 50% of the time on average, and I’m just thankful those odds do not constitute my professional experience. If a buyer loses out on a home, often the buyer blames her buyer’s agent.
Is it the buyer’s agent’s fault? Depends. Did the buyer’s agent suggest a strategy the buyer ignored? A strategy that would have resulted in the buyer purchasing the home? Then it’s the buyer’s fault for not trusting and listening to her agent, and let me add if you, as a buyer, do not trust nor listen to your agent, what in the hell are you doing working with that agent? Agents are a dime a dozen in Sacramento, and perhaps you should find an agent you do trust and respect. Without trust and respect you have no fiduciary relationship and, without fiduciary, you are doomed.
In these types of situations, sometimes buyers think about a buying a home using the listing agent because they think the listing agent will give them an edge. What kind of edge, you may ask? Information about the seller, mostly. Or they think the listing agent will compromise her ethics because we’re all just snakes in the grass anyway, and will do anything to get paid both sides of the commission. There are a few snakes in the grass in this profession, especially the hot bed of snakes in Orange County (JK), but I prefer to call them unsupervised. For the most part, unethical listing agents are few and far between. Plus, ethical listing agents make up the majority and won’t share personal information about the seller anyway.
I read a series of comments on a public website, generated by a prospective buyer about buying a home using the listing agent. That buyer’s take was agents who say it’s not a good idea to use the listing agent are liars. Further, the elephant in the room is that buyer also believes a listing agent will screw over her seller in order to accommodate the buyer’s offer, which is against the law. That’s a messed-up and confused buyer. Yet it goes to show what some buyers erroneously believe. One bad apple does not rot the entire tree.
Much as I may rally on about why buying a home using the listing agent is sort of a stupid and pointless idea, I have yet another twist that recently came to my attention through an unsolicited email. A buyer wrote to ask about a dual agency situation. Apparently the buyer had decided that buying a home using the listing agent would give him an advantage. This was a fixer upper the buyer intended to later flip. The listing agent made a future listing a contingency of the purchase, of all things.
Yes, you read that correctly. Allegedly, the listing agent, as a condition of dual agency, forced the buyer sign a side addendum promising to pay a certain percentage of commission and promising to list the home through that agent when the buyer was later ready to sell. Seems to be in direct violation of the Realtor Code of Ethics, which states the agent must put the interests of the parties above her own. But perhaps that agent was not a Realtor. Not every agent is a Realtor and there are differences between real estate agents and Realtors. Moreover, it most likely violates California real estate law, on top of a possible breach of fiduciary with the seller.
My advice to buyers in Sacramento is don’t look at hiring the listing agent. A competent buyer’s agent will extract MORE information about the seller from the listing agent than you EVER will anyway. Great agents have skills you don’t. There is no advantage. And I say that as a top listing agent in Sacramento who consistently closes a phenomenal number of sales. Find the very best buyer’s agent, an agent with a long track record of providing superior negotiation skills, and you’ll be light year’s ahead of yourself. If you need a sharp Sacramento buyer’s agent, I can suggest a few. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Reasons That’s The Way We’ve Always Done It Does Not Apply
Don’t ever say that’s the way we’ve always done it.
That’s the way we’ve always done it is an excuse. And it’s a damn lazy excuse at that. Stupid even. I know this because as a Sacramento Realtor, I’ve used that line myself when maybe the situation wasn’t important enough to employ a better tactic. But I certainly know better. It makes me cringe when I hear an agent use that lame line. Yet just the other day, that’s the way we’ve always done it popped up in an email. Without going into details, let’s just say the agent who originated the email works in a closed environment, sort of how San Diego is considered a test environment because it’s an isolated metropolitan city that is fairly self contained. If this place were a family, it would multiply through incest.
Since using that argument holds no water with me, I didn’t particular care. I am not a Realtor who believes in the premise that’s the way we’ve always done it. It just rubs me the wrong way because it’s such an idiotic thing to say. Everything changes all the time. The world continually evolves and what was true today is not necessarily true tomorrow. There might be a better way to accomplish a directive or goal. A different way that produces better results. And I’m constantly searching for it.
I challenged the agent who sent me that email. Explained that we are taking a different approach. Against the grain, against the way we’ve always done it. Discussed how that particular action is certainly allowed in the purchase contract. It’s another way of looking at the situation, a way I had not previously considered, and it made a lot of sense. Bucking the norm. It’s a way of life for me.
The agent was not happy with that outcome. The agent was used to doing business a certain way and this was not that way. The agent said that’s the way we’ve always done it, and then even sent statistics from MLS as evidence that, on average, many sellers responded in a similar manner. I put little credence in the way average works. Average is for average people. Average means there are people who do better and people who do worse, and when that accumulated result is divided by the number of participants, that calculation produces an average.
I strive to do better than average. I strive for superior performance. But some of us are wired this way, I suspect, and other Sacramento Realtors are satisfied with the status quo. How do I consistently move $30 million of inventory year after year? I don’t subscribe to the premise that’s the way we’ve always done it. I blaze new trails. I recognize that door of opportunity and welcome change. Change is constant. If you prefer creative innovation over the same-o same-o from your Realtor, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
