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 When the listing was withdrawn by the first (now present) agent, there must have been some sort of spiff because the listing agent left a photo of the chicken coup in MLS as the main photo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.