Email ElizabethMLS Says Refrigerator Stays But Agent Missed Offer Inclusion
Nobody knows exactly how every agent deals with the mishap when MLS says the refrigerator stays but the agent missed including the refrigerator in the offer. I imagine some agents change their phone number and never get out of bed again. Reiterating that MLS says refrigerator stays is no basis to defend the selling agent’s actions. The selling agent is supposed to know that a refrigerator is personal property. It does not convey with the real property. Personal property and real property? Two different things.
A very expensive lesson for some buyer’s agents to learn. What do they do when the buyer says: hey, where is my refrigerator? The seller moved and swiped my refrigerator. You told me the refrigerator stays because MLS says refrigerator stays. And now the refrigerator is gone.
This always ends with, “and I want you to get it back.” Trust me, they do not care how the agent gets that refrigerator, either. The agent can steal it from her neighbor, go get it from the seller, or buy a brand new refrigerator from Lowes as a house-warming present.
I can tell you that I’ve had buyers sign an addendum with the seller agreeing, for example, that the washer and dryer will stay at no consideration and no warranty. Then sure enough, the seller takes it. Well, buyers have a legitimate gripe and should pursue the seller. Most likely the seller’s movers did not pay attention to what stays and what goes and just took everything. They can bring it back.
However, when a buyer is under the impression that because MLS says refrigerator stays yet the buyer’s agent forgot to include it in the offer, somebody is responsible for this. Who do you think it is? Your choices are as follows:
- listing agent
- selling agent
- buyer
- seller
- MLS
Well, I would say it is the selling agent. (If you agreed with me, you are a smart cookie.) Followed by the buyer because, let’s face it, buyers should read their purchase contracts and take control of the buying situation. It’s their danged house. But we all know they rarely do. They hear what they want to hear.
I noticed when reviewing the paperwork for one of my listing sales recently, a buyer’s agent had asked for the home warranty to cover the refrigerator, washer and dryer. That looked odd and out of place. Sure enough, the buyer’s agent did not ask for the appliances to stay with the property. I let the agent know that perhaps his buyer did not want to start paying for extra home warranty coverage on appliances she does not own.
The agent, realizing the snafu, then said it would be appreciated if the seller left the refrigerator because it looks so cool in the kitchen. Right.
First-Time Home Buyers in Sacramento Just Closed on Anna Way
All kudos in this transaction have to go to the selling agent, Julie Reardon, a Lyon Realtor, for making sure her first-time home buyers in Sacramento got their home. Julie did everything right. In fact, if it wasn’t for Julie, I’m fairly certain her buyers would not have been able to buy this home. It was her attitude that made all of the difference. She was upbeat, positive and earnest, presenting her buyers in the best light possible while remaining respectful of the situation and the sellers.
She also persuaded me to want to work with her. No easy feat somedays in this business, LOL. I can be stubborn and grouchy. This was not a circumstance of bulldozing her way into a purchase offer, either. Quite the opposite.
I listed this home on Anna Way from our second home in Hawaii last month. Although my team member Josh Amolsch sold the home to the sellers, I had not seen it yet, apart from photographs. There was quite a bit wrong with the house. Deferred maintenance. The pest report was not pretty.
On top of this, I’m not sure any of the occupants in the home spoke much English except for the Cambodian seller. He had his parents living with him, and 3 little girls, and his wife. His hands were full. He also owned a bakery in the city of Davis, but people were not buying luxury doughnuts anymore. So he planned to move to Maine. Haul his entire family to Maine. I only hope they are not in for a shock when it snows and blizzards set in. Having traveled to Cambodia, I have a special soft spot in my heart for Cambodian immigrants trying to make it in America.
The lender had asked for a copy of the pest report, and my heart began to sink. Oh, no. I thought for certain they would want all of that work completed. Our agreement between the parties was the home would be sold AS IS unless the lender required repairs. In that event, the seller would cure any defaults demanded by the buyer’s lender.
Fortunately for the seller, the only thing the bank insisted we fix was a leak behind the shower. It meant removing drywall. Drying out the area. Repairing the leak. Treating the wood. Replacing the drywall. And it was almost $1,800 to fix, not nearly the total amount on the pest report, though. At least these first-time home buyers in Sacramento do not have to deal with a stinky bath anymore.
These buyers had been evicted after living in their home for 16 years. Their landlord decided to sell the house and evidently not to them. They have 2 children of their own plus they care for 2 other kids. They needed an affordable home, and there are not very many homes on the market anymore that suit the needs of first-time home buyers in Sacramento.
Julie downplayed her experience, saying she has not been in the business as long as I have and welcomed any tips I could give her. She doesn’t need tips. Ha! She’s doing a great job. There aren’t many agents with the kind of longevity I have in the business but it doesn’t mean agents without as much experience are any less effective. No siree. Julie is a perfect example of a fabulous Sacramento Realtor who wants what is best for her clients and it shows.
Congratulations, Julie, on a smooth closing.
2512 Anna Way, Sacramento, CA 95821 closed escrow on July 30th at $230K.
Fixing Bay Area Offers Involves Finesse While Closing Sacramento Sales
Fixing Bay Area offers without offending the parties involved often means stepping back and putting your client’s needs first and foremost. There is no easy way to tell a Bay Area agent that so much stuff in the agent’s buyer’s offer is wrong. At first blush, I was tempted to quickly judge the parties as not being serious. They made demands that nobody asks for in our Sacramento seller’s market. The buyer asked the seller to pay for things no other seller pays for. In fact, it was about as one-sided as a buyer’s purchase offer that I would have written myself in 1978, but certainly not in today’s market.
To make matters worse, it wasn’t just a matter of fixing Bay Area offers, there were also 2 or 3 other offers on the table. After talking to the sellers, it was clear to me they would like to find a way to make the Bay Area offer work. After all, it was cash, so no appraisal. Getting an appraisal on this home would be difficult because there were really no comparable sales. The home was a white elephant. Overbuilt for the neighborhood.
After every open house, buyers would ooh and ahh over the upgrades and improvements. But after driving the area, they said no thank you. It was one of the nicest homes in the area. Plus, with cars parked up and down the street, basketball hoops blocking driveways, well, it didn’t present the neighborhood in its finest light. However, we knew that walking into the situation. The sellers were patient because they didn’t have to move until the end of October. They felt now would be a good time to sell over October, and they were right.
I decided to try to find a way to make the purchase offer work because that’s what my sellers desired. The buyer was doing a 1031 exchange, although the home would not be a rental. It would be occupied by family. Not even about to argue how it is not a 1031. Not our problem. So, I asked the buyer’s agent if the buyer would consider renting back to the sellers until the end of October. The buyer said yes and named an agreeable rental amount. This was a hugely important benefit to the sellers. Not moving twice.
OK, the dilemma was how to handle the fact the buyer refused to purchase the home in its AS IS condition. The way I saw it, we could argue over the black-and-white verbiage in the purchase contract which clearly states the home is sold AS IS. Or, we could find a way to make it work. The agent said the buyer expects all repairs from inspections to be completed. What? And we didn’t even have a home inspection yet. How could we agree to do all repairs when we don’t know what they are? That sounded like a recipe for disaster.
Well, what we could do is have the seller pay for a home inspection from a reputable home inspector. Not some fly-by-night idiot. There are idiots doing home inspections in Sacramento because they don’t need to be licensed. Anybody can pretend to be a home inspector. An teenage mouth-breather can be an inspector. So I drew a counter offer that included the seller paying for a home inspection, subject to successful negotiation of a Request for Repair. We agreed not to open escrow until the Request for Repair is executed, and if it can’t be, then the offer is void and canceled.
Seemed like a perfect solution. We signed all the counter offers and the purchase offer. A few days later, the buyer’s agent noticed we were holding an open house because our status was changed to Active With Release Clause. The agent accused us being dishonest and underhanded. What? The agent threatened if we did not cancel the open house, the buyer would cancel the offer. Then, the agent tried to cancel the offer.
However, the offer could not be canceled until the terms and conditions were met. We had a binding agreement.
But they do things differently in the Bay Area, and not every Bay Area agent sells a lot of real estate. Many sell only a few homes a year. So you really can’t hold it against the agents. Some agents just don’t know what they don’t know. All I really wanted to do was spare my sellers the anxiety and drama. Very difficult under the circumstances. I was fully prepared for the buyer to make more unreasonable demands, especially after receiving all of the inspections.
However, suddenly we received the Request for Repair from the buyer and it was not completely unreasonable. Very surprised and excited over this. In keeping with fixing Bay Area offers, I also rewrote the response to the Request for Repair to make it very specific. The Bay Area agent copied the numbers from the home inspection report but it was not easily understood and could be misinterpreted. The report did not identify how to make repairs, and it alluded to further inspections. After laying out each specific repair, we went into contract. We signed the Request for Repair, which also stipulated the buyer would immediately release all contingencies.
By being very clear from the beginning, we can often avoid misunderstandings later.
This is also the first escrow I’ve ever closed in which we entered escrow ready to close. I’ve closed thousands of sales over my 40-some years in real estate, not one like this. Twenty-day closing. No monkey business, no weirdness. Oh, and it sold over list price.
Fun Photos From the California State Fair 2018
We probably have not been to the California State Fair since before they changed the time period from August to July. August is such a hot month in Sacramento. Well, I mean it was 98 yesterday, and that’s still hot, but not as hot as August often is. Plus, there were misting booths and air-conditioned spaces. Although, we had a long walk from the parking lot to the entrance gate in the hot glaring sun.
I kept my eyes peeled for Lobster Boy or Bearded Lady or some of those other old-timey entertainment tents, but I don’t think they are PC anymore. Did not find any of those.
However, with all of my listings presently pending, it seemed like I deserved a bit of break from my Sacramento Realtor duties and pretty much took the afternoon off. OK, two phone calls and 4 text messages. Still, my phone was fairly quiet.
What I did find was corn-on-the-cob, which is always my go-to snack for the California State Fair. Any State Fair, really, gotta get roasted corn-on-the-cob. I also heard a lot of unsolicited comments about my shirt. Everybody loves this t-shirt. I found it at Nordstrom maybe 5 years ago. Most of the chuckles are from women. The guys just stare and say they don’t get it. In case you can’t read it, it says: Eat Your Lettuce and Be Sad.
Don’t ask me what kind of cow this is, because I have no idea. Cows are not my thing. I do not know anything about them except they need to be milked twice a day or they will explode. This particular cow looks like she has a river running across her shoulder, and the world map is stamped on her body.
Yes, ask me about goats. I know a lot about goats. For example, these darling critters are Nubian goats as evidenced by their long silky ears. I used to have a Nubian goat whose name was Zubie, and she lived in my back yard in Newport Heights in Costa Mesa. She and I would go on walks together. Little old ladies would stop me to pet her, telling me how much they love Dobermans. I was also shocked to discover that I could not get milk from Zubie unless I had a male goat around. I learned that little fact by going to the Orange County State Fair one year and asking.
I love carousels. Especially older antiques. One afternoon while working as a marketing and communications director in Minneapolis, I talked a group of coworkers into grabbing a bus and going to the Como Park Zoo. We ate hotdogs and rode around and around on the Painted Ponies on a 1914 vintage carousel. It was common for me to plan long lunch outings with my workers.
No wonder, I also worked as a meeting planner. Won an award from Meeting Planners International for Best Meeting of the Year in Minnesota. Only because nobody else applied for it, and I said to myself, hell, I’ll take that award then.
And we bet on the winning horse in Thoroughbred racing, Race #2, at the California State Fair. The one in front, in red, Knust. Not big gamblers. We paid $6.00 for win, place or show, and we won $12.40, which we promptly splurged on aquas frescas. It was hot. Did I mention how hot it was! Fun afternoon at the California State Fair. Hope you enjoyed the pictures.
Pros and Cons About Sleeping on Buying a Home in Sacramento
My amazing team member Amy McMullan, exclusive buyer’s agent extraordinaire, shared yesterday that her buyers had talked about sleeping on buying a home in Sacramento. She showed them a bunch of homes but they were not quite ready to commit. Sleeping on buying a home sounded like a good idea until they Googled it. Naturally, they found an article I wrote: 10 Ways to Know You’ve Found the Right House. They texted Amy to say yes, let’s write a purchase offer. How cool is that? Really made my day that I was able to reach out and touch these guys; help them make a decision.
It’s hard NOT to find an article I wrote about real estate and homebuying through Google because I produced a ton of material online over the years, early on and in great volume. Further, without tooting my own horn too much, readers find my voice connects with them. They also appreciate my sense of humor. I try to make my information easy to read. So it gets clicked on a lot, and that propels my articles to the top of Google searches.
In some ways, it is my legacy. That sort of content will always be managed by some corporation for profit so it won’t ever vanish.
But home buyers will continue, no matter what, to consider sleeping on buying a home. They come up with this idea because they don’t really know what else to do. Somebody once told them if they feel the same way after sleeping on it, it’s a good idea. Hogwash. You generally feel the same when you go to sleep as you do when you wake up. (Well, unless you’re tripping.) The only difference is you waited too long and now some other lucky home buyer snagged the house. There are zero pros to sleeping on buying a house except 12 hours passed.
I received an email from a buyer’s agent a few days ago about a home she had counseled her buyer to purchase. Her buyer loved the home. It was close to her work. Within her budget. It had everything she wanted except no garage. Since this is her first home and she wants to buy in downtown or Midtown, she’s not gonna get a garage, most likely. She needs to get over that. But she probably hasn’t realized that yet.
Her agent said, “She missed a good one. Could not make up her mind.” And that’s what tends to happen when buyers choose sleeping on buying a home in Sacramento. There is no upside to doing it. There is a lot of downside. So, I suggest you print out my article linked in the first paragraph of 10 Ways to Know You’ve Found the Right House and tick off each item after you think you’ve found “the one.” In this market of low inventory, there probably won’t be another for a while.
Trust your instincts.
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