Email ElizabethWe All Need Somebody to Pick On
You know, it occurred to me that those lyrics in Let it Bleed could be easily twisted Yankovic-style to: we all need somebody to pick on. It’s an American pastime. America is one of those places where people like to make fun of other people who are not like themselves. I suppose it’s a way that people can feel better about their own lot in life. There’s always somebody who is worse off in some way you can pick on. Ask Cat Stevens.
I was watching Cat Stevens last night, aka Yusef Islam, get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I never quite got over Cat Stevens leaving the music industry in the 1970s. Almost all of his songs, I could play on guitar and his lyrics were memorized by heart. It was painful for me personally when he abandoned his fans, as silly as that might sound to some of you. I also pretty much stopped listening to new music about that time. No Cat Stevens, screw it.
I was also too busy selling real estate and dealing with all of the drama in my life during the 1980s to care about any new bands. So, as a result, I pretty much missed that era, which according to Yours Truly I didn’t miss much — although my husband, who graduated high school 11 years after me, would disagree. We often argue about my view point, that being that the 1980s was a huge vast wasteland of big hair and nonsense. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that my taste in music was restored, and I was able to move past the music of the 1960s and 1970s to embrace new musicians.
As he stood on the stage to accept his award, Stevens made a joke about how he was better off than some of the others in the crowd. That was a true statement. But it also made some people hit their heads on the tables laughing. It was funny but it was sad. In contrast, there’s always somebody worse off. My mother used to talk about the starving children in China whenever I complained as a kid about her meal choices.
It made me think about a conversation I had with my sister earlier in the day. We noted how difficult it is to gauge how much another person weighs, especially extremely overweight people. She was astonished to discover that hefty people she thought had weighed like 500 pounds were really only 280 or 300 pounds.
Then, I came up with an idea for a new television show: America’s Got Fat. Contestant’s could appear kind of like on The Dating Game, hidden behind a screen, and the skinny little rails who make up the panel of judges behind the microphones could guess how much the contestants weighed based on answers to questions. I bet it would be a big hit. Everybody knows somebody who is fatter than they are, and people seem to love to pick on the obese. Then the winner could go on a diet, supervised by one of the judges.
I can’t tell how much people weigh. It doesn’t matter to me; although I did just reach my goal of losing 25 pounds myself over the past 3 months, just in time for my upcoming trip to Maui. My reward for a successful first half of 2014 and overcoming the challenges associated with my career as a top Sacramento real estate agent. It is kind of nice that Cat Stevens came back, don’t you think?
A Hard to Sell Duplex in Land Park Closes Escrow
This blog is about selling a hard-to-sell duplex in Land Park, not far from my real estate office and my home. Now, one of the reasons that readers come back to my Sacramento real estate blog again and again is because I share stories and lessons I’ve learned in real estate. Even though I’ve been in the business for decades, I still learn something new with each transaction and through each closing, which is what keeps the real estate business exciting and interesting for this agent. This duplex in Land Park is one of those stories.
I just closed this duplex, which wasn’t quite located in Land Park proper, although it is situated in the same ZIP of 95818. I started working on this property a year ago to the very day it closed. This reflects patience and dedication on the part of this Sacramento real estate agent. It was a difficult property to sell. For many reasons.
There was nothing wrong with the property itself, though. In fact, it was a dream listing, if one isolated all of the other factors. It was better than a regular duplex in that it was not constructed up-and-down or side-by-side. The units were not attached to each other at all, which greatly increased the rentability factor. They were standalone, contemporary houses. In great condition.
Location was an issue because the property is under the W X Freeway. That means a duplex located in a desirable area of Midtown, for example, on a quiet street, would sell for more money than a duplex, say, under the freeway. And the sellers initially expected the same price as other duplexes in the area, regardless of location. Top that off with the fact they probably paid too much when they bought it as they are not from Sacramento, plus bought at the top of the market . . . and, well, it’s a recipe for a long struggle.
It’s hard to tell a client they made a mistake years ago. Nobody wants to hear that. Especially a seller who hopes to get top dollar today. I did mention I thought they overpaid even for market conditions at that time, but also explained it was water under the bridge now, realizing my words were probably not fully sinking in. I can’t go back in time to change that original purchase, and harping on a poor financial decision years ago at this point would have been hurtful. I’m not a hurtful person although I do stick to honesty.
Besides, I really liked the sellers. They are sincere, nice people. They are the kind of people who drove hours to Sacramento to meet with me personally because they wanted to shake my hand and look me in the eyeballs. I sell many homes for people I never meet, and that’s OK, too, but some people forge a special connection in person. These guys had worked with other agents in Sacramento and seemed very happy they found me.
Every week or so, I would send them a market update, showing that most duplex buyers either wanted to buy a duplex in Land Park or Midtown in a better area or buy a duplex for less money. Hey, facts are facts. I don’t hide them. But I also continued to plug away for them and pushed for their price. I advised the sellers to raise the rents, which helped tremendously with the cash-on-cash return for an investor. Buyers laugh when you tell them how much they could get in rent if the rent is not already being paid at that amount. You’ve got to show buyers, not tell buyers. I sent buyer feedback from agents.
We found buyers, finally. They came to look at the duplex last winter around Christmas before the rents were increased. These Sacramento investors did not write an offer until June. By then the cash flow was much more appealing. All of a sudden, a few days before closing, the buyers changed their minds and were about to cancel. Their buyer’s agent helped his clients get over cold feet and we closed on Friday. Patience paid off. It took a year, but this agent never gave up.
How to Sell a House With a Bad Roof Without a Loss
Just because your home has a bad roof is no reason not to put it on the market in Sacramento right now, because this Sacramento real estate agent can sell your house with a bad roof without a loss to you. Believe it. I can get a brand new roof installed for you. No fuss, no muss, no upfront cost. Overcoming challenges and working around issues is one of my specialties. You don’t have to pay for this roof out of your pocket, either. There is no credit inquiry. You can have bad credit or no credit.
How does this miraculous thing happen? It happens because I have established relationships with roofing companies who know that when I list a home for sale, that house will sell. These roofing owners have confidence in me and my abilities to sell homes in Sacramento, not to mention, my track record speaks volumes. I don’t sell one house every 4 months like most agents — I close an escrow on average every 4 days.
The cost for your brand new roof will be paid from the proceeds of sale at closing. The roofing companies will wait to get paid. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, either. You’re not paying for the zero interest, and you’re not even signing an agreement. The bidding process is competitive. You are free to discuss costs and get other bids yourself as well.
It doesn’t get any better than this. It’s just one out of many services I offer my sellers that other real estate agents probably haven’t even thought about. If you have a bad roof, I’ll take care of it.
I just closed on a home in Carmichael a few days ago that had a bad roof. It was a trust sale, and the executor had never lived in the home. The roof was at its end of life, and there was quite a bit of dry-rot that I could view from the ground. The seller did not want to put any extra work into the home and preferred to sell AS IS. However, an AS IS sale would cost him a lot MORE than the cost to replace the roof. It actually saved him a lot of money to replace the roof during the sales process. Buyers don’t know how much a roof costs. Buyers might want to ding the seller’s price by $40,000 to $50,000 sometimes, when it costs less than $10,000 to replace an average roof.
Plus, now we could market the home in Carmichael as having a brand new roof! The roof over a buyer’s head is very important. A roof over your head is a reason to buy a home. If the roof is in excellent condition, it can protect everything else in the home. Not the very least of which, for a seller, a new roof protects the seller’s bottom-line profit. If your home was built prior to 1990, you probably need a new roof. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759 for help in selling your house, bad roof or not.
Solution for Selling a Home in a Bad Location
It’s really hard to tell a seller who has lived happily in a home for 30 years that it will be a challenge selling that Sacramento home because it’s in a bad location, but I manage to share that news when it’s warranted. It’s my job as a Sacramento real estate agent to set realistic expectations for my sellers and to be straight with them. The apartment buildings behind this pool home were a major concern, and I knew it would turn off buyers.
Now, some agents get upset when sellers have their own way of dealing with such news, which is sometimes to ignore it and see how things go, but that’s the seller’s prerogative. It doesn’t bother me. I get it. The seller is the boss. The seller owns the home and makes the rules. I would never come back and say I told you so. That’s not my style — although I might think it because I am human. But I completely understand a seller who may have trouble coming to grips with the reality of a situation. Nobody wants to realize his childhood home is stigmatized because of a bad location. Sellers who need time to process can take all of the time they need.
This particular home had a beautiful back yard, a covered patio, sparkling pool that had just been refinished, and a separate area for parking RVs, complete with a row of storage sheds. But all those apartment windows looming over the pool was a huge concern for buyers. It screamed: bad location.
Agent after agent sent me feedback over a 3-month period stating their buyers would buy that home except for the apartments, which I forwarded to the seller. Potential buyers didn’t want strangers gawking at their kids. After the seller read the numerous feedback statements over and over, he finally asked what he could do. Well, the obvious was to lower the price, but a better option was to fix the problem. No, I don’t mean blow up the apartments. But you can erase them from the picture, just like you can in Photoshop, by putting up a barrier to block the view.
For about $5,000, the seller planted 28 Italian Cypress trees along the back fence. That process involved digging through the concrete by the fence. Once that plan was put into place, the home sold at list price to a large extended family. The seller had become so used to the building over the years that when he looked into the back yard, he did not see it. Now the buyer won’t see it, either.
How to Save Money When Selling Your Sacramento House
Hire a pro to truly save money when selling your Sacramento home.
If you’re interested in how to save money when selling your Sacramento home, this blog is for you. This is a true story. By paying attention to gut instincts, these particular home sellers hired the best Sacramento real estate agent and made almost 10% more by selling their house through me. They almost didn’t. They were about to hire some agent they stumbled across by accident or whose name was printed on a bus bench. I don’t know how they found her, but she wanted to sell their house for about 10% under market value. Oh, she had some investor who would pay cash and it would quickly close, and there were other stories involved, to which I didn’t pay any attention because it was all garbage. Dual agency, too.
This is what happens when sellers are chasing down some random discount agent to sell a house. They might save a percent on the real estate commission on the front end but they can lose it on the other end in far greater numbers. If you truly want to save money when selling your Sacramento home, you’ll hire a more expensive agent.
The sellers called me because they were feeling uneasy about the agent they were about to hire and talked to an agent they trusted in Benicia about it. She suggested they call Elizabeth Weintraub for a second opinion. When I told the sellers they could sell that house for a higher price, for a lot more money, and still receive multiple offers, their eyes bugged out. They looked at me like I just landed in a spaceship in their backyard.
After all, this other agent had said, blah, blah, blah. Why was my advice different? Good question.
I didn’t ask them to take my word for it because they didn’t know me from anybody. I’m just an agent who pulled up in a foreign sportscar and was walking around waving a clipboard like I owned the place. I showed them a list of sales within a half-mile radius, houses just like their house, similar square footage and age, and explained why I gave the price a little push. My logic and explanation made sense to them. They signed the listing paperwork. Now they are actually going to save money.
We went on the market on May 21, received many excellent offers, and we had to cancel the upcoming open house. I love it when that happens. The sellers countered the offer they liked best and we closed on June 18th, fewer than 30 days later. No hassles. I helped the sellers through a minor hiccup after the home inspection — as this is the point where many buyers try to renegotiate — but the sellers had me looking out for their interests, so they prevailed. It’s a good thing they hired the best Sacramento real estate agent to represent them. I feel good about the closing because I know that my decades of experience added immensely to their bottom line net profit.
If you want a professional job, you should go to a professional agent to save money when selling your Sacramento home.
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