Email ElizabethEast Sacramento Home and Josh Amolsch on FOX 40 News
And to think that some agents pooh-pooh open houses in Sacramento, yet my open house at an East Sacramento home got a little bit more exposure than expected. The FOX 40 news reporter Doug Johnson asked me yesterday what time we hold open houses in Sacramento. It sorta depends. I held open four of my listings yesterday, and the customary time for me is typically 2 to 4 PM. But sometimes we’ll throw in an extra hour and do a time slot of 1 to 4 PM, especially during Lyon Real Estate’s Extravaganza Open House weekend, which is company-wide once a month and yesterday.
Too late, the reporter said. He needed footage for the 4 PM broadcast and into the night. Oh, wait, we have an early open house at the affordable remodeled home in East Sacramento at 1732 51st Street. That home is $330,000, and it was open from 11 AM to 1 PM. My team member Josh Amolsch was scheduled to host that open house. I quickly called Josh.
Yeah, he got 20 minutes’ notice. But that’s how it goes in this business. I often get interviewed by the media due to my reputation and exposure in Sacramento. Sound bites, Josh, think about sound bites. We discussed a few things he could say. Short, sweet, informational, pithy, that’s what news reporters want. I figured they were probably piggybacking off the Sacramento Bee’s article yesterday on the front page about how first-time home buyers are getting squeezed out of the marketplace.
It’s true, if you’re thinking about buying a home in Sacramento, you better hurry up. Once interest rates start to rise, it will be much more difficult to find an affordable home due to our higher prices achieved during recovery.
Very important, try to stand near our For Sale sign in the yard, I suggested to Josh. If people are interested in buying that home in East Sacramento, we need to make sure they know how to get in touch with us. Well, they weren’t filming near the sign but Josh did ask them to capture the sign with their cameras, and sure enough, that For Sale sign with the phone numbers for Elizabeth Weintraub and Josh Amolsch in front of the East Sacramento home is what starts off the video: Owning a Home is Becoming More Difficult in Sacramento.
We also captured a few interested home buyers for that East Sacramento home. Gosh, I hope one of them makes an offer today!!
10 Things That Don’t Sell a Home in Sacramento
When sellers in Sacramento call to ask questions about how to prepare a home for sale, if they haven’t already read a few of my articles online, I send links to those informational pieces. Other agents in Sacramento do the same thing because I often get emails asking if it’s OK to republish my stuff on their websites (it’s not, because About.com shares the copyright), but they can publish a few sentences, hopefully the words without profanity, and then link to my content. Apart from knowing what does sell a home, it’s imperative to know the things that don’t sell a home in Sacramento.
Discussing these things in advance with sellers saves me a lot of time on the phone and in person when I show up to list a home in Sacramento or in Placer County. I can assure you without hesitation what sells today, and what kind of improvements a seller should make to prepare a home for sale without even seeing the home because I know precisely what does not sell.
Today’s first-time home buyers don’t think in terms of fixing up stuff or replacing outdated fixtures. If you ask them what it costs to paint a house, they’ll tell you $50,000. Home buyers will simply cross your home off the list if it doesn’t measure up to expectations and consider buying a different home that does.
If you have the following features in your home, you should get rid of them, if you can:
Things to Get Rid That Don’t Sell a Home in Sacramento
- laminate flooring that looks exactly like laminate flooring
- glossy tiled kitchen counters
- white kitchen appliances
- goldish / brassy light fixtures and faucets
- worn oak cabinets
- white walls
- wallpaper
- jangly old-fashioned ceiling fans
- stained and worn carpeting
- weather beaten front door
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to prepare your home for sale in our present real estate market. I find that many sellers go overboard and make repairs that won’t ever return their investment. Doing the wrong things is just like pitching money out the window. Everybody has their own idea about what looks good and what doesn’t, so stop arguing with your spouse about it — take advice from a Sacramento REALTOR who talks to buyers all day long and sells a ton of homes in Sacramento Valley.
Some Sacramento Home Buyers Should Not Buy a Home
A good reason not to buy a home in Sacramento is a buyer might not be able to afford it. Looking at the situation purely from a financial point of view, it should not be that difficult for some Sacramento home buyers to understand why a seller would refuse to make a home “affordable” for them by discounting the sales price below market value. Especially an investor who looks at his investment the same way one might consider shares of stock: it’s impersonal, and the only thing that matters is whether the price has gone up or down.
Non-affordability is not an argument nor a negotiation tactic. If you’re standing by the entrance to a freeway with a sign that says Will Work for Food, it’s possible a passerby might offer you a job or a good-hearted driver might flip you a twenty, but asking for charity when you’re buying a home is not quite the same thing. Yet, that doesn’t stop buyers from requesting it. Further, a refusal does not mean the seller is a meanie and big ol’ grouch, either.
An agent asked my seller yesterday to “have mercy” for his buyers, because they are young, with a small family, struggling and pregnant. These stories have a time and a place, we encounter them every day, but do they pertain to housing, to Sacramento real estate? Are sellers heartless, cruel and without compassion if they don’t reduce a sales price so cash-strapped buyers can purchase a home that is outside the boundaries of their financial reach?
I wonder if buyer’s agents should push a product that people can’t afford to buy? Not every buyer needs to own a home. Not every buyer should own a home. Maybe, just maybe, the buyers should not buy a home. There is no shame in renting a home, and millions of people are tenants. If people did not want to rent a home, there would be little reason for investors to buy single-family homes or condos as a long-term hold investment.
Yes, I realize just about every Sacramento real estate agent you run into will say you should buy a home. But maybe you should not.
When Sacramento Home Buyers Cancel a Contract
Delivering bad news to a seller in Sacramento is every bit as horrible as shooting antibiotics down your cat’s throat. You know it’s gotta be done, and you’re the one who’s gotta do it, but it’s not pleasant. I don’t know a Sacramento real estate agent alive who wants to tell her seller a buyer has gone sideways and fallen off the edge of the cliff, but so many of them are not watching where they’re walking these days. They seem to be unsupervised.
La-dee-la-dee-la-dee-dah, oops, over the cliff. It’s almost like a video game. Not real.
I blame it partly on DocuSign. It’s so easy to sign a residential purchase contract these days, why, you can sign on your cellphone. Blip, blip, done. It’s easier than buying a latte-half-soy-pumpkin-caramel at Starbucks. With whipped cream. Except by the time you finish consuming that 800-calorie fat bomb, at least you feel satiated. When Sacramento home buyers sign a purchase contract, it’s much more forgettable.
Oh, did I buy a house this afternoon? Slaps forehead. How silly of me. No, sorry, I didn’t want to buy a house. I wanted tickets to the TBD fest. Clicked the wrong thing. Please cancel the contract.
It’s a sorry state of affairs when I find myself grilling buyer’s agents about how much time they have spent with their buyers, how well they know them. Agents tend to use the term “client” rather loosely. Some stranger calls, asks to meet at a home and, around 2:00 AM, after the bars close, that person decides to sign the RPA waiting patiently in DocuSign, is that person a client? Or, is that a person we’ll have to chase around for the next couple of weeks to get the cancellation signed because her intentions to buy a home were never there in the first place?
Perhaps buyer’s agents should discuss next steps and consequences, and help a buyer figure out if the buyer truly wants to purchase a home before presenting a buyer with click here.
How Sacramento Listing Agents Show Sellers They Care
Sacramento listing agents worth their salt know that they need to keep sellers informed during the entire listing and sales process, but some agents get sidetracked and forget. I don’t know if it’s agents who are easily overwhelmed or too busy or what the deal is but I hear common complaints from other agents’ sellers. I don’t call these sellers; they call me. The story is often the same. They say they are unhappy with their listing agent and want to know if I will help them. You betcha. I’m sorry they are upset with their present situation, but hey, I’ll help.
I imagine as we move into the colder months, I’ll get more of these calls. We are facing a tougher winter market for Sacramento real estate than in previous years. Some listing agents will undoubtedly run out without a jacket and freeze to death, leaving their dazed would-be sellers to scrap for themselves. The days on market are growing and listing agents can no longer suggest list prices ahead of the curve; it’s got to be the perfect, just right, Goldilocks sales price in order to sell. Further, sellers deserve constant information about the market and what’s happening or they might drop that agent like a hot potato.
Some Sacramento sellers look at me like I’m “a gift from heaven” because I report feedback from showings and I keep them in the loop. I’m not a gift from heaven, I’m just doing my job as a listing agent. I never lose sight of the fact that the listing is not my home. I’m a temporary guest, visiting for a small period of time, and in the picture to perform a function to the best of my ability.
A seller in Elk Grove called yesterday to tell me how blown away she is with my performance. She did not know how a professional listing agent operates, she said, until I took over her listing. In my short association with her, she says we’ve had more showings, more offers, and she’s been kept informed every step of the way. I call her, I text her, I email her, depending on which form of communication is appropriate for the message I need to deliver.
Another seller in Placer County I met with a few days ago is asking me to take over the listing of a home because the seller was not promptly informed that a break-in had occurred. Apparently, some thug broke into a vacant house and removed furniture. The seller alleges that the listing agent was informed by a buyer’s agent that items were missing earlier in the week, and that the listing agent delivered the news to the seller a few days later — not on the day the agent found out about the theft. There’s got to be more to this story, but I don’t know it. I couldn’t imagine forgetting to let a seller know that something awful had happened.
Communication is key. Not just when things are going well but also when they’re not. Good news, bad news, as Sacramento listing agents, we need to constantly keep our sellers informed. Even if it’s just to say, hello, we haven’t had any showings, but let me tell you how many people have looked at your home online. Or, here’s a market overview from your area.
I say if a Sacramento listing agent goes to the trouble to get the listing, she needs to work that listing. Why work on something else when all you need to do is sell what you’ve got?
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