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The Creamery at Alkali Flat in Sacramento and Why Call a Sacramento Realtor
The Creamery at Alkali Flat will feature 3 basic models with custom design options
From the homebuilder, BlackPine Communities, that brought you infill projects in the McKinley Park neighborhood of East Sacramento and the Curtis Park Village development at the railyard, comes new homes in downtown Sacramento: The Creamery at Alkali Flat. The Creamery is the former site of the Crystal Cream & Butter Co. The project will consist of about 200 homes and covers 8 acres, adjacent to the KCRA studios at 10th and D Street in downtown Sacramento. Mike Paris, the founder and president of BlackPine Communities, presented the project yesterday to my midtown office at Lyon Real Estate.
Of course, with any neighborhood in Sacramento, there are drawbacks, pitfalls and challenges to deal with, simply because we live in an urban environment, so let’s get that out of the way right away. The challenges are all different, so you can take your pick. You look at McKinley Village, and you’ve got noise factors from the train and Business 80 freeway. The Mill at Broadway is sandwiched between Interstate 5, the WX Freeway and swaths of low-income / Section 8 housing, which some residents object to because “poor” people are not like them. Or maybe they are racist. The Creamery at Alkali Flat, however, is mostly known for a homeless population. The builders hope, I imagine, that gentrification will drive homeless people elsewhere but this is not a blog about the pros and cons of gentrification.
Kitchen and living area under construction at The Creamery at Alkali Flat
If you look at the location, the train tracks are a few blocks away and so is Light Rail, but that makes it very handy for commuters. It’s also within walking distance of the Midtown Autoworks, where I take my Porsche for service so I don’t have to drive out to Rocklin. Alkali Flat features some of the oldest homes in Sacramento, including beautiful Victorians and Italianates. If you work at the courthouse, you could be there in 2 minutes, so I bet this project will definitely appeal to lawyers, but it’s also within a mile or so to the Capitol. Close proximity to restaurants, theatres, nightlife, the new Kings arena Golden1, and very close to the American River bike trails.
Vertical accent tiles accentuate the custom tile work over the tub at the Creamery at Alkali Flat
Three 3-story designs are available, which can also be customized to a buyer’s personal tastes. They all include roof top patios as an option, and you’d be pretty much foolish not to choose the roof top patio element. Our cool nights with the Delta breezes blowing through are perfect for summer-time entertaining and what better place to be than 3 floors off the ground with a view of Sacramento?
Each will feature a two-car garage. Two of the models will be configured with 2 to 3 bedrooms, you decide, and your choice of 1745 square feet or 1818 square feet. First Release pricing, $500,990 to $530,990. The third larger model will be 2305 square feet and boast 2 to 4 bedrooms. First Release pricing, $539,950 to $569,990.
However, don’t run over to the project just yet. If you are interested in buying a home at The Creamery at Alkali Flat, the very FIRST thing you need to do is ask your Sacramento Realtor to register your name as a client of your Realtor. If you do not, you probably cannot use the services of a Sacramento Realtor when you buy because the builder will register you. Registered builder buyers are not allowed to hire an agent. So get representation. Call Elizabeth Weintraub, 916.233.6759.
Designer tile is attached to a bathroom wall entrance at The Creamery at Alkali Flat
People don’t realize that they can’t use a real estate agent, which the seller pays for, if they go directly to the new homebuilder. They think: Oh, I’ll just shoot the builder an email to get on a mailing list, or I’ll just stop by on my way home to say hello, what’s the harm in that? Plenty! My professional advice is DO NOT EVER CONTACT A NEW HOME BUILDER ON YOUR OWN. Make sure you go to your own Sacramento Realtor first. Once your Realtor registers you with the builder, you can run over there all you want.
To get registered to buy at The Creamery at Alkali Flat, call the Elizabeth Weintraub Team at 916.233.6759. We’d love to help you. I’ve got more than 40 years in the real estate business. Don’t make the big mistake of cutting out your agent and losing your personal representation. It costs you nothing and could save you big in the long run to call us. In fact, we can also get you an invitation to the private grand opening in early December.
Of course, if you want to buy a new home on a culdesac over by East Sacramento, we have a small infill project available for you. Check out the affordable new homes in Elmhurst known as Declan Court Houses. Value range pricing: $429K to $479K. Or call your Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759 for more information.
Photos: © Barbara Dow, from the Elizabeth Weintraub Team
When Sellers Develop Emotional Ties to a Home
Tessa, Pica and Jackson watch Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub work at her desk.
There is no better way to start the day in the life of a Sacramento Realtor than to begin by entering the term cat constipation into Google. Our diabetic cat Pica appears to be constipated. It wasn’t Tessa rolling cat poop balls around the house for amusement the other week, it was Pica trying to give us a message the best way he knows how. One of the feline sites about constipation even depicted cartoons of cats depositing poop in the litter box and my favorite: active regurgitation. It reminded me of the puking rainbow mouth you can do with Snapchat now. Cats, no matter how you look at it, are gross creatures.
At least they are quiet when my phone rings. But when I answer my phone, there is nobody else in my office area except these 3 cats, so they naturally assume I am talking to them. Even when it’s not my sweet kitty voice. Especially when I’m saying stuff like, this is the worst pest report I’ve seen in 10 years, or what do you mean you haven’t ordered the appraisal yet when the contingency release is due tomorrow? The three cats — they just sit there on the floor and purr. Or rollover to expose bellies to the ceiling.
This will be my memory when we eventually sell our home many years from now, when we’re old and feeble. Everybody develops emotional ties to a home. In fact, my client just asked for photographs this morning of her home in Elk Grove. I always offer to send my professional photography to my sellers so they have a keepsake album of their home. Just because they are selling a home does not mean they don’t have an emotional attachment to it. It’s hard to leave any home if you’ve lived there for a while because all of your memories of years gone by were created in that environment. Unless it’s a home of sad memories.
I have another client who would not go into her home when I showed up to shoot photographs earlier this year. She had too many unhappy memories and did not want to revisit them. She sat in her car in the driveway while I went inside to take photos. When I came out, she appeared severely depressed. I asked if she wanted a few photos of her children that I spotted lying on the floor. It’s not like I wanted to force her to go back inside, but I did want her to know that the photos were there and they might mean something to her. Not to mention, she probably did not want to leave them for strangers.
After she came back outside holding a few mementos, I talked to her for a while, explaining what I would do to sell her home. I don’t think she cared, so I stopped going into detail and just hugged her. That’s when she burst into tears. Selling Sacramento real estate is not about the numbers. It’s about the people. And preserving the emotional ties to a home.
Beware of a Hacked Email From DocuSign
Usually when I receive a suspicious email from another Sacramento Realtor, I send it back with a warning to let the agent know somebody might have hacked that email account. If it looks like they have attached something, perhaps an offer, I also mention that I don’t open unsolicited links. If they want to send me a document, then send it as an attachment. I’m extremely careful about what I click on, yet I realize the day will come when something malicious will get through; it’s just a matter of when, but I never expected to see a hacked email from DocuSign with an envelope.
Oh, sure, there are the goofy gmail stuff that ask recipients to click on a link, and most appear really hokey. Of course, if you’re overly busy and less prone to caution, I can see how an agent might be tempted to click on it. No agent wants to not open a purchase offer on her Sacramento listing. There are a lot of cyber attacks going on in gmail accounts, probably because they are so prevalent.
The hacked email from DocuSign I received this morning looked real. Very real. I studied it for a while. It was yellow and blue, just like the DocuSign emails I get from myself when I sign my own listings and purchase contracts online. It even had the access code displayed in case a person did not want to click on the “review documents” link. Best I could tell it was missing the App link. However, let me caution you that if you decide to use the access code that DocuSign provides in each and every email, do NOT click on the DocuSign link in the email. Open a new browser window and go to DocuSign yourself to enter the code.
I have received a bunch of offers on a new listing in Sacramento that just went pending. I suspected if there was an important document sent to me via DocuSign, it will most likely for that listing. Sometimes lazy agents who think they are being proactive and efficient will cc the listing agent on an offer in DocuSign, so after all of the parties have signed the offer, DocuSign will automatically send the purchase offer to the listing agent. I prefer to email directly to confirm receipt. Less chance for error.
Fortunately for this Sacramento Realtor, I have a software program that detects malicious hacks and viruses. After I finished studying the DocuSign email and clicked on it, it opened a window that said I should NOT proceed to that website because it was dangerous. Yup, it was a hacked email from DocuSign. I’m afraid other Sacramento Realtors and customers of DocuSign might not be so lucky.
See, this is just one MORE reason to always include a special message intended for the recipient like I do on my DocuSign transmissions. But even that is not sufficient. To be completely safe, you should probably use the code and go directly to DocuSign, if in doubt.
What will they come up with next? It’s anybody’s guess. You can never be too diligent to protect your computer against vicious cyber attacks.
A True Story About Setting Priorities for the Self Employed
Setting priorities is paramount to succeed in an business not just Sacramento real estate.
Setting priorities and establishing procedures are two secrets for success in any type of business, not just Sacramento real estate. Everybody is different, too, which is the beauty of how this works. You get to pick what works well for you and discard the things that don’t. For example, I have elected to answer my phone when it rings. Of course, it is with extreme rarity that I would ever in a million years hang up when another phone call comes in, although other agents do. Like last night for example.
Here, I found myself engaged in a conversation with a buyer’s agent who was about to write a purchase offer for one of my listings. We were discussing the framework of that offer when he suddenly expressed an extreme urgency to have to hang up. He had to, to, to, to “go do some things.” Well, I guess it beats dropping your cellphone into the toilet, was my immediate thought. Then he called back to continue our conversation when all of a sudden, once again, he blurted, “I have an extremely important phone call I have to take,” and here I thought that was what we were doing, engaging in an important phone call during business hours. This agent’s idea of setting priorities was different from mine, but what the hey.
When he called back a third time, he explained that he had to take that call because that was fiancée. His fiancée? Unless his girlfriend just fell off a ladder and broke her back, couldn’t he let the call go to voice mail? Of course, that’s just me and my way of setting priorities. And somebody did fall off a ladder, but it wasn’t his girlfriend. It was my friend in Texas. She sent me a text message that I spotted just as I was about to go out the door yesterday morning. I hadn’t yet tapped my messages and just read the message on my phone. I fell off a ladder, broke my back and both my legs. There was a telephone number for the hospital.
My immediate thought, given my cynical nature, was my web guy will do anything to get out of finishing the footer work on my home page and find an excuse for delaying it. Love him to pieces, but he seems too busy for me, and I’ve expressed that sentiment to him. But then, since there was a phone number, it must be something real. From whom? I quickly opened the text. And my heart fluttered. Freak out. How could I have possibly thought it was my web guy when it was my best friend from junior high who was in the hospital? Point being, this was the type of call to get off the phone for. That’s where I would be setting priorities.
Then, yesterday afternoon, another woman called about selling her home. When I answered my phone, she stuttered and said she thought she had reached voice mail and was ready to hang up. I replied, “No, no, no, you can’t hang up, you have to talk to me now because I answered my phone. Now that you have a live person, you are required to stay on your phone and talk.” I suspect she was stunned, before bursting out in laughter.
Closing a Sacramento Escrow and Finding a Rental in November
Finding a rental in Sacramento is not easy in November or December.
In any real estate transaction in Sacramento, getting occupants out of the property so the buyer can take possession at closing is often a juggling act. Buyer possession can cause difficulty because stuff can change during escrow and the sellers might have no place to move, despite their best intentions. This time of year, it’s even more difficult. In talking with a seller yesterday about her brother moving out of a home that is in escrow right now, I suggested that he might be better off trying to find a rental NOW that is available on November 1 and negotiating with the owner to let him move in on November 15th, which is a few days before our closing date.
Because if he waits until November to start looking, most of the available rentals will be ready for occupancy on December 1, and that is too late. Not only that, but the number of rentals dwindles this time of year. Few people want to move over the holidays, so there are fewer rentals becoming vacant. Even if he has to pay for November 1, he’s better off than having no place at all to move. Well, there is always a Motel 6 somewhere, I suppose.
For Sacramento sellers who are leaving the state, it’s no issue to close in November or December, but for everybody else who is not buying a replacement home, finding a rental in November is radically difficult. The time to think about that issue is before November, like right now.
To alleviate this potential difficultly, I comb through my listings on a regular basis to determine if any of my sellers will have a problem finding a rental or just where they are planning to move. One seller is headed off to Texas and already has a place. Another is moving in with family. Three others live out of state. And yet another is doing a short sale and, fortunately for that family, many of the short lenders now allow a rent-back; whereas in the past arm’s length agreements used to prohibit them. Now, many lenders OK it for a minimum time period of up to 90 days. This is useful information for some agents who are unaware of this change in policy.
But for this one guy with limited vision and even fewer resources, I imagine it will be a struggle. The fact that remains is a smart Sacramento Realtor will make sure her clients have some place to go. Especially if it means trying to find a rental in November or December in Sacramento. I hope my seller will be able to assist her brother in finding a rental. If not, there are options such as putting stuff into a storage unit and checking out Extended Stay.
