Email ElizabethReal Estate Tips
How to Stop Email Spam When Unsubscribe Does Not Work
You don’t have to shoot the culprit to stop email spam.
Do you want to stop email spam? If you are tired of receiving repeat email spam and have unsubscribed from that email spammer but the unwanted email continues, there is a solution. You do not have to be a slave to your email system just because some moron continues to spam you over and over. I realize Sacramento Realtors are cautious to block any email for fear they could unintentionally block a legitimate business communication attempt, but there are safe ways to do it, and definitely a way to make sure no spam will ever reach your email again. You can stop email spam.
A few months ago I wrote about how to reduce spam. But today, I want to tell you how to stop email spam all together. You know how it goes, especially if you are a Sacramento Realtor. Let’s take a Sacramento home inspector like Brian G, for example. I’m not gonna tell you his last name because there is no reason to try to ruin the reputation of a dingbat home inspector who does not entiende email spam laws; some ignorant idiot. I’m confident some of my readers recognize the problem with this guy or perhaps you are one of the victims who have already filed a complaint against him on YELP?
This turkey has emailed me over and over. I have unsubscribed. I have written to him and even personally called to plead with him to please, please, stop emailing me. This has been happening for years with him. I don’t and won’t use his services; he is a commercial solicitor and I have no reason to ever contact him. Yet, he won’t stop. He claims his mailhouse is the culprit. That is not a defense.
Federal law says he is a violator. It says he and and his mailhouse are both responsible for violating the Can-Spam law.
Penalties can be as high as $16,000 per offense. Item 7 of Can-Spam specifically warns spammers:
- Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.
Stop Email Spam by Reporting the Offender to the Government
If you are receiving email spam from a commercial vendor with whom you have no pre-existing relationship, and you have asked this spammer to stop, perhaps unsubscribed, and yet that spammer disregards your objection and continues to email you, you don’t have to put up with that nasty behavior. You can report that spammer to the Federal Trade Commission. It’s easy. Just forward the spam email to spam@uce.gov.
Difficult Tenants Who Refuse to Cooperate With Home Sale
Better options exist for Realtors who want to tear out hair over difficult tenants.
A fellow agent in southern California wrote on an agent website about struggling with a listing in which he is dealing with difficult tenants who refuse to cooperate with the sale of that home. The tenants wrote a lengthy letter to the seller, filled with demands, including a snotty retort about social non-responsibility because the seller wanted to put grass in the yard. I could see them kicking back with a few craft beers among friends, composing the letter, scratching off sentences, changing the format and laughing their fool heads off.
Of the 35 or so comments received by other agents, almost every real estate agent said they would not take the listing under those circumstances. They expected the sellers would evict the tenants. But the sellers did not want to evict the tenants and lose the rental income. Like many, the sellers want the rental home home sold with the tenants in place.
I guess I must be the oddball agent in that group because I most certainly will take the listing occupied by crazy tenants. It’s not my place to demand that the seller evict the tenant. Oh, I will suggest eviction and explain why, but if the seller refuses, that’s the seller’s prerogative. It’s not my house. I’m hired to sell that listing with the difficult tenants, so that’s what I do. My sellers make their own informed decisions. I give them the phone number of the best eviction lawyer in Sacramento. If they don’t make the call, it’s still all good.
Solutions for Dealing With Difficult Tenants When Selling a Home
The first step is to get inside to shoot photos, and I can generally arrange that with a bit of finesse. I put the home on the market. If the tenants remove the sign from the yard, we put it back. When I show up to initially meet with the tenants, I size them up. They think I’m there solely to inspect the home, but I am checking them out. I also hand them a Notice of Sale and document the delivery.
Then I slip the listing into MLS with a notation that all offers will be subject to interior inspection because the tenants refuse to cooperate with the home sale. Now, I know some of you will say, hey, the seller has a right of entry with 24-hours notice, and that’s true. But difficult tenants means even if you secure a showing, the tenants will most likely do everything within their power to discourage the buyers, and I think you know exactly what I mean.
Rodents. ¡La rata! Mold. Health and safety issues. Noisy neighbors. Meth lab. Leaky roof. They make up shit.
After we receive an offer — and we will receive an offer, you can bet your bottom dollar on that — we can arrange for the home inspection to occur at the same time as the buyer’s initial inspection, with the seller present, if necessary, and after posting a Notice of Entry the day before on the front door. Once it closes, the new buyers are free to evict the difficult tenants. I refer a spectacular lawyer.
But not take the listing due to difficult tenants? That seems silly. Call Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub, 916.233.6759.
A Second Chance for Cold Feet Home Buyers in Sacramento
The Sacramento Regional Transit Light Rail passes between Ella Dining and Brasserie Capitale.
When one door closes, another opens and gives home buyers in Sacramento a second chance. I admit that I was a bit bummed yesterday when a previous client bailed on listing his home to sell to some stranger he met in the street, on top of They Might Be Giants canceling the show in Berkeley, but I solved that disappointment by focusing on other things. Things you can’t change you need to let go of, immediately. Especially in Sacramento real estate. But that thinking does not apply to canceling a transaction because home buyers in Sacramento have cold feet.
It makes me wonder if buyers who have canceled transactions for my sellers over petty issues later regret those actions. We are closing an escrow next month that I had to sell twice because the first set of home buyers in Sacramento elected to cancel escrow. They expected the seller to replace the entire fence, which was not only unnecessary but an odd request to receive.
Other buyers who canceled a transaction a few weeks back decided yesterday that they should now buy that home. This could be a dilemma for the agent. I mean, what do you do when the buyers have canceled once? Do you give them a second chance and hope they don’t do it again? Probably not. Not without some sort of assurance or guarantee that the same situation won’t repeat itself. However, due to limited inventory in Sacramento, once buyers are in escrow, most buyers would do just about anything to stay there. If these home buyers in Sacramento understand our market.
I thought about that last night as I poked my lobster carbonara at Ella Dining Room and Bar downtown. Mustered all of my strength to twirl the hand-cut chitarra pasta around the butter-poached Maine lobster on my fork, dribbling with spring peas, which included a tasty bit of pancetta accentuated by spicy black pepper and stuffed it into my mouth. My team member and I advised the home buyers in Sacramento to sign a contingency release and include a Request for Repair for the already agreed-upon work to get back into escrow. We apologized profusely. These home buyers in Sacramento were ready to move forward and deeply regretted previous actions.
You don’t see that happen very often. Buyers who come to their senses. Or, sellers willing to take them back. But the sellers granted these home buyers in Sacramento a second chance yesterday.
I also tasted my husband’s artichoke and mascarpone tortellini. His dish featured a bluefoot mushroom so meaty and thick I forgot for a moment that I was eating a fungus. Between our appetizer and first courses, we were almost too satiated to finish our main courses. I’ve included a few photos below, just in case you’re getting hungry reading. I paired the lobster carbonara with a Patricia Green pinot noir from Willamette Valley in Oregon. I’m seriously enthralled with wines from Oregon lately, including the Hood River.
This was a nice ending to a day that started out pretty crummy. And our second chance home buyers in Sacramento are back in escrow.
Lobster Carbonara served at Ella Dining Room and Bar for Whole Hog Month at Ella in March 2016.
Artichoke and Mascarpone Tortellini served at Ella for Whole Hog month of March 2016.
Photos © Elizabeth Weintraub
Should You Go Into Real Estate?
People often imagine great wealth for those who go into real estate, and it rarely happens.
If you’re wondering if you should go into real estate, especially because it seems so easy to do and the rewards are so high, stop it. Reconsider. Those are not reasons to go into real estate. I have been in the real estate business since the 1970s and, if I had known the odds against my success back then, I might not have done it. You might say to yourself, well, hey, she is a top producer Sacramento Realtor who made it big by being clueless . . . but it doesn’t mean that you will, so don’t even go there with that train of thought.
First realize that at least 80% of the people who go into real estate to become an agent don’t actually make it. By “make it,” I don’t mean turning yourself into a megastar real estate agent; I am referring to earning a good living, enough to pay your mortgage or rent, support a family, put food on the table, buy a car, take a vacation, and make ends meet every month. The carrot is there every month. It’s within reach and that’s what keeps some people moving forward.
On the other hand, you might think that positive thinking will get you there. It won’t. You can hang up all the positive affirmations you want on your bedroom mirror, and it will be just words staring you in the face. What the positive thinking seminar gurus don’t say as they pocket your money: you’ve either got it or you don’t. You can’t learn how to be positive. You can learn how to accept failure and defeat, though. If you go into real estate, failure and defeat will be your two best friends at some interval.
When I was lured in the 1970s to go into real estate, I received training by some of the best, mentors who are long dead now. I absorbed what they taught me, manipulated it to fit my personality, and somehow persevered. It takes self motivation. Real estate is completely consuming. It is my passion. It might eat you alive. I surround myself with smarter people, including my Weintraub Team members, who exhibit exceptional commitment and routinely perform. They paid the price. And don’t you let anybody tell you there is no price. There is a price.
The Price of Success If You Go Into Real Estate
Other drawbacks: Clients call at all hours and expect immediate replies. If anything goes south, it’s your fault, even if it’s not. You go to sleep thinking about real estate and you wake up thinking about real estate. Real estate school and passing the exam teaches you almost nothing that you need to go into real estate. You sometimes forget to eat lunch. You don’t have time for your friends. Your family rarely sees you anymore. Pretty soon, superficial wounds don’t require Band-Aids because they’ll heal on their own, eventually. You are glued to your computer and cellphone.
Last week I mentioned my theory to other agents in my office that only misfits and oddballs go into real estate and make it. People who can’t really fit into any other kind of work. Successful Sacramento Realtors are not what you would call normal nor ordinary people. My personal recipe for success is extreme focus and sincere dedication to the client. I derive great satisfaction in knowing I have performed above and beyond a client’s expectations. If you can overcome the negatives, you just might make it if you go in real estate.
I’ve been working in real estate for more than 40 years and cannot envision myself in any other line of work. I absolutely love this crazy life. If you need a Sacramento Realtor, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
How to Find Listings in Sacramento
The days of posting paper listings in Sacramento are pretty much over.
It’s a good thing that I enjoy talking with people because I have a lot of buyers calling asking where they can find listings in Sacramento. They’ve been looking online at various websites, many which contain conflicting data on homes for sale, and they often think I am the listing agent. Sometimes I am the listing agent. I list a lot of homes in Sacramento. I’m a top producer. But more often than not they are finding the listing elsewhere, spot a name on that website they recognize, like Elizabeth Weintraub Sacramento Realtor, and they call me. Which is muy bien.
There are homes in East Sacramento that I seem to know more about than I probably should by now. Lots of calls on those listings. And another recently that has been on the market near Natomas for something like 672 days. It was first listed by an agent who has it listed now, but there was another agent in the middle who had it listed for a while. When the listing was withdrawn by the first (now present) agent, there must have been some sort of spiff because the listing agent left a photo of the chicken coup in MLS as the main photo and stripped out the others. Not only that, but the marketing remarks, an MLS violation, noted the seller had canceled the listing and did not wish to be resolisted [sic] to relist.
If I have enough time to talk with callers about their home buying needs, I will try to assist but some buyers don’t really want any help. They just want to call listing agents about listings, thinking the listing agent will force the seller to sell the home for less, which really doesn’t happen. That’s basically a myth. They also think they can find every listing in Sacramento and don’t realize they can’t. They will snort, “We’ve bought and sold homes before,” as though that means they thoroughly understand real estate in their small corner of the world, this complicated industry that I’ve been part of for more than 40 years.
The Best Place to Find Listings in Sacramento
Without a direct paid subscription to MLS or access through an agent who will set up a portal for them, buyers are stuck scratching the dirt for listings. Like a hungry chicken. Pollo hambre. It’s a lot of work to call agent after agent and ask about listings when the listings are not the agent’s listings, and the buyers don’t want to work with a buyer’s agent. They could simplify their lives, and make it so much easier on themselves to work with a buyer’s agent, but they seem hellbent on finding their own listings in Sacramento, which means they will miss some of the best homes available.
By the time they discover an outdated listing on a third-party website, that home might be sold. That’s how fast homes are selling in Sacramento this spring. Buyers should do themselves a favor and call a buyer’s agent to get listings matching specific criteria directly from MLS through a Sacramento Realtor. Or, they can continue to beat heads into the ground. Which is fine with us because it’s less competition for our own home buyers, whom we treat like solid gold.
