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A Short Sale Home in Fair Oaks with Two Loans Closed Fast
As I drove away from my closed listing of a short sale home in Fair Oaks yesterday, I wondered why I picked up the Supra lockbox. It’s not like I can use the lockbox for anything ever again now that MetroList has rescinded its agreement to allow us to continue using our Supra lockboxes until they die. I had more than 70 lockboxes and did not exchange them all in the rip-off 2 for 1 Supra lockbox exchange because MetroList promised we could keep them. Which means now I have about 40 lockboxes rolling around in my trunk that are useless because MetroList backpedaled.
Well, I do know why I picked it up. I retrieved my lockbox because I owed it to the new buyer of that home in Fair Oaks to retrieve. Because I have a responsibility to my profession. We, Fair Oaks Realtors don’t go around leaving our personal property attached to homes in Fair Oaks, even if it’s useless to us. I wonder, though, how many agents will just leave their lockboxes? You know how some agents are.
Homeowners can thank MetroList for all those abandoned lockboxes that I predict will be happening throughout Sacramento.
The home in Fair Oaks that just closed was a short sale I had listed in MLS on May 15th. It was a Fannie Mae short sale; Seterus was the servicer for Fannie Mae, and I’ve closed hundreds of short sales since 2006, which means I have knowledge other agents do not. One of the things I know about Fannie Mae is it does not want to see any offer prior to 5 days on the market, with at least 2 of those days the weekend. Makes sense, Fannie Mae expects decent exposure on the market, no side deals. I also have an account at Fannie Mae’s portal that keeps me up-to-date on new rules and where I expedite my short sales.
We had multiple offers, too, and chose the buyer most likely to wait for approval, which is the buyer whose agent is cooperative and submits the offer the way we need it submitted for approval. You’d be amazed how many agents contest what is actually in their best interest and their client’s best interest, but what can I say?
Come August 15th, 3 months later, we had closed escrow, and there were two loans on this short sale. I also hear agents say they don’t want to deal with two loans on a short sale, probably because they’ve had bad experiences. They haven’t worked with me. I do many short sales with two loans. It’s really no big deal.
I’d say 90 days from listing to moving out of the short sale home in Fair Oaks is a fairly decent approval process. I didn’t see the buyer yesterday or I would have thanked him personally for going into escrow with us. My seller is thrilled beyond being thrilled, and extremely relieved, and that’s the most important thing to me.
P.S. Look out for those chickens in Fair Oaks.
Did You Know You Can Avoid Tankless Water Heater Problems by Servicing?
You might have tankless water heater problems if you don’t perform service.
When was the last time you serviced your tankless water heater? If you’re like many people, probably never until it stops delivering hot water. Do you have tankless water heater problems? We never did until the other day when our control panel for our Rheem gave us an E1 76 error message. No hot water.
Of course, the nice thing about a tankless water heater, especially those that are mounted outside, is no concern about it bursting and flooding your house or, in the case of gas water heaters, exploding, and burning down your house. The downside is you waste water by letting it run in the sink until it gets hot, water that needs to be saved during our drought and recycled elsewhere. Tankless water heaters also do not deliver hot water on-demand, but instead provide an endless supply of hot water without the hassle until the day there is none.
It’s not quite a Klaatu Barada Nikto moment, when you have a tankless water heater problem, but it’s right up there.
Our Rheem was so weird that it only gave us difficulty in the morning and refused to work at 7 AM. However, by 8 AM, it began working again. My husband surmises it’s because the sun has warmed the tank by that time, and our plumber is still in the dark about that freaky situation.
We had the plumber over yesterday to first service our tank. In my Googling for tankless water heater problems, I discovered that we are supposed to perform routine service: a) clean the filter every month (a little cylindrical doohickey) and, b) de-lime the tank annually (descale and flush). We’ve done nothing, and our tankless is 7 years old. Gah! On top of this, the guy who installed our tankless did not install a “completion unit” below the unit itself that would allow us to attach a hose and flush it out ourselves. Without that unit, the whole thing has be taken apart to de-lime. Oh, crap!
With any hope, our plumber is returning today because we’ve lost water pressure on the hot water side since he was here yesterday, although all of our pipes are now copper in our 1948 house. He said I sounded too calm for an “old person” whose water pressure is messed up and water heater still isn’t working correctly. Hey, I sell Sacramento real estate. I’m not a looney tune. I deal with worst stuff than this.
I’m also NOT the guy having to stand in a cold shower at 7 AM.
Our plumber reckoned the problem is either the heat sensor or the control panel, in case you face a similar problem. Or, you could ask your plumber to call the manufacturer. Rheem said the issue is related to a faulty PBC board, a motherboard that costs about $500, but since we’ve never called about anything ever, Rheem will send it overnight for free. But hey, get on that annual service for your tankless. It’s not magical after all.
And I now know more than I ever wanted to know about tankless water heater problems.
Showing a Sacramento Pending Sale and the Trouble With a Chase Sapphire Card
If your home in Sacramento is a pending sale, why would you let another buyer into your house to see it? It’s not like that buyer can purchase it. It’s inconvenient to you, probably, to show. You are most likely ready to close in another couple of weeks, why the rush now to show your home? Your existing buyer is not about to cancel the transaction, and her inspection contingencies are removed. Then, why is showing your home while pending a wise move on your part?
Because you know where I’m going with this. I would not have brought it up if I didn’t want you to consider showing your home again.
Short and sweet: it is insurance for you. A back-up plan. You should always try to have a Plan B because Plan A can go haywire for the silliest of reasons. Many of those reasons have to do with the buyer’s lender and how that loan is processed. The lender might have missed something obvious from the start. Or, it’s possible the underwriter uncovered some other situation that just happened. Much can go wrong in underwriting.
If a buyer is interested in writing a back-up offer, it’s to your advantage to let the buyer do it. It’s your ace in the hole in the event the first buyer cannot close escrow.
It’s Murphy’s Law that says if things can get screwed up, they probably will.
In a related issue, a while back Chase Bank messed up my shopping at Nordstrom. I used my Chase Sapphire card, and it was rejected, even though I regularly shop at Nordstrom and often spend insanely. I pay in full monthly. There is no reason for a fraud alert on my card. After I called the super-duper secret private customer service number reserved solely for my benefit, I was passed over to the fraud department anyway and drilled like a criminal.
After complaining to Chase, they verified my purchase. At the next counter in Nordstrom, same thing happened again. Chase froze my account, and I had to call customer service a second time. WTH?
I asked Chase: This will not happen at the next counter, right? I will NOT have to call you a third time today, will I? You realize now that I am shopping at Nordstrom this afternoon and you will authorize my charges, correct-o?
Yes ma’am.
Ha. Fat chance.
Tried to ring up a bag in the third department. Fraud alert. I called a third time. There is no removing myself from this spiral until I cancel my Chase Sapphire. This is crystal clear. Either the JPMorgan Chase employees are idiots or its system is flawed. Neither is good.
I deal with these irritating matters day-in and day-out in normal life, so do you, probably. And you don’t need more problems in the middle of selling your home. If you can get a backup offer, it’s to your benefit.
Sellers Who Don’t Need One of the Best Sacramento Realtors
If you’re looking for the one of the best Sacramento Realtors, odds are you can find a few by doing an online search. But just because the agent helps with staging or pricing and you list the home yourself or with a friend, does not mean you’ve got the services of one of the best Sacramento Realtors. You only got part of the story and not the entire package.
A former client relayed to me this morning that she did not realize some real estate agents will work for dirt cheap, and that the job to sell a home is so incredibly easy that she doesn’t really need to hire the best Sacramento Realtor. Although, she did add that when she’s ready to sell her more expensive home in East Sacramento, she will definitely hire me. Because she wants the best.
But for right now, to sell her rental property at the Parkway in Folsom, any old discount agent will do. She doesn’t need the best, she said, after promising last month to list with me. Especially after this more experienced and full-service Sacramento Realtor has already met with her at the rental in Folsom, completed an inspection and provided her with a list of fixes and repairs to undertake. In addition to giving her a list of vendors to purchase materials from, advising on color and choice of materials, providing contractors to complete the work and finding other ways to save her money.
This is on top of responding to every email from the seller within minutes, even while on vacation in Oregon. Advising on the perfect sales price and sales strategy.
So, yes, I guess I can see that after a seller has her home all fixed up, knows how much to price it at that she might feel it is a slam dunk. Especially since she didn’t pay the full-service Realtor a dime for all of this. However, all of that upfront work is part of the fee a full-service agent earns.
This is like jumping into my car at a stoplight, grabbing my bag and running off. I’m supposed to be OK with the theft, including the lack of respect. But I’m not and, when the time comes, I will not choose to represent her to sell a home in East Sacramento.
The other portions of my full-service fee, which I work hard to earn and the seller will most likely come to understand down the road are the following:
* Positioning the home to go on the market on a day that will make it the most attractive as possible
* Personal and immediate attention to my client
* Anticipating problems in advance and preventing difficulties
* Shooting high quality professional photography designed to drive up the price
* Hosting unique open houses through extravaganza blitz marketing
* Capitalizing on my 24 years of online internet experience — unparalleled by most other Realtors
* Utilizing my 40+ years of real estate experience to negotiate the purchase offer to ensure the highest price among possible multiple buyers, which I strategically manipulate to occur.
* Once in escrow, I negotiate the list of repairs the buyer often returns with after a home inspection to keep those costs to a minimum, if at all
* Meeting contingencies of the contract with precision
* Staying on top of the buyer’s financing to make sure there are no loopholes that will hold up closing or more likely cause the transaction to blow up
That’s a bare bones bullet-point list of things I do to make sellers more money above and beyond any difference in fee they might pay a discount agent. When escrows close, sellers always say I more than earned my fee, and they are very ecstatic with the extra money they received — which a discount agent could never provide. They understand this. All of my sellers pay for full service. Happily. Especially the million-dollar home sellers.
In other words, a seller tends to lose money with a discount agent, even if she wrongly believes her home is a slam dunk to sell. There are no slam dunks in Sacramento real estate. Saving a few pennies on the commission means eating it on the big picture. But then that kind of seller doesn’t really care if she has not hired one of the best Sacramento Realtors.
Is the Internet Stripping Away Human Contact?
Technology doesn’t always win when it separates us from human contact.
Because of the internet, some people believe they don’t need professionals anymore. Like, why go to the doctor when you can Google your symptoms to figure out why your $hit is F’d Up, including seemingly viable treatment options? It’s all right there in front of your eyes with pictures and everything. Because you are not a medical professional with a decade of education, and you could be wrong. You’re a fry cook at Arby’s, for crying out loud. Not only could you be wrong, but you could overlook something else potentially more life threatening.
People also think why call a travel agent when you can book airfare and hotels right there online. Because you probably won’t find the best deal, and Google doesn’t know everything. There is no substitute for a travel agent’s personal relationship with a vendor, and you don’t get that from a third-party website. Without a travel agent, without that human contact, who can you call when the (choose one or all): airline, car rental, hotel screw up?
It would not surprise me to learn that Siri hates everybody.
I imagine the day when we no longer talk to people to transact business. I already see it at airports when I travel, kiosks to tag baggage and retrieve boarding passes. Kiosks to buy that last-minute big-ticket item you’ve been putting off like whoa, look, a 75-inch television and suddenly you need to buy it, RIGHT NOW, before you get on the plane. “Reward” or “Loyalty” cards process and distribute your personal data without your awareness and market like crazy to you. In fact, it’s a little scary to see the Minority Report turned into a TV show coming this fall to FOX.
Some people also honestly believe they don’t need a Sacramento Realtor because they once ran a lemonade stand as a kid or sold flower seeds door-to-door and therefore know everything there is to know about real estate because there is really nothing to know as all the photos of homes are online, duh. These people are idiots. You can’t tell them they’re an idiot because they’re too busy trying to cut into their gut to perform liposuction on themselves, and by golly, they’ve got the vacuum cleaner handy.
The internet is a great place to do research and compile questions to ask a professional. Just pay attention to the authority of the URL. Make sure you are obtaining your information from a trusted source. The need to connect with professionals via human contact is more important now than ever. Because garbage in is garbage out.
