Email ElizabethHonesty Should Not Be Tough For Real Estate Agents
Agents need to be truthful when asked if they have shown a property to their buyers if, for no other reasons, than the California Bureau of Real Estate makes honesty a requirement for a license and the REALTOR Code of Ethics demands it. You would think being honesty for real estate agents is a no brainer but some apparently disagree. The dishonest sort tend to twist honesty into a pretzel and a format they recognize, something they can rationalize, but there really is no rationalizing the truth. You are or you aren’t. You did or you didn’t. You did not have sexual relations with that woman. You are not a crook. You’re just some whack job driving a white Bronco very slowly.
We all get it. We all wish it would stop.
Except, sometimes, the people who perpetrate and give life, meaning and clarity to the unfortunately descriptive word: asshole. This sort doesn’t give a crap.
The California Bureau of Real Estate created bare-bone requirements to become a Sacramento real estate agent. You must be 18 (you do not have to be a high school graduate), you must complete 3 real estate courses, and an applicant for a real estate license must be TRUTHFUL and HONEST. Right there, that requirement probably knocks out at least 1 person out of every 5, yet they still get a real estate license because if they are untruthful, do you think they will admit it? Ack.
In the REALTOR Code of Ethics, the very first article a REALTOR pledges is to treat all parties HONESTLY. Yes, honesty for real estate agents is a prerequisite.
Yet, when a listing agent asks a buyer’s agent who submitted an offer the sellers want to accept if the agent showed the property to the buyers and the agent responds, “Yes, she loved it,” when the agent did NOT show the property, well, what do you make of that? When presented with the facts such as maybe the sellers were home all day and did not possess a business card from that agent, only then might the buyer’s agent admit that the buyer did not actually view the inside. Inferring, btw, that the buyer was outside of the property with the agent, which probably did not happen, either.
It’s the writer’s instinct in me, I ask questions and probe.
Agents, you might be tempted to “fudge” the facts even if you don’t see it as outright lying, but please don’t. Dishonesty is against the law, it’s against the Code of Ethics, and sellers might ignore your buyer’s offer when they find out what you did. I will tell them. It’s in my fiduciary to disclose what I know to my sellers. Just be honest. Why is honesty for real estate agents so tough?
Sacramento Home Buyers Ask: Why Wasn’t My Offer Accepted?
It pains me when I see a purchase offer to buy a home arrive in my email and I instinctively realize the buyer will be asking her agent: why wasn’t my offer accepted? In the mind of many Sacramento home buyers, they did everything right. This particular home buyer found the home she wanted online all by herself — it fit her parameters exactly. She fell in love with the photographs and knew before she ever stepped foot inside that house that she wanted to buy that home.
Visiting the home in person solidified those feelings and thoughts. Yes, she should definitely buy that home. She is qualified and has her pre-approval letter that confirms it. The buyer may have provided proof of funds from her checking account. She has delivered an earnest money deposit with her offer. Everything is as it should be. All the stars are aligned, and this is her home. She even offered list price. She did exactly what was asked. All that’s left to do is to figure out where to put the sofa.
Ack. The seller accepted a different offer. Why didn’t she get this house? Why did the seller reject her offer? What is wrong with her Sacramento real estate agent? These are the thoughts running through the buyers’ mind. Do you want to know what the problem is?
First, it’s probably not the real estate agent. I imagine the real estate agent told the buyer that Sacramento is experiencing a limited inventory market, there is not much for sale, and there is intense competition, especially for entry-level homes in good condition. This means many Sacramento home buyers must write a better-than-normal offer. It could entail a higher price, paying more of the closing costs or giving the seller extra benefits, among other home buying offer tips.
I know that buyer’s agents explain this to their Sacramento home buyers. But somehow, that advice seems to fall on deaf ears or for some other reason the buyer does not agree nor understand. An agent can tell a buyer they need to offer more than $300,000 for that listing at $295,000, and some buyers will still ask, can I offer $250,000? These are not true buyers who say those sorts of things; these are people who are mentally deranged, which means yes, they are buyers from another universe and don’t operate in our world.
Working with a veteran real estate agent can also help improve a buyer’s chances of getting an offer accepted. Listing agents know the agents who perform and agents gain a reputation in this industry — good reason not to rely on your cousin’s aunt who happens to have a real estate license.
It’s generally one of three reasons why a buyer’s offer is not accepted: the buyer or the agent or both. Which is your reason? Because it’s not the Sacramento real estate market. We all must adjust to the market. If a buyer conforms to the market, the buyer will get her offer accepted.
Sacramento Spring Home Selling Starts in the Rain
One of my Elk Grove sellers yesterday almost passed out when I called to say we had sold his home. I’m not joking. He could not believe it, and that’s putting it mildly. One day he’s a guy with a home in Elk Grove that is almost upside-down with a roof at the end of its life and the next day he’s slipping $50,000 into his pocket. I’m sure that’s the way it seemed to him. “Buttt,” he stuttered in disbelief, “We haven’t even been on the market for 2 weeks yet.”
When a listing is done right, much of the work is done upfront. Sellers don’t see the hours we agents pour over our listings, highlighting this feature, brightening this spot, cropping thusly, and plastering it everywhere online. Or the time invested to study the comparable sales and help the seller to choose just the right sales price. Or the number of inspection reports obtained from roofers, pest workers much less our own visual inspections, rearranging, color coordinating and staging the home a little bit. What they see is a buyer walking in the door and cooing, “I want this home.” It sends sellers into shock.
It was an unbelievable day yesterday for this Sacramento real estate agent. I don’t always have days like that Wednesday or I would probably drop from exhaustion. In addition to receiving an award from Leading Real Estate Companies of the World at my office meeting, bringing in a breakfast item for a potluck to honor veteran and former SAR president Barbara Harsch, and adding another curb scrape to the front lip spoiler on my car on my way to drop it at the body shop, it seems like everything happened in three’s. First, I took 3 new listings: met with the sellers, inspected the homes, shot my photographs, signed all the paperwork, explained how showings work, all that stuff.
Lyon Real Estate and I are bringing to the Sacramento spring home selling market today a gorgeous remodeled home in East Sacramento at 700 San Antonio Way at $649,000. The attention to detail in this remodel is astounding. Another new listing is a home in Carmichael, just north of Fair Oaks and east of California Street at 6145 Fountaindale Way at $350,000. This is a single-level, open floor plan with vaults and attached deck, surrounded by mature landscaping, built in 1992. The third new listing is located at 17 Oasis Court, which is on a culdesac, built in 2008 (among newer homes in central Sacramento), with 4 bedrooms and 2 baths at the affordable price of $195,000.
On top of this, I put 3 listings into contract and into escrow. Like the home of my Elk Grove seller who almost had a heart attack. I picked up 3 new clients by answering my phone as I was driving around Sacramento, too. We’re just getting started in this Sacramento spring selling season. See, focus. That’s the name of the game, and an agent must be on top of her game. Besides, it was too rainy to take my daily bike ride through Land Park yesterday anyway.
A Sacramento Mortgage Lender Can Make or Break the Escrow
The thing about primarily representing sellers in a transaction is a listing agent rarely gets the opportunity to recommend an excellent Sacramento mortgage lender to a buyer. This is normally handled by the buyer’s agent. That doesn’t stop lenders and their lender reps — the mortgage loan officers (MLOs) — from nonstop spamming / harassing and marketing to listing agents in hopes of attracting their business, but quite frankly they are barking up the wrong tree and going about it in the wrong way.
No veteran real estate agent is likely to recommend a mortgage loan officer due to a brief office meeting or over leisurely coffee breaks (what are those) at Starbucks. Agents recommend loan officers who have proven themselves worthy of a recommendation through performance. We put them on our list. They can’t ask to be added to our list because we won’t add them.
Sometimes I run into a situation with a buyer that is perhaps a bit iffy, which is a good way to describe some of the risky situations I spot. If I don’t recognize the mortgage loan officer in those instances, the sellers and I might suggest that the buyer get a second opinion from one of my preferred lenders. They are preferred because I know and trust them to thoroughly investigate and analyze a situation before issuing a pre-approval letter. They discuss options and make sure the borrower understands the mortgage choices at hand.
When a mortgage loan officer informs the agent, say, a week or so before closing, that the buyer can’t remove the appraisal contingency when an appraisal has been completed, a Sacramento real estate agent might rightly wonder why. Perhaps the mortgage loan officer will say something like the borrower was upset over all of the costs to get an FHA loan and decided to switch to conventional.
You know what that tells me? It tells me that the mortgage loan officer did not thoroughly explain the GFE to the borrower upon inception of the loan. It also tells me that the mortgage loan officer herself probably suggested the conventional loan as an alternative, not realizing that the buyer’s contract did not specify a conventional loan. The sellers will most likely consider this to be a contractual change, whether the MLO realizes it.
When presented with reality, the MLO might argue and say the conventional loan is better for the seller. Really? It might be for the buyer, but it’s not necessarily better for the seller. What if the seller had a former buyer in escrow who had an FHA appraisal previously completed, and what if that was the reason the sellers chose the present FHA buyer? No appraisal problems. Now that the buyer is changing financing, it changes the type of appraisal, and it could affect the entire transaction. Moreover, why would a mortgage loan officer who is hoping for repeat business leave the buyer’s agent out of the loop and overstep?
Perhaps the most endearing quality would be if the MLO desperately tried to justify the new financing by explaining to the listing agent how conventional financing works in comparison to FHA — especially to an agent who has been selling real estate before the MLO was born. Some mortgage lender reps set their own paths for failure, and they don’t need any help from anybody else.
Starting Over on a HAFA Due to Chase Bank Short Sale HELOC
What does it mean to start over on a HAFA short sale through Bank of America because the HELOC department (second lien holder) at Chase Bank messed up? That’s a question that is probably lingering in the minds of many frustrated home buyers across the United States right now because if it happens in Sacramento, you can bet it happens elsewhere. Let me be clear that a Chase Bank short sale, when Chase is in first position, actually seems to run rather smoothly in Equator now, it’s just those second liens that are a royal PITA.
Why, believe it or not, sellers and buyers can start a short sale in December and still be working on it at the end of March when the Chase HELOC department finally gets around to ordering a BPO. A Sacramento short sale agent can call 3 times a week and sometimes leave several messages a day and escalate, and nobody from Chase will return the call probably because they a) know an agent will call back or b) Chase doesn’t pay them enough to give a flying fig or c) they’ll quit or get fired.
Supervisors’ emails fill up with messages and they don’t return calls, either. Hello, Julio Escobedo?It seems that half the HELOC short sale department at Chase is either out to a 3-martini lunch, on vacation or sleeping in a broom closet. I hate to say this, but we had a much easier time with Chase when it was not using Equator for these second loans. Its performance today is dismal and disappointing.
But what else is new in a short sale? I’ve been closing them for 8 years now, hundreds of short sales. Now that we have approval from Bank of America on a certain HAFA short sale and we were able to beg, borrow and steal an extra two weeks to gain a short sale extension to close escrow, no matter how many hand grenades we toss at Chase, we can’t light a fire under its feet.
Chase will amble along, waddling like a fat walrus after a big lunch, drooling fish guts down its chin.
It’s not giving up to “start over” with Bank of America on a short sale. Because Bank of America is pretty streamlined in Equator. But then it’s been working harder on short sales than Chase, and that’s evident. Bank of America can approve a short sale 2 or 3 times in the length of time it will take Chase to issue one approval letter. Chase really needs to get with the program and clean up its work ethic. We’ll get a rush on the approval process at Bank of America and probably get the second approval for this HAFA short sale before Chase has had time to tie its shoes.
See, and this is why I buy stock at Bank of America and not Chase.
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