Email ElizabethThe Lost Art of Pie in the Face
The movie studios don’t really make slapstick comedies anymore and I miss that kind of humor, unless you count the world of Sacramento real estate — in which one can almost always find a highly amusing moment as there are so many to choose from. I kinda like slapstick because I grew up with it, not to mention, it gave me a good excuse to whack my brother’s face for no reason. I laugh at pie in the face from the old Soupy Sales skits. Don’t get me started on the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges. But today so much is PC you don’t get that kind of humor from Hollywood or media.
Not that I’m against being PC because I’m not. As an enlightened human beings of the 22nd Century (Is that right? Are we in the 22nd Century now? How did that happen?), we don’t need to reinforce stereotypical issues that harm people or encourage discriminatory opinions, but what’s a pie in the face gonna harm?
I wish I could carry whipped cream pies in my briefcase for spur of the moment chuckles. I mean, maybe for health and safety purposes they could be stored frozen in the freezer like Cool Whip and removed to thaw just before I needed them. I could find many uses for this product.
Thank you for this lowball offer, whoosh, pie in the face. Thank you for never intending to close escrow, whoosh, pie in the face. Thank you for that Request for Repair on this AS IS sale, whoosh, pie in the face. Thank you for listing with your husband’s cousin, whoosh pie in the face. Thank you for picking my brain about all the fine nuances to sell and then sticking a FSBO sign in the yard, whoosh, pie in the face. Thank you for failing to deliver loan docs, whoosh pie in the face.
See, just thinking about this makes me laugh. But maybe that’s why I’m a Sacramento real estate agent who has survived and thrived all of these decades. If you gravitate toward goofy stuff, you’ll probably enjoy Anchorman 2.
Watch Out for Chief Denny’s Flip Sacramento
I’ll be the first to admit that I have never met Chief Denney, and I do not watch his little cable show on A&E about Flipping San Diego, nor have I perused his free propaganda, but I don’t need to in order to know what kind of person he is because it’s like my dead ex-husband Al Brown was resurrected and come to life right here in the Sacramento Bee. I can easily spot the Get Rich Quick schemes perpetrated by hucksters and snake oil salesman because I used to know so many of them from Orange County in the ’80s and, I hate to admit, was married to a couple of them in my younger and naive days, although not at the same time.
I see the warning signs. I read between the lines. And I scoff at the smiling faces full of charm and feigned sincerity, knowing full well that the public will buy that dog-and-pony show regardless of what I say about it. Still, I can’t keep my mouth shut when I see this baloney, and now it’s plastered in a full-page Sacramento Bee ad. Lord help us all.
Apart from the fact the poor schmuck can’t afford a proofreader so he didn’t catch the fact that they spelled his name wrong, he makes a clear statement that all of those properties he is showing in his FLIP SACRAMENTO ad are actual sales bought by members of his real estate team. They are not. Then, down at the bottom of the ad, he rebukes that claim by stating those properties are simply for demonstration purposes — meaning he had to insert a photo of some kind of property in those empty slots so the ones he chose are not indicative of anything. In fact, they are amounts due for back taxes and those homes do not sell at those prices.
That’s seems like blatant misrepresentation, but what do I know?
What can the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nail him on when his ad is all about giving away free books and CDs that will change your life? It will change your life all right when he sucks you dry for all of the other investment ideas he has up his sleeve and products he will sell once you’re on the mailing list.
A smart person would run like hell. But there are a lot of suckers in the world. I hate to bear witness to this crap, and I can hear my phone ringing now with morons muttering about making big profits by buying properties at tax sales, oh, please. I suppose a person who sends away for a free Fix and Flip for Quick Cash Kit deserves what they get, but I can’t help but want to protect them from their own ignorance.
Once Upon a Time There Were 3 Homes in Escrow
One would think it was an April Fool’s joke the way things seem to be going this morning in my Sacramento real estate business, but I can assure you that it’s entirely coincidental that 3 properties are going back on the market today pending rescission through absolutely no fault of the sellers. It’s those buyers. Once we had 3 homes in escrow and then not.
You would think buyers would have received the message by now that we have limited inventory in the marketplace, and they are pretty much lucky to be in escrow on any home. But with any strange market comes strange buyers as part of the mix. The problem is as a listing agent, we don’t meet the buyers face-to-face and we have no idea really whether they face mental challenges or are just drunk or stoned. The scenarios seem so similar at times.
I want to suggest hey, buyer’s agents, why not rifle through your buyer’s personal belongings to see if they have stashed illegal drugs in their coat pocket and better sniff that water bottle, does it contain vodka? Because I don’t see any other explanation for such absurdities. I know for some people it’s a lot of fun to be in escrow and picture what life would be like after closing, but for some of those people, it pains me to say, well, they can harbor no intention of closing. Some of them don’t realize it at the time, I’ll give them that much; but others are fully aware, they’re just playing in some other kids’ sandbox, one that the cat visited.
Just seems like a big case of buyer’s remorse sneaking into town on slipper-clad feet. Like that purple smoky haze cast as a curse by Maleficent over Storybrooke. Three perfectly good homes in escrow back on the market today. It’s unbelievable. Enough with the negative, let go of that — time to focus on the positive. These will sell again. They always do.
If you need a turnkey home in Elk Grove at $225,000, or a model home condo in West Sacramento by the Lighthouse Marina at $195,000, or a huge upgraded home with hardwood floors and a fabulous view in Natomas around $300,000, please give this Sacramento real estate agent a ring today at 916.233.6759. I’ll be more than happy to help you find that perfect home and slip you into backup position as we await the processing of the inevitable. No April Foolin’, I promise. When we put homes in escrow, they generally stick.
Notes on Decluttering a Cluttered Home Before Selling
We all tend to accumulate crap in our lives but the people who are selling cluttered homes have a tougher time preparing their home for sale. I’ve sold many homes for packrats and those suffering from an obsessive compulsive disorder, and I try to be compassionate because I realize it’s not their fault. It’s a disease. Besides, I am also focused on the job at hand. I realize I am not responsible for their mental condition, I’m simply responsible for selling their home. I don’t try to be a White Knight agent.
Who among us hasn’t collected crap, when you come right down to it? True story — when my husband and I moved to Sacramento, I carted off truckloads of crap, er, really nice stuff and donated it to charity. The crummier stuff I tossed. I had worked past the years of moving boxes of old bus transfers from the 1960s and telephone bills and other types of paper receipts that are absolutely worthless, which I had saved and forgotten to discard. They tell you to save stuff but don’t tell you when to toss it. I also had accumulated boxes in my attic filled to the gills with old curtains, drapes, bath towels, pots and pans, you name it, if I had bought it for a previous home, I had saved it.
This is why now when sellers ask me if they can take the drapes, my eyes get wide and say WHY, for the LOVE of God why? They won’t fit the windows in a new home. They will be too long or too short or the wrong color or the wrong material, and they will go into a box in your attic that you will move to the next house and the next house and the next house, so for crying out loud just don’t do it. Even if they do fit, you’ll decide you want new window coverings for some other goofy reason. Don’t even get me started on the people who plan to unattach and take their plantation shutters.
I also threw away boxes of old shoes. I suppose now it would give me great pleasure to paw through such a box but only for a moment as I held up a pair of rotting hippie moccasins to recall the last time I wore them and realize I could not (that’s what the ’60s do to ya), so what they hey, into the trash they go. I had to tug and pull two boxes of old shoes, they were so huge and heavy, outside for the trash collectors. Next thing I knew, people were knocking on my door in anger, waving shoes in my face, demanding to know how I had a right to throw away such precious things! You can’t win.
Then, when I got to California and moved into our new home, not everything would fit. As I unpacked, I realized what I should have realized back in Minnesota, and that is I did not need half of this crap. So even though I paid to ship it across the country, I still rented a 30-ton dumpster, put it in the street and filled it to the brim. Homeless people and scavengers had a field day.
I share this story in hopes that my clients and readers will be a bit more ruthless — poor Ruth, she gets all the blame — when trying to sell a cluttered home and will get rid of the crap upfront. Or, you can just call this Sacramento real estate agent, and I’ll guide you through getting that cluttered home prepared for sale.
Where To Get Legal Advice for Real Estate in Sacramento
Nary a day goes by when a client doesn’t ask me a legal question about real estate in Sacramento. They do not realize that I can get into a boatload of hot water and trouble up the ying-yang if I answer those kinds of questions and provide legal advice for real estate. Even when I say: hey, a Sacramento real estate agent is not allowed to give legal advice; I could lose my real estate license for practicing law, they will twist the question around and insist it’s not a legal question because they just want to know how other people have handled a similar legal technicality — which still makes it a legal question, regardless of whether they agree with my statement.
I say if you want to get conflicting opinions, ask a C.A.R. legal hotline lawyer. Those guys are paid, I suspect, on a flat-fee basis, and probably a minuscule flat-fee at that, to answer the phone which, because of that minuscule fee, I imagine, they often do not answer the phone. But one of them will eventually call back an agent to dispense real estate legal advice. In the few times that I have personally called a C.A.R. lawyer, the advice I received reminded me of an old Johnny Carson show, when he used to go on the street to ask questions of silly people in those Man on the Street interviews. In my experience, some of these lawyers seem to hold a weak grasp on real estate law, don’t understand how MLS works and tend to talk off the top of their heads, which I can get from my husband with a missing caveat: my husband will apply logic.
But one typically gets what one pays for in this world. C.A.R. legal hotline lawyers are free to dispense real estate legal advice to agents; they don’t submit written legal opinions. They simply provide free legal advice to agents in California. These free lawyers also probably feel like they aren’t paid enough to actually practice law but they’ll talk to an agent like we interrupted them while they were reading a comic book on the John. For all I do know, they take their cellphones with them into the stall before they accidentally flip them into the toilet. I bet cellphone providers sell a lot of insurance plans to free legal hotline lawyers. Heaven knows, too, that all-important phone call might come through from Domino’s Pizza. Gotta have your phone.
You might think I am unduly harsh on these professionals, but the advice they have dispensed to many agents has been completely wrong on so many levels that it has colored my opinion of them. It’s also possible that agents misunderstood or misconstrued. The point is that the C.A.R. lawyers are not held liable for poor advice because they’re not paid enough to be liable for the advice. And you know what that kind of advice is called? Lip service.
If I really need legal advice I can rely upon, I go to my company lawyers who are paid beaucoup bucks to protect the brokerage and, by extension in most instances, its agents. I respect these people and they know real estate law. If a client needs legal advice for real estate, I have a list of respected real estate lawyers in Sacramento whom they can call. I often point clients to California Civil Code, which explains many of the secrets in California real estate, but nothing can substitute for the advice of a lawyer — a real estate lawyer who provides professional assistance based on her own experience, associate practice, court case and real estate law. Don’t ask a Sacramento real estate agent.
And don’t blame C.A.R. either because our agent dues don’t begin to cover a legal hotline. C.A.R. is just a trade association.
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