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5 Questions for Sacramento Real Estate Clients from Hell
You might not recognize Sacramento real estate clients from hell until you have signed a contract.
Part of the way to avoid working with Sacramento real estate clients from hell is to learn to recognize your screaming zonkers from the beginning. My team member, Amy, asked if we could give them a “crazy person breathalyzer” on the sly. Love Amy. She gets it that selling real estate is basically people management. Because with some types of Sacramento real estate clients from hell, you really can’t determine how weirded out they can get until you get to know them better.
By then it’s too late.
On the surface, the psychopaths can seem fairly normal. The pinheads might be married, socialize with friends and even hold a job, although perhaps it’s not a very demanding job, one that allows ample freedom to disguise mental insufficiencies like maybe politics. Yet, later, when you spot their true colors, shaking your head, wondering why nobody, out of the need for sheer self preservation, has never dumped these looney tunes into the Sacramento river in cement shoes, they could be yours.
No one prepares you for working with Sacramento real estate clients from hell when you get a real estate license. You learn how to deal with the nut-jobs and loose cannons as you go along, getting stabbed in the eyeballs, followed by shit pies in the face. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if you could give them sort of a test to determine if they are likely to morph into the spawn of Satan before you get into escrow?
May I suggest:
5 Questions for Sacramento Real Estate Clients from Hell
Situation: As a VA buyer, the home you offered $500,000 for just appraised at $485,000.
Do you:
A. Jump on Twitter to proclaim your Realtor hates all disabled veterans and is a disgusting pig?
B. Discuss a strategy to request a price reduction with your Realtor?
Situation: As a seller, you just received a full-price offer from a well qualified buyer for your home.
Do you:
A. Run over to Yelp to complain that your Realtor is a dirty, lying, snake in the grass, who should be tarred and feathered because she cares only about her next paycheck?
B. Break out the champagne to celebrate a job well done?
Situation: As a seller, a buyer’s agent did not read MLS showing instructions and came over without calling first.
Do you:
A. Accuse your Realtor of sabotage, call her a lazy piece of shit and threaten to shoot her and all of her friends if she so much as steps foot on your property?
B. Ask your agent to remove the lockbox?
Situation: As a buyer, your agent discovers another buyer wants to buy the home you want.
Do you:
A. Immediately dump your agent, but not until you write a diatribe of nonsense on Facebook about how much you hate your agent and the horse he road in on?
B. Decide how to write a very attractive offer the seller can’t refuse?
Situation: As a seller, the buyer’s agent tells your Realtor the buyer needs two more days to close escrow due to a lender delay.
Do you:
A. Demand your agent cancel the listing, the purchase contract and shoot herself in the head before you hire a hitman to do it for you?
B. Sign an extension.
Some of my readers will think I’ve made up these situations. Realtors know differently. Mental illness is real, and if you were not insane before you decided to buy or sell a home, you may come to appreciate the fact that you’re never far from it. There is something about Sacramento real estate that tends to trip the reality meter.
Free House in Tahoe Park and $375,500 for Two Cats
These cuddly kittens can help you get through buying a house in Tahoe Park.
This is a true story about a free house in Tahoe Park and $375,500 for the two cats who live there. I had to battle to obtain this listing because this seller had 3 referrals to 3 different Sacramento Realtors. People presume because I’ve been in the business for more than 40 years that it’s always a cakewalk for me, easy to get listings, and I’m telling you it’s not. I make listing presentations just like anybody else in Sacramento real estate. I don’t use formulas, prepared sales pitches or anything like that. I just talk to sellers, share my knowledge and tell them what I will do.
When the seller selected me, I was ecstatic. You never lose that feeling of excitement no matter how long you have been in real estate. Plus, I really loved her house in Tahoe Park. Experienced Realtors, in touch with how a home feels, can pretty much tell within minutes of entering a home whether it will be a likely candidate for multiple offers. Not every home fits that bill. This home had a few things that were drawbacks, too, like no remodeled kitchen, no central air conditioning, no master suite, but it had plenty of other features I could work with.
We talked about the price of the house in Tahoe Park. My elderly seller had done her research and was willing to sell for much less than my recommended price of $369,000. I felt we were pushing the envelope at $369,000 but that’s my job. To get the seller a top selling price. She also showed me her two kitties for adoption in Tahoe Park. Where she was moving, into assisted living, she couldn’t take them, and this was a sudden, unexpected move. Broke my heart when she said she was taking them to the Sacramento Animal Shelter. In fact, she had gone to the Animal Shelter that morning but by sheer luck it was closed.
The cats lived in the sunroom in the back yard. They are indoor cats. When the listing hit MLS, an inspiration hit me. I asked the seller if she would mind if I told agents that we would give priority to purchase offers from buyers who agreed to adopt the kitties. She was all in. Thought it was an excellent idea. If the kitties had thumbs, they woulda been raised. We received three offers for this house in Tahoe Park.
One buyer’s agent appeared very upset, however, and demanded to know how could we say that offers to adopt the kitties received priority! That was ludicrous. The agent complained to her broker. Came back to announce that neither her broker nor any of the other real estate agents in her office had ever heard of such a thing — making the adoption of the cats part of the purchase offer — and her buyer adamantly refused to participate in such a wild-haired scheme. So, there!
People. What are ya gonna do?
The other two purchase offers both contained provisions to adopt the kitties. One set of home buyers offered to build a catio for the kitties. They wrote a very sweet letter. The seller read all of the offers, all of the letters, thought about it overnight and chose the right buyers for this house in Tahoe Park. The winning buyers paid $375,500 for those two kitties and got a free house in Tahoe Park. We closed escrow this week.
It doesn’t get any better than that! This is why I sell Sacramento real estate.
Summer Home Sale Activity in Sacramento
Trend over 15 months of average square foot prices of sold homes in Sacramento.
The summer home sale activity in Sacramento has fallen into a bit of a lull, but that doesn’t mean sales are not happening. It’s seasonal — homebuyers often do not start hunting for a home in the dead heat of August dog days. Buyers are still looking at homes but at a much more leisurely pace. Inventory is increasing, but not enough to make much of a dent in the demand. There are still crummy homes in bad condition that sellers expect to get top dollar for without lifting a finger and those still linger.
When I went to Parkway Estates yesterday, near 99 and Florin, to talk with a potential home seller, I was asked about the summer home sale activity. He thought it was the best time to list a home. I asked why he harbored that opinion. Well, he’s been talking to agent after agent and every single agent told him the same thing. NOW is the time to sell. Who woulda thunk? Actually, that’s what is drummed into every agent’s head, NOW is always always always the time to sell because guess what? Any time an agent makes money, that’s a good time.
It’s not necessarily so good for the seller. If sellers want to optimize a home selling experience, sometimes it is better to wait for the fall market and the busload of fall buyers who suddenly appear on our horizon. And I don’t say this simply because I have a two-week vacation in Spain approaching as I always take my laptop along on trips, and I stay in touch no matter what. No, I say this because every summer I see the same results of summer home sale activity in Sacramento, which means it slows down in August.
The Sacramento real estate market heats up again right after Labor Day. That’s when all the kids are back in school, vacations are over, and families probably enjoyed a little bit too much closeness with each other over the 3-day holiday weekend. That’s when they say, you know what we need? A bigger house!
In any case, I assured the seller this Sacramento Realtor will take care of him. He wanted to know how I juggle all of my listings and was a little bit embarrassed to ask if his price range was below the normal average sales price that I sell. He was asking if I discriminate against lower priced listings or work harder on higher priced listings. Silly, yes, but not for him. Broke my heart he had to ask. His sale is every bit as important to me as the sale of a $3 million home. Every single one of my sellers gets my undivided attention. In fact, they often say I make them feel like my only client.
This seller needs to fix up his home a little to get top dollar. Brush off the cobwebs, paint, spruce it up. That doesn’t happen overnight. NOW is not the right time to sell his home, and I would like to pound the heads of the agents who pushed him like that. But I won’t have to because he’s listing with me, and we’re going on the market in the fall. The summer home sale activity in Sacramento shows this is not the right time for him.
We had 2,000 homes close escrow in June in Sacramento County and only 1,668 in July. I predict that number will be even lower for August. The one thing that is constant, though, is the rising average per-square-foot price. Take a look at the Trendgraphix chart on this page. It speaks volumes.
If you need to sell a home in Sacramento, call Elizabeth Weintraub, 40-year veteran and top producer, at 916.233.6759.
Thoughts on Disclosure Regarding Real Estate Agency Relationship
Realtors should present the disclosure regarding real estate agency relationship as soon as practical.
Most California Realtors ask a buyer to sign the Disclosure Regarding Real Estate Agency Relationship when the buyer signs a purchase offer, but my philosophy lies more in accordance with the intent of the disclosure and we get it signed before showing property. On page two of the disclosure, in compliance with California Civil Code 2079.13 (k) and (i), in the fine print that nobody reads, it states: The selling agent shall provide the disclosure form to the seller as soon as practicable prior to presenting the seller with an offer to purchase . . .
If we are showing homes to a buyer, that’s a good time to get it signed, before we walk out the door. It establishes disclosure, although it does not confirm agency relationships. Agency relationships are confirmed in the purchase offer itself. Yet, we have a property manager with a real estate license in Sacramento who disagrees and has refused to enter sales in MLS under the selling agent’s name. This agent prefers instead to enter all the names of all the agents who have ever signed a Disclosure Regarding Real Estate Agency Relationship with this buyer.
MetroList has not yet enforced its own rules on one of my recent sales that say a listing broker needs to enter correct information from the selling broker. MLS Rules 10.1: Final sales shall be defined as recorded transfer of property. Final sales with the correct cooperating broker information and the correct sales information shall be entered into the MLS by the listing broker within three (3) business days of the final closing date.
The purpose of a Disclosure Regarding Real Estate Agency Relationship is to inform sellers and buyers that agents work in various capacities. An agent can represent the seller, the buyer, or both parties, under dual agency. It’s a disclosure, not an agreement. On the Realtor’s side, presenting the agency to buyers determines whether a) they trust, and b) they read. Further, it states: Throughout your real property transaction you may receive more than one disclosure form, depending upon the number of agents assisting in the transaction. The law requires each agent with whom you have more than a casual relationship to present you with this disclosure form.
Real estate law is such that ten agents could show a buyer property, yet only one agent is the selling agent noted on page 10 of the California Residential Purchase Agreement. Still, for no particular reason that I can see, we have a rogue Realtor who has refused to record the sole selling agent into MLS. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it. He says more than one agent signed an agency disclosure so he’s reporting all of those agents as the selling agents to MLS, regardless of the selling broker’s instructions. This strikes me as an odd situation that MetroList clerks appear reluctant to fix.
While I’m on a roll, I have a beef with the way the Agency Disclosure appears in ZIPForms. I have asked the California Association of Realtors (CAR) to consider changing the first field in its listing package in ZIPForms, but no representative from CAR has responded. I can’t be the only California Realtor to have noticed that when the template for the RLA loads into ZIPForms, the first document, the Disclosure Regarding Real Estate Agency Relationship, has such a teeny tiny field that it’s emphatically too small to read the seller’s name. It’s not my 20 / 20 vision.
Just goes to show that the end user might not have been considered when the fields were designed. They ought to test these things in the field with real people who use it, real Realtors. The fields change from blue to green with black lettering, which is also not easy on the eyes. Even if they just switched the order of the documents and made the Seller Representation of More Than One Buyer or Seller the first to load, it would help; that name field font is much larger.
One typo in the seller’s name on the Disclosure Regarding Real Estate Agency Relationship carries throughout the listing paperwork. It’s a PITA, but that’s the life of a Sacramento Realtor. Don’t get me started on agents who argue about how many agency disclosures a seller is required to sign . . .
Can Buyers Move Into the House Before Closing?
Whether to let buyers move into the house before closing depends on sellers’ tolerance for risk.
Do you think it’s a good idea to let buyers move into the house before closing? Is there ever a good time or reason to give home buyers early possession of a home? I suppose the opinion greatly depends on which side of the fence you sit. If you’re a buyer, absolutely, you may develop an unexpected need for early possession right away, especially if you have to move out of your home before the closing of your new home. You don’t see anything wrong with it.
Hey, I’ve been there. I recall moving out of an apartment in Edina, a suburb of Minneapolis, the last apartment I ever lived in 25 years ago, and buying a home via a land contract of sale by the lakes in south Minneapolis. Went to closing, signed all of the documents, deposited funds and went home to finish packing. The sellers suddenly developed seller’s remorse and refused to sign closing documents. I sent a letter demanding they perform in accordance with the purchase contract, and I moved into the house anyway, without their permission.
This is not something I recommend. This is actually called trespassing. It is against the law. In my case, it worked, and the sellers signed. But it could have backfired. Just sayin’. Don’t you do this.
Yet, in an escrow that closed yesterday for a home in Antelope, the buyer’s agent asked for permission to let the buyers move into the house before closing. Their lender told them the transaction would close on Wednesday. Nobody checked with escrow, though. We had a last-minute glitch because M&T Bank had abruptly transferred the mortgage to trustee lawyers to begin foreclosure proceedings, even though the bank knew we were scheduled to close. That meant we were required to get an updated beneficiary demand from the trustee lawyers, and they could not possibly turn around that request in fewer than two days.
This is one of the problems with our lending institutions. So many banks tend to operate with internal systems and departments that do not communicate with each other. It’s like they keep separate files in each department, and the computer software systems can’t track a loan throughout the bank. Crazy to imagine that banks are that disorganized and screwed up but they are. I see it first hand all of the time, especially with short sales.
Can buyers move into the house before closing? I advised the sellers against it, but then laid out the pros and let them decide. After all, the buyers did pay for and complete all of the pest work prior to closing. The buyers also paid out-of-pocket to have the carpeting professionally shampooed. Their money had been deposited into escrow. They had signed all documents. But there was still a risk, and the sellers said, sorry, no. Sellers’ call.
When we were in a position to close 2 days later, the buyer’s agent sent an invoice from the movers for unpacking and repacking the truck. The buyers asked the sellers to reimburse them for that additional expense. I know what you’re thinking. We thought the same thing. People never cease to amaze. Further, that action solidified the decision not to let the buyers move into the house before closing. No regrets there.
