Email ElizabethWhat First Time Home Buyers Wanted 40 Years Ago
When it comes to talking about first-time home buyers and what they want in a home in Sacramento, my initial mission is to try not to sound like: you kids get offa my lawn; however, I’m afraid I’m about to fail that objective most miserably. This topic popped up because my sister in Minneapolis — who has absolutely no intentions of selling her home at the moment — is worried that it doesn’t have the things that first-time home buyers desire. It made me stop to think about what I yearned for in my first few homes. So here’s a trip down memory lane for ya, in no particular order:
Electronic ignition on a gas stove. Although I love the smell of sulfur, lighting a stove with a match is a big hassle. You’re always worried the box of matches over the stove might unexpectedly combust and burn down the kitchen. You also need a utensil into which you can deposit said burnt matchstick, and hopefully it’s not into the trash can when the matchstick is smoldering.
A doorbell. Old-fashioned doorbells were hard-wired and worked for years until one day they didn’t work anymore. All of them went ding-dong. The new fangled ones played goofy tunes, which was just plain stupid. Having a doorbell, though, beats listening to some stoner bang on your door yelling, Hey Dave, open up.
A built-in dishwasher. Truth be known, I would have been happy with a portable dishwasher, any place where I could hide dirty dishes and not have them pile up in the sink because I’m too danged lazy to wash them. Sinks used to have washboards that would allow water to drain from freshly scrubbed dishes directly into the sink, but then Rubbermaid came out with dishracks, which I always seemed to forget and leave under the sink when I moved.
Garage door opener. To come home from work on a cold snowy evening and be able to press the garage door opener button on my remote control was pure heaven. It was such a luxury to not have to stop the car, step into a wet snowbank, kick the garage door to loosen the ice and then tug it open, get back in the car, close the door and drive into the garage, narrowly missing the wall. In those days we parked without relying on a tennis ball hanging from the ceiling to tell us when to stop.
Indoor laundry. Apart from grocery shopping, I don’t know if there is any other task I detest more than going to the laundromat. If you don’t own a car, it was even more horrid because it meant you had to haul a basket of laundry, blocks away, filled with stinky clothing and hope you had enough dimes for the dryer.
Multiple phone lines. Coming from a suburban home in the 1950s that had a party-line, having a single line was heaven, but it was even more delightful to have phones in all of the main rooms of the house, including the bedroom. We’re not talking about Caesar’s Palace with phones in the bath here, that was ultra luxurious. If a phone line didn’t work for some reason, Ma Bell would come out and fix it for free.
Dual baths. I don’t know when it became more fashionably correct to say “bath” instead of bathroom, but it’s definitely considered taboo to add the word room to the bath in marketing materials. I lived in so many homes with only one bath, and I have no idea anymore how I managed or if we just peed in the yard and I wiped living like an animal from my memory banks.
Automatic ice makers. My parents used to call our refrigerator the icebox, from back in the day. About once every couple of months, we’d heat hot water on the stove, pour it into metal ice-cube trays and place them in the freezer to defrost it. My job was to hack away at the frozen blob with table knives. Then, I’d refill the trays with cold water to make ice-cubes and try not to slop it on the floor while transporting said trays to the freezer and tripping over a dog.
Air conditioning and central heat. When I bought my first home, I took out a separate loan to pay to remove a gravity furnace, this huge asbestos octopus that took up so much space in the basement, and installed central air and heat. I don’t know how I survived summers as a kid without central air. We didn’t even use window air conditioners, just floor fans and spent a lot of time running through lawn sprinklers. Which brings me to . . .
Automatic lawn sprinklers. Not having to remember to water the lawn, much less grabbing a dirty hose, dragging it across the lawn and hooking it up to a sprinkler. Then, trying to set the sprinkler head while it is spraying its 180-degree direction without getting soaked yourself is a feat in itself. Today the gardeners deal with the sprinkler system if it malfunctions, and I never hear it inside my home with dual pane windows.
I am hopeful this blog will resonate with today’s first-time home buyers. Many home buyers in Sacramento today crave the shiny stainless appliances, the oiled-bronze hardware, the granite counters, the hickory-plank flooring, ceiling fans (without those dangly lights on pull cords), and Wolf ranges which they will rarely turn on, coupled with SubZero refrigerators in which to store leftover pizza. And my job as a Sacramento real estate agent is to help them find and acquire their heart’s desire, whatever that yearning may be.
Some Homes in Elk Grove Sell 3 Times Before Closing
There are ten million stories in Elk Grove, and this is only one of the homes in Elk Grove that has been sold several times before the buyer stuck with the program. The listing in Elk Grove closed on Friday, a mere 21 days after going into escrow. The buyer’s agent was on the ball, efficient, reachable by cell and text, and an all-around pleasant guy. I’ve been so fortunate lately that I’ve lucked out with such great buyer’s agents to work with because they can make the entire experience memorable or forgettable.
I tend to put fresh hell situations out of my mind. There is no sense in dwelling on them. But I do want to revisit this particular transaction because it is indicative of other listings of in Elk Grove. It is not an anomaly.
First, this home was initially listed by a property management company. To me, this like a mortgage broker trying to sell real estate. Or an Elk Grove listing agent deciding to manage rental property. We all have our specialities and should not try to wear 2 hats. The qualities that make a person a good property manager does not equate to making a person a good listing agent. The seller lived in the Bay area and didn’t know the difference. She thought a property manager could sell her home, but the property manager tried for 3 months and didn’t get anywhere.
The main problem with this Elk Grove home was the carpets were filthy. Why didn’t the property manager notice this? When buyers spot dirty carpeting, the first thing they think is it will cost $20,000 to replace, or some other crazy number, and they pass on buying the house. I recommended an excellent company that specializes in cutting out and replacing damaged portions so it’s invisible. They also do a bang-up job of removing spots.
I listed the home in mid September and we eventually received 9 purchase offers. The first offer was 10% under list price from “a throw offers at the wall and hope they stick” cash buyer. Unacceptable and we countered, no response. The second offer was a bit under list price, we issued a counter and the buyer accepted. A few days later, for no reason, the buyer canceled. We went into escrow with a second buyer near the end of September, and a few days later that buyer canceled. Then came 5 more offers, most with closing cost concessions, and another offer I couldn’t open because the file was corrupted and I had to wait 2 days for the agent to fix it.
I was a bit worried that the seller might be getting discouraged or start to believe that all buyers for homes in Elk Grove were off their rockers. In actuality, she was very happy with my performance and continued to comment all through the transaction that she had wished she had found me in the first place.
Then came the offer the seller could accept. It was clean. No concessions. No mistakes. No lowball offer. We zinged through escrow in 21 days with no request for repairs, just like it should be for a fairly new home in Elk Grove built in the last decade. Eureka, we closed. It was a relief but it wasn’t easy to close on this home in Elk Grove. It just goes to show that one can easily put a home under contract; it’s not so slam dunk to get it closed. This is when you need a professional, an experienced Elk Grove agent who doesn’t give up and doesn’t quit until the keys are dangling from the buyers’ hot little fingers.
Three Things About the Sacramento Housing Market
As a blogging Sacramento agent, I try to narrow my blogs to a singular thought, but I have 3 things that keep popping up over and over in unison about home buyers in the Sacramento housing market — which, if I don’t discuss these 3 observations in one blog I might never get around to it. The first is the problem in Elk Grove. I’ve lost count of the number of offers I’ve negotiated for my last bunch of listings in Elk Grove that have fallen out and had to be sold a second, third or fourth time.
These buyers go into escrow and then immediately cancel, which tells me they are writing multiple offers when they can’t afford to buy each of the homes. Where do they get this idea? Do their agents encourage this kind of unethical behavior? Our market is not so hot that they need to do it. They can make an offer on the home they want to buy and probably buy it without competition.
I’ve seen some agents write into the offer that the buyer is making multiple offers, and I want to hug these guys. I’ve had other agents include an addendum that says the buyers are absolutely not writing any other offers and will wait for the offer negotiations to reach a conclusion before doing so. You guys can dance on my grave if you want.
The second thing I’ve noticed about the Sacramento housing market is VA buyers are becoming ubiquitous. I’ve always said if you want to buy a home with a VA loan come over and sit down next to me, and my sellers will gladly cooperate. I love love love VA buyers. Once you get a VA buyer into contract, they close and they don’t go wandering around open houses wondering if they’ve made the right decision. They understand what a commitment means. You can count on a VA buyer. They have integrity.
The third thing about the Sacramento housing market is about home pricing under the next price point. By this I mean pricing a home at $499K instead of $505K, for example. It could go one of two ways. Pricing at $499K might mean that home buyers will fight over it and bid up that price. On the other hand, a buyer might also lowball that price. They probably won’t offer $499K, though. It will be higher or it will be lower, and it’s not always easy to predict which way it will go, regardless of the home’s beauty and desirability.
In super hot seller markets in the past, a $499K listing would almost invariably sell for more. In buyer’s markets, it will fetch less. In this market, though, an agent can’t always accurately forecast because this is a fairly balanced market with no leanings either way, although our inventory is still relatively low. Inventory will get lower as we edge closer to Thanksgiving, but that’s a blog for another day.
Working With Lawyers as Clients in Real Estate
Working with lawyers as their Sacramento real estate agent is not high on the priority list of many agents in Sacramento, if you want to know the truth, but I really enjoy that type of personality. I enjoy working with many types of personalities except for the you-know-who’s. I’ll also take the harmless nut-jobs, but not the explosive guys. I draw the line there. Yet, Type A personalities and the analytical guys are interesting and fun for me. Lawyers also tend to care more about their transactions, sometimes as much as I do.
You might find that difficult to believe but lots of people don’t put a lot of credence into what agents do for them, especially when we are talking about listing agents. The public has this impression that it’s easy to sell a home, that all we do is stick a sign in the yard and people call us. They don’t always understand why we are so highly compensate for what we do, because they don’t view the inner workings of real estate and often agents don’t share that information.
One of the things that I try to do with my blog is share what goes on inside a transaction without giving away any personal identifying data about anybody so people can understand what agents do. OK, maybe not all agents, but this particular Sacramento real estate agent. I do things a little bit differently. I constantly evolve, reassess.
I focus completely on my sellers and what’s best for them. Ordinarily that part is pretty easy, because what’s best for them is usually netting the most money out of a sale and closing without headaches. When I’m working with lawyers, they expect me to handle the details efficiently and effortlessly.
For example, when my seller receives a purchase offer that entails crediting closing costs of say, $15,000, to the buyer, I go that extra step. I will call the buyer’s lender to schmooze. In the middle of schmoozing, I might say, “Hey, this borrower of yours, how well do you know her?”
Then, they tell me all kinds of things they wouldn’t ordinarily spill.
I might also say, wow, this borrower is very strong and you are lucky to work with somebody like this who can afford to pay her own closing costs. Not many borrowers today can do that. This borrower has a lot of assets and is fortunate.
Then the buyer’s mortgage lender confirms it.
See, right there I might have saved that seller $15,000 or more. Turns out the buyer did not “need” a closing cost credit. Because I think about purchase offers and strategize counter offers. The seller didn’t ask me to go that extra step, I just did it because that’s my job, and I like my job. It’s another reason that lawyers love to work with me. So, you sellers who are hemming and hawing about paying a full commission, you have no idea what you get when you don’t. You want to save $5,000, yet throw $15,000 away.
You would be really hard pressed to find an agent who loves working with lawyers in Sacramento real estate more than this agent. Lawyers get it.
On the Fence About Buying a Home in Sacramento?
If you’re on the fence about buying a home in Sacramento, this blog is for you. How often have you said to yourself, I would like to do this other enormously fun and hugely rewarding thing, but I have to work or perform some other pure drudgery I don’t really want to do, so I’ll have to pass? Yeah, I’ll have to do the responsible thing. Make the adult choice. And then later you regret it? I once passed on a trip to London with my mother because I spent the money I would have used for the trip on fixing my car, a 1965 Mustang. I should have gone to London, even if it meant borrowing the money.
When faced with choices of do or don’t, this is where analyzing risk comes in. You’ve got to ponder what would happen if you did it anyway and whether you could live with the possible downside of those results. I’m not saying you should do something stupid like run out into the freeway at rush hour because the likelihood is you would get killed. But what if when faced with an unusual decision, you did something nice for yourself or someone else instead, something that was out of the ordinary for you?
People spend so much time trying to plan for the future. As though we have all the time in the world and nobody can take that time away from us when everything can change overnight with the snap of a finger. We’re so busy with our noses stuck in our cellphones that we don’t see the here and now. We can’t be here and now if we’re elsewhere. The future most likely will come regardless of our plans, but the here and now will be gone tomorrow.
Why not give yourself permission to enjoy something different or just be happy? There is innocence in happiness, and as we grow older sometimes we forget about that innocence, but it’s still there. We tell ourselves that we’ll be buying a home in Sacramento when we have secure jobs (ha, ha) and have socked away a big down payment, but that day might never come. Emergencies pop up, stuff happens, things change. Life gets in the way. Before you know it, you’re in your 40s and have never owned a home. You get into your 50s and your bucket list gets longer and longer.
If you want to take tomorrow off work and head for the beach, just go, follow your heart. If you’re thinking about buying a home in Sacramento, talk to a mortgage broker and find out what you need to do to clean up your credit report or apply for down payment assistance. Think how you’ll look back at your situation 5 years from now. Try a different perspective. For guidance, call a Sacramento real estate agent like Elizabeth Weintraub, 916.233.6759.
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