Email ElizabethPreparing Your Home For Sale Before Going on the Market
Before fixing anything in your home to prepare that home for sale, you should ask a Sacramento real estate agent what needs to actually be done. Because your idea of making a home improvement repair might be different than a repair the agent might advise, not to mention, you could end up spending money that you don’t need to spend. This is a valuable service experienced agents provide to sellers, advice on what to fix and whether the home should be sold in its AS IS condition.
If your agent has little to no experience, you’re at a disadvantage when it comes time to sell. But a veteran agent who sells a ton of homes can be a god-send to you.
The advice for what to fix and what not varies from home to home and neighborhood to neighborhood and market to market. I recall way back when I sold my first home, and I grabbed the city home inspection report that I paid for when I initially bought the home. I combed through that report thoroughly and fixed every defect on it as a precursory to preparing the home for sale. What a waste of money, time and effort. Most of that stuff, I discovered later, were items the buyer didn’t give a hoot about.
Obviously, if you have visual distractions, those should probably be corrected but again, it depends on how much money it costs, what’s involved labor-wise and whether the market demands it. I have listing that’s coming on the market next week which has vinyl siding and in some places the posts have been chewed, a few J channels are busted or cracked and, in another area, the siding is missing all together.
It’s almost impossible to match vinyl siding panels on a reorder from the manufacturer because the sizes and colors vary. The seller doesn’t have any extra pieces. Not to mention, vinyl siding is not vogue anymore and stucco is considered a better exterior option. The cost to change out the exterior is more expensive than the return on this particular investment. Plus, for what this type of property is, the siding is OK. It won’t affect the sales price. Not for this home and not in this market.
If you’re thinking about preparing your home for sale on the market, hire the best Sacramento real estate agent you can find, and then follow her advice. Don’t spend more money than you need to spend.
Buying and Selling in a Normal Sacramento Housing Market
You might wonder why about 50% of the homes are selling in Sacramento this spring and the other 50% of homes are not selling — especially when you read that we are experiencing a seller’s market for 2014 — and, as usual, this real estate agent has an explanation for our Sacramento housing market phenomena. For starters, this is not really a seller’s market for all Sacramento housing, because it doesn’t fit all of the criteria for a seller’s market. To have a seller’s market, you’ve got to have buyers, and we don’t have as many as buyers as we probably should for the amount of inventory available.
This means if a tree falls in the forest does it make it a sound?
Yes, our inventory is very low as compared to previous years but I don’t see as many buyers out and about our town. I’m not receiving as many multiple offers as I used to a few years ago, it takes longer to get an offer, and the days on market seem a bit longer as well. So, that would make for a pretty balanced market, wouldn’t you agree? Plus, let’s not forget, prices are up! You can probably get $100,000 more for that home than you could have a few years ago. It’s a great time to sell. Rates are low, so it’s still a good time to buy.
If you need to sell and buy a home, the good news is contingent offers are back! Little signals a normal Sacramento real estate market than contingent offers.
It’s also a Sacramento housing market in which some homes in Sacramento will sell very quickly because there is a high demand for that particular type of home, location, price range — or a combination of those factors. Other homes will take longer to sell. Especially those homes that are overpriced. I realize some sellers are exuberantly enthusiastic, let’s say, and optimistic to the point that they’ve priced themselves out of the market, but by golly, they sure do have that sign in the front yard.
I closed a home in Roseville earlier this week in the West Park neighborhood for sellers who are moving to the Midwest. If they had waited another month, they probably would have received the price they wanted, but since it didn’t sell within 2 weeks, they elected to reduce the price a bit to entice an offer. Bam. Flew into escrow with that price reduction. Of course, then they worried that they sold too low — that’s human nature — but they didn’t. They sold at market value, and we negotiated with the buyers to let them stay for a few weeks free of charge.
So, it all boils to if you’re planning to sell, you need to think about which side of the fence you want to be on. Do you want to be on the side of the fence that is receiving offers, going into escrow and closing? Or do you want to sit on the other side that, well, sits. Because only about half of our inventory is selling right now. But low inventory with low numbers of buyers is still a somewhat balanced market. Could this be the new normal for Sacramento real estate?
Sacramento Will Be Featured in Financial Times
Just to show you how it goes in the life of a Sacramento real estate agent, last week I didn’t put any new listings on the market yet, yesterday, I worked on four new home listings in Sacramento, plus I gave a film interview to the Financial Times. That particular media is covering the collapse and recovery (or what-have-you) of the housing market across America. Because Sacramento was hit so hard by the real estate market-crash asteroids in a double whammy (2005 and 2008), and because we’re one of the first cities to begin our journey down that Yellow Brick Road, our town is of interest to the Financial Times, along with Austin, Texas, and a few others.
The morning started out innocent enough, an office meeting with my peers, during which I briefly and without actual intention mentioned a duplex I am listing in Tahoe Park. During the day, I received 3 phone calls from real estate agents about it. OK, this listing will be hot. It might even receive multiple offers. I conducted my visual inspection of the home a short time later and, as I lifted the door to the electrical panel to determine the amperage, the seller asked how I could read the label. She was stunned, watching me.
Hey, I might be an old fart but I wear monovision contacts. I am also a Baby Boomer, and we are not wearing reading glasses or bifocals if we don’t have to, and we don’t. I explained how distance and near vision works with this particular type of contact lens, and probably opened a new door of possibilities for the seller.
I spent about 30 minutes with a couple of my team members showing how to analyze a listing in MLS and various methods to pull comparable sales. It’s amazing how much information a buyers’ agent can glean about a listing in Sacramento if the agent utilizes all of the tools available. Knowledge is power.
Wednesdays are also my day to complete any last-minute open house schedules for the weekend. This weekend, Lyon Real Estate is holding its Open House Extravaganza for the month of May, so it’s very important to participate with such wide coverage for my sellers. I lined up a bunch of homes, matched with fabulous open house agents, and updated all of my online listing data because I like to tweak the listings myself. I’m such an odd duck, I guess. I do all of my own work on my listings because that’s my focus, it’s what I enjoy.
The best part of any Sacramento real estate agent’s day, though, is calling her sellers to announce their home has closed escrow — and a home in Roseville did close yesterday, less than 6 weeks after we went on the market. List price, all cash. West Park subdivision, at $375,000.
My team member Linda Swanson is filming with the Financial Times today, showing the reporter around Sacramento. I’ll let you know when this news story airs. I can tell you that although my life is pretty much open book, and my opinions are strong, leaning far to the left, I still prefer talking to the Financial Times over 60 Minutes any day. Some of those guys have accents.
Your Real Estate Problem is This Sacramento Agent’s Challenge
If you’ve got a problem with a home in Sacramento, come on over here and sit down next to me; I’m happy to talk about it. This is what I do all day long. As a busy Sacramento agent, I solve real estate puzzles and problems. I get to hear about some of the wildest situations, and I find a way to put the pieces together and close escrow.
It doesn’t matter what the problem is or the perception of that problem. I’m a good Sacramento agent to take care of it. Not every problem a seller perceives is actually a problem. Moreover, there is not much I haven’t run across or had to deal with in some form over the years, knock on wood. OK, I’ve never had to supervise the digging up of a grave in the front yard, so I suppose my time is coming. I’ve never had to drink milk directly from a pail toward which a cow’s udder was recently directed; oh, ick, I am such a city girl. There are few things, though, I have not done.
A few weeks ago I listed a home in Sacramento County that was pretty much trashed from one end to the other, and it was a big surprise for the sellers when they saw it. The tenant died in the house. But you know, the dude was watching one of his favorite programs on the TV Land channel: Bonanza, and he died peacefully in an overstuffed lounge chair. That’s not a bad a way to go; especially with everything being all right with Joe and Hoss on the Ponderosa. There were no cliff hangers on Bonanza. Every show neatly tidied up its drama. When I bite the dust, perhaps I’ll be watching Tattoo screaming: the plane, boss, the plane.
Another seller has a home with orange walls that I’m looking at later on this afternoon. My recommendation will be to paint the walls a light beige. Paint is kind of expensive when you figure it’s about $25 a can, and you need at least 2 cans of paint per room, but it’s the cheapest way to improve a home and get top dollar. You can also hire a pro for $300 to $500 per room.
There is the seller who had to turn off the water in his vacant home due to plumbing problems he couldn’t afford to fix, not to mention, the roof is beyond its end of life, and the payments are in arrears, have been in arrears for several years, but still, this might not be a short sale, and I am hopeful that I’ll find a first-time home buyer for this home in Elk Grove. I know other agents probably would not touch this listing with a 10-foot pole, but not me. I’ll take on the challenges.
The more challenges I solve and close, the better Sacramento agent I become. I’m still selling millions per month on average, even in today’s slower real estate market. You need a listing agent? You call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. I’ll be there.
How Not to Flip Your Sacramento Home
Can you make $100,000 profit on a Sacramento home you bought last summer and flip it? To clarify the answer further, let’s say the home was purchased at market value, the price at which most homes in Sacramento sell. Forget about the fact that the home abuts a gated community, and it’s not actually located in the gated community but instead is situated on a busy street with traffic. The caller wanted to know if she could make $100,000 profit, darn it, she wants to flip. Flipping the home is her goal because she and her husband no longer want to own this house.
Why don’t they want to own the house they bought only last summer? Because the work commute to San Francisco is too long. The sellers underestimated how gruesome it would be to drive 2 hours each way every day to go to work. So, now it is imperative that they make $100,000 profit and dump what they view as a bad decision. They’ll just flip it. They watch cable TV.
I tried to explain to the seller — without looking up the sale of her home or anything about it — that our market experienced its big appreciation in 2012. The first half of 2013 brought more appreciation and we saw another leap. But we’re pretty much done jumping around at the moment, and the market has been fairly stable since last July. I wondered what she thought would make her home worth $100,000 more than she paid for it, plus the costs of sale to flip it.
To get the answer, I go where I usually go when I’m looking for horribly bad property information that is widely available to the unsuspecting public — which is Zillow and its Zestimate. Believe it or not, this time Zillow wasn’t that far off on value, maybe by only $20,000, so it wasn’t Zillow’s fault. I pulled up listings in MLS to see what else was for sale in her neighborhood because sometimes it’s another home for sale in Sacramento that makes sellers think they can get more for their home. Hey, it’s down the street and on the market . . .
They don’t always realize that people can ask whatever they want. They stick any old price tag on it and find a real estate agent who is willing to list that home for sale. Sometimes, believe it or not, that Sacramento real estate agent could even be me as I don’t always turn down overpriced listings with potential — because those homes could sell someday for less, and I’d like to be that agent when they sell. It’s not my home. I do inform my sellers if I believe the price is too high, but it’s always their call because it’s their property.
Sure enough, I found a home for sale that is listed at about $100,000 more within a half-mile radius. It has a ton of upgrades. Quiet street. Nicer location. Bigger property, single level, and in fact wasn’t really a comparable sale at all in the world of Sacramento real estate. The potential seller who contacted me had a solution for this though, she could put in $50,000 to remodel her home and then she could make $100,000. Is she a professional flipper? Don’t think so.
And this is what HGTV has done to the minds of otherwise normal people.
The difference between me and the other two real estate agents she called? I talked to her. But my name would be mud if I encouraged her, and that’s just not the right thing to do. It means I won’t get the listing, but that’s how it goes.
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