Email ElizabethHow a Sacramento Agent Stays on Course
In a conversation with my sister in Minneapolis this weekend, we discussed how as we get older it becomes easier to understand how a person can mistake her husband for a hat or an umbrella. We have so much overload in our lives today as compared to a few years ago. Especially as an agent selling real estate in Sacramento in the month of May. This is why as a busy agent I often feel the need to take breaks now and then, but even while I’m riding my bicycle around Land Park in the afternoons, I can spot weird things out of the corner of my eye that can morph into, oh, I dunno, imaginary animated objects, for example. I’m not going bonkers. I’m sure of it.
But listen . . .
In the newest version of Plants vs. Zombies, the game board uses triangles and other traffic zone images that impart super powers to the plants. If a person’s brain is otherwise engaged, like mine often is when I’m riding my bike (because I’m listening to music on my wireless headphones, interrupted only when I answer a real estate call — hey, why did the music stop? — Oh, yeah, I’m getting a phone call), it’s easy to zip past a triangle in the road and perhaps picture a double-fisted bok choy nestled securely behind a boosted walnut. I can see how people lose their minds. And you know what? It’s not all that frightening.
I’m here to tell ya that if you’re gonna turn into a vegetable in your old age, there are probably worse things.
Like many top producer Sacramento agents, we keep a lot of information categorized in our heads, and it’s a balancing act much of the time, especially when an escrow has a contingency to sell. I noticed yesterday as I filed away closed escrows that I am often lately helping sellers to buy homes at the same time they are selling. Even so, these escrows don’t last anywhere nearly as long as the short sales used to several years ago. During that time period, it was not unusual to work on a file for 4 to 6 months or longer. In fact, during that particular ice age, I usually got to know my sellers fairly well and their home inside out, with every single detail embedded in my brain.
When we got to closing, it was sometimes a bitter sweet farewell. I often felt like I was parting with an old friend, because I was intimately familiar with each facet of the transaction. Nowadays, I take a listing, it sells, it quickly closes, and that lengthy interaction is often shortened. I feel like, hey, we just met, and now you’re going into the closed box under my desk. Wha? Come back!
But it’s all for the best. At least this Sacramento real estate agent is not losing her mind. Not yet, anyway.
Sacramento First-Time Homebuyers Now Have a Fighting Chance
Compared to a few years ago, first-time homebuyers in Sacramento now have a fighting chance to buy a home without a ton of competition from cash investors. They just have each other to compete with, yet some of them are going about it the wrong way. The wrong way is when the buyers refuse to take their agent’s advice. They might say they listen to it, and then they do things their own screwed-up way. When the offer doesn’t get accepted, though, they tend to blame their agent instead of themselves.
This is nuts. My heart goes out to buyer’s agents who end up writing offer after offer that gets rejected because buyers are hung up on the wrong things. Like list price, for example. List price can be meaningless. It’s a measurement. It’s the comparable sales that matter. But people get attached to personal agendas, mantras and odd beliefs, not to mention our favorite sidekick: fate.
Homebuyers last week told me they had a specific price point in mind, but they were looking at an Elk Grove home priced higher. This home had been on the market for only a few days and they wanted to offer less than list price because it didn’t fit their plan to pay slightly more. Well, a reasonable person would say: stop looking at a home you can’t buy at the price you want to pay. But reasonable people aren’t necessarily buying real estate. The fact is a hesitant buyer needs to conform because some other proactive buyer will conform. These buyers reconsidered, conformed and they got the house, over a full-price cash investor.
This market in the spring of 2014 in Sacramento is different than previous markets. We no longer face stiff competition from cash investors. Of course, we Sacramento listing agents still receive full-price cash offers and a few lowballs from investors, but for the most part, the market is made up of first-time home buyers and move-up buyers. I counsel my sellers about choosing between an investor buyer and a buyer who will occupy the home. Does it matter who buys your house? You bet it does. And sellers can legally choose to sell only to an owner occupant.
Not surprising to real estate agents, a story in the Sacramento Bee says homeownership in Sacramento has fallen to a 40-year low. That’s not surprising, given the number of sellers we observed who said yes to the cash investors over the years and no to the first-time home buyers. But now the tide is reversed, and we still have a fighting chance to take back our neighborhoods, providing first-time homebuyers step up to the plate.
The kind of purchase offer a buyer makes can mean the difference between buying a home and not buying a home. Here’s my general advice: Study the comps, listen to your agent and, if the home is on the market for only a few days and the price is justified, pay it or somebody else will. A more savvy buyer will probably pay more than list if the deck is stacked against them. If the home is super desirable, a hot commodity and you’re an FHA buyer or a VA buyer, you’re just not as desirable to the sellers as the conventional buyers, so step up your price and terms or you’ll fall to the bottom.
Hey, agents don’t make the rules. The market dictates.
The Best Sacramento Listing Agent Asks Questions Like This
It’s a sorry state of affairs in this real estate market when a Sacramento listing agent holding a pending offer questions another agent with a pending listing to inquire if her sellers are in contract with the same buyers. Yada, yada, yeah, it’s confidential information but agents can still confirm the fact. I’m just saying it’s sad that an agent nowadays is put in the position of having to ask the question in the first place. It’s part of doing a fiduciary for the seller.
Sure, most transactions are straightforward and everybody is honest and ethical. Unless they are not. I’ve run across so many screwball escrows lately that my head is practically spinning. There was the guy who tried to buy a home and actually finagled his way into a contract when he had no money, no job and a police record. Then, there were the many buyers who wrote multiple offers all at the same time, locked down the properties and then subsequently canceled them all. Not to mention the cash buyers whom, at the last minute, developed cold feet.
There are so many ways that working with an experienced agent in Sacramento can pay off for a seller that I can’t even count them. Because of the volume of business that I do, I see a tremendous amount of purchase offers pass through my computer every year. I pay close and careful attention to each one of them, too.
Somebody asked me the other day, a seller whose home I’m listing next month, if I was too busy for her. I don’t know if she got that idea from a competing listing agent or if she came up with it on her own, but I am never too busy, and that’s the secret to my success. I don’t take on more listings than I can handle. Like I replied to this seller, a while back I was handling 70 to 75 listings at a time and doing a damn fine job if I say so myself. My clients agree, too. Today, my active Sacramento home listings number closer to 25, because the market is much slower.
The thing is I use my 40 years of experience to help my sellers. That’s an inherent quality they can’t buy or easily find elsewhere. My clients expect me to go beyond the norm. If I receive paperwork that makes me ask questions because I spot a red flag, you can bet I will get to the bottom of it. I see that action as part of my job and in good conscience I cannot let these types of questions go unanswered.
This is What Sacramento Real Estate Agents Work For
The public doesn’t really know why people choose a career in real estate and what Sacramento real estate agents work for. They see the financial rewards and sometimes that’s as far as they get with their thought process. They think the end result is that paycheck, and while money helps to pay the bills, it’s not the reason we sell Sacramento real estate. It’s not what we live for and work for.
Most Sacramento real estate agents, believe it or not, are really in the business to help people. We have a specialty, a knowledge, a skill set and experience to guide our buyers and sellers to a successful closing. There are those of us, we hate to say, who sometimes don’t perform, like the agent who was previously working with a buyer who just closed escrow this week with Barbara Dow from the Elizabeth Weintraub Team.
When the buyer called about this particular home, I asked if she was working with an agent, just like I always ask. She said yes, and continued to clarify before I could disconnect. I listened. Turns out she was pretty unhappy with her agent and felt very disappointed in her search for a home. She no longer wanted to work with that particular agent. She also had been watching the For Sale sign installation in the front yard of this particular listing, and said she was planning to sit in that yard until an agent drove by to show it to her. That’s determination.
I checked with my team members and Barbara was available to immediately show the home. She explained Agency and that we would probably receive multiple offers so the buyer needed to be very aggressive with her purchase offer. The sellers were thrilled and accepted the offer. They were happy. The buyer was happy. And the transaction closed early. The buyer wrote to Barbara after closing and said this (with personal information removed):
“You have been so awesome! You made this experience more perfect than I could have ever imagined! Seriously!!! Now I am going to brag that I have the best Realtor / Real Estate Agent (not sure what the preferred title is) EVER!!!
“I grew up thinking that happy dreams were for everyone else, but thankfully I’ve been learning . . . that I deserve happiness and happy dreams, too! Thank you for being a part of this with me. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to help me. I think that the thing I like best about you is that you are genuine, Barbara and . . . that is a quality that is not easy to find nowadays, so thank you for being YOU! And being so awesome at your job!!!”
This is what we work for. This is what matters in a real estate transaction. And it doesn’t get any better this.
Biggest Peeves Among Home Sellers in Sacramento
There are 3 things I do that other agents don’t seem to do on a regular basis, which is how this Sacramento real estate agent keeps her home sellers happy and content. I know there must be times when an agent looks at my new listing in MLS and wonders how I got that listing and why didn’t he get the listing. What is it about this agent, they may ask? I will tell you. Not only will I tell you but I do so without worrying that oh-my-gosh, now every real estate agent knows my secrets and will steal all of my business in town — because it won’t happen. I’m not bragging, it’s just the way things are.
Deep down my competitors know they should do this, they often just don’t do it.
It’s consistency, overall. Which agents can adopt if they want to badly enough.
The first secret is respond quickly. Don’t take all day to get around to answering an email or return a phone call. People don’t have all day. I don’t have all day. When a potential home seller contacts me, I answer. Naturally, if they leave me a message after hours, that is, after 7 PM or they send an email at 3 AM, they won’t get a response until the morning, but I do address concerns and questions with the fastest speed humanely possible.
The second secret is to answer the phone when it rings. Sometimes, we agents are on the other line when the phone rings and can’t disconnect. But for crying out loud, if an agent is talking to her hairdresser or one of her kids or friends, hang up and take the darn phone call that’s coming in during business hours. What the hey?
The third secret is to keep sellers informed about what’s happening with the sale of their home. Ever since the market shifted 2 years ago and short sales stopped being the dominant sales driver in Sacramento, it’s been a wild ride with those regular home sales. They close so quickly, and often tend to sell quickly, too, if they are priced right. If I hear anything about a home that I think the seller would like to know, I immediately pass on that information. I keep sellers informed. I’d hate for a seller to wonder what’s happening.
How do I know sellers want a Sacramento real estate agent to perform in this manner? Because they tell me so. My mission is to consistently perform.
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