Email ElizabethWhich Sacramento Home Buyers Get the Short End of the Stick?
For years, first-time home buyers in Sacramento were getting the short end of the stick, and in many ways, they still are. That’s because sellers and listing agents tend to prefer the so-called stronger buyers, which would be the home buyers with cash or those obtaining conventional loans with substantial down payments of 20% or more. Me? I don’t really care as long as the buyer can close escrow, and therein lies some of the problem.
Can the buyer close escrow? I’ve had some CalHFA buyers flake out at the last minute, due to some sort of snafu or tiny change in their financial situation. These are buyers who might not have a down payment and need down payment assistance and, if they don’t have money for a down payment, they might not have any money for closing costs either. Is that a crime? No, Sacramento home buyers can still get 100% financed loans and sellers can agree to subsidize their closing costs.
But the rules to qualify are still stringent for Sacramento home buyers with marginal assets. Then there are problems that could arise if the lender calls for repairs. If the seller doesn’t want to make those repairs, it can fall to the buyer to complete them. If the buyer doesn’t have any money, that’s kind of a tough situation. It doesn’t mean the CalHFA buyer can’t buy a home, but it could be a long road, with many rejected offers before finding a seller who will cooperate.
VA buyers fare slightly better because they aren’t receiving secondary financing to fund a down payment, the twist is they are just not required to make a down payment. Some see VA buyers as better credit risks because the bar seems to be set higher. Again, though, there are sellers who are reluctant to sell to a VA buyer, but that’s generally due to being misinformed. They think it will cost more or some crazy notion. I love to be in escrow with VA buyers on my listings because I’ve never had any of them fall out, and they all close escrow.
Can’t say that about CalHFA Sacramento home buyers buyers. But that doesn’t mean I would ever advise a seller not to take an offer simply because the buyer was obtaining down payment assistance. Everybody deserves to achieve the American Dream.
Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You
Anything you say can and will be used against you, I warn home sellers in Sacramento. Sacramento home sellers have rights and don’t have to say anything to a third party. On top of that, no matter what a buyer’s agent may believe, it is not the seller’s responsibility to convey transaction status or to discuss anything about the terms of selling the home with another agent. That’s one of the reasons sellers hire a Sacramento real estate agent, to represent the seller. Yet, agents seem to continue all the time to ask sellers this stuff.
When a listing notes in the showing instructions to make an appointment with the owner, it means an agent can call a seller to make an appointment. It doesn’t mean an agent is free to engage in a conversation about how many offers the seller has received, whether any of the offers were cash, or if the seller will accept less than list price — yet, you’d be amazed at how many agents do exactly that. No wonder some agents don’t let anybody talk to their sellers. Because anything you say can and will be used against you.
Regardless of how a listing agent might try to micromanage a transaction, though, one can’t always separate a buyer’s agent from a seller. It’s simply impossible. The buyer’s agent might run across the seller pulling out of the driveway as the agent is pulling up to the front of the home, and it is fairly easy for the buyer’s agent to slam her vehicle into park, leap out, run up to the seller’s car and knock on the window.
I practice sometimes with my clients to repeat after me: “you’ll have to ask my agent,” as a response to questions thrown by outsiders in their direction. I don’t care if it’s something simple as how long have you lived here, the preferred response is: you’ll have to ask my agent. You might think a transaction is all about win-win but it’s really about a listing agent trying to do what is best for her seller and a buyer’s agent trying to do what is best for the buyer.
Any information a home seller provides can and will be used against the seller. You’re not just two people standing next to each other in a grocery store line having a chat about some reality TV show on the cover of People. You’re probably a seller who doesn’t want to drop bags of cash out of the window. Trust your agent and go be BFF?after the transaction closes.
For Those Who Have Shunned a Bourbon Whiskey
I have been drinking bourbon whiskey. That’s not an excuse for my behavior, btw, it’s simply a new thing in my life. How I got to be over 60 years of age and had never developed an affinity for bourbon is beyond me. Especially when I spent the last 8 years negotiating and selling short sales in Sacramento–because if short sales don’t push you over the edge, I don’t know what will. I became curious about bourbon whiskey after reading about bourbon in Mental Floss. Thought I’d give it a try to determine my reaction.
Back in the old days, and by old days, I mean in the early 1970s in Nederland, Colorado, my friends used to drink Jack Daniel off the bar, right after they snorted some Peppermint Schnapps off the bar. We didn’t give much thought to sanitary conditions in those days. Besides, the alcohol content killed all bacteria, we decided.
I have concluded that I should have given bourbon a chance all those years ago when I regularly stayed out late to party and now can’t stay up past 9 PM. My partying days now are a thing of the past. But no, I had turned up my nose at any type of whiskey. It choked. It burned. It stung. It was awful, was my deduction. I was such a kid. A neophyte.
Bourbon, in case you didn’t know, is made from corn, at least 51% corn in the ingredients. And it must be aged in a charred oak barrel. The best authentic place to get your bourbon from is Kentucky. You sip it slowly. I read that Allison Janey credited a crew hand for giving her a shot of bourbon before she shot those nude sex scenes with Beau Bridges in Masters of Sex. I can see how it would help.
Bourbon is creamy and smooth with just a little bit of bite. It changes intensity when ice cubes melt in the glass and morphs into a different drink. If you haven’t tried bourbon lately, I encourage you to try it. Open up your horizons. Especially if you’re in escrow to buy a home in Sacramento, because these are trying times we are forced to struggle with.
Or go to Ella Dining downtown Sacramento. Last month they celebrated bourbon and bacon — much as I love bacon, I’m not game for stuffing large quantities of bacon past my lips. But in August, they switched to lobster, and a girl can’t turn that down a chilled whole Maine lobster. Plus, you haven’t lived, trust me, until you sip a Manhattan at Ella: made with its own two-barrel blend of Kentucky bourbon, sweet vermouth and bitters. Then select one of the excellent bourbon flight offerings, small 1/2 ounce samples.
Make sure to bring along a designated driver and whatever happens, don’t end up like Sen. Ben Hueso.
Pet Friendly Rental Homes in Sacramento
This is a guide to pet friendly rental homes in Sacramento, but first, let me point out that just because my sportscar doesn’t have a back seat for a dog doesn’t mean this Sacramento Realtor can’t take pet-friendly listings for sale in Sacramento. I most certainly do list pet friendly homes. Each and every single family home for sale that I list in Sacramento, all of those single family homes, are pet-friendly home listings. Do you know how I manage to do it?
I can sell pet-friendly homes because after the home is sold the new buyer is free to finally get that dog she always wanted or he can adopt a few cats. Or, the buyers can satisfy that urge to raise birds such as parakeets, cockatiels or canaries or, build a chicken coop in the yard — it’s legal in Sacramento. Once it’s your home, you can do whatever you want. It’s one of the 8 reasons to buy a home — unless, you are a tenant, and therein lies the problem.
Some of my clients, after selling their home, expect to rent for a while. Some people retire. Others postpone buying a home right away, and some have decided that owning a home is not right for them at this time in their lives. There are advantages to renting a home: no upkeep or maintenance, no payment of taxes, less responsibility, no long-term commitments. But the downside is finding a home seller who will let a tenant reside in the home alongside a pet.
The SSPCA maintains lists of pet-friendly rental homes websites in the Sacramento area. Some of you might recall my brief stint at the Sacramento SPCA when I first arrived in Sacramento in 2002. I was the SSPCA Marketing Manager who wrote those tear-jerking appeals, coupled with a monthly print newsletter, which I designed and edited. Alas, the SSPCA was not a structure I could work within. Let’s just say it was very clear after a few weeks that I would be much better off back selling real estate full-time, so it’s a good thing I realized it and quit. Your heart never leaves those animals, though.
I share a few pet-friendly rental home websites with you in the event you are looking for a home to rent that will allow pets under a pet-friendly policy, many of which also allow pit bulls. This list was forwarded to me by a friend:
PET FRIENDLY RENTAL HOMES IN SACRAMENTO
Pet Friendly Apartments in Sacramento
SS Property Management is Pet Friendly in West Sacramento
Greystone Pet Friendly Apartments
Westgate Village in Woodland Pet Friendly
Fremont Mews is Pet Friendly in Midtown Sacramento
Riverfront Apartments is Pet Friendly in Greenhaven
Windscape Apartments is Pet Friendly in Roseville
Sacramento Pet Friendly Lofts at Globe Mills
Sacramento Single Family Home Pet Friendly Rentals
WARNING: Further, please be aware that Sacramento Realtors do not find homes for tenants. We are not yet a big enough city to offer that kind of service. Realtors in Sacramento only represent home buyers and home sellers. If you can’t find a home at one of those links above, try Craigslist, Zillow or Trulia. Be careful, many of those online ads are from crooks who steal listing photos online and make up a creative ad that makes it look like the home is for rent. After they get your first month’s rent and deposit, they vanish.
If you suspect a home is for rent and also for sale, you would be mistaken. It is only for sale.
Remember what your mother told you: if something sounds too good to be true, it is. If the rent seems too low, it is probably not for rent.
The Trouble With YOU, Sighs Trulia . . .
As a result, I have had to figure out how to manipulate the data in Trulia and make it work the way that I need it to work. It means that some of it needs to be tweaked on a weekly basis. If I sob and plead enough I can get my homes in Sacramento featured. The reps have been very kind to apply patches to my listings. My point is if Trulia wasn’t broken, though, they wouldn’t need to apply a patch.
Also, if Trulia wants to grab our listings and put our information on its website to generate content and assist to monetize Trulia, the listings should work and appear correctly. In my mind, Trulia probably ought to conform to its content generator’s needs and to assist real estate agents, not the other way around, because we are mavericks, an unruly bunch. But I suspect we are all willing to give an inch if Trulia will. Of course, if I were Trulia brass, I might be tempted to view agents as that buzzing sound we used to hear generated by honeybees, before they were all dying off due to climate change. I know how agents are viewed. Let’s not go down that rabbit hole.
Instead, you know what I really love about Trulia? I like the fact that when I’m searching for oceanfront property in California, I can go to the map and navigate all along the coast, for as far as I can drag and still retain the strength in my right finger to click the darn mouse, from the Oregon border all the way to Baja. This way I can click on every listing I can find on the ocean and drool. Other people might surf porn or shift through pages of Jimmy Choo shoes, but someday I will move to the ocean and I like to dream about oceanfront homes.
The thing with this type of searching is I am not serious at this point. If I was serious about buying a home on the ocean, I would not look on Trulia. Because Trulia doesn’t have every listing, it takes too long to upload new listings so I could miss an opportunity, and many of the available listings are actually sold. I would search in the MLS that only agents can access (our mothership) and hire agents in other cities. But I might start my search on Trulia to determine trends and find top agents.
See, Trulia, I have developed patience; after all, for 8 long years I negotiated and sold hundreds of short sales — which sprang up outta nowhere and hung around way too long. If that doesn’t teach patience, I’m not sure what does. So, I waited 2 days for my listing to show up in Trulia in order to claim it. Two days. It never appeared. We have an open house scheduled tomorrow, so I had no choice but to input that listing manually if I want buyers to see it. I realize that’s a rebel’s way to do it, and I’m messing with your system, but like any top Sacramento real estate agent, I do what it takes to give my sellers an edge.
Image:Trulia
Sorry we are experiencing system issues. Please try again.
