Email ElizabethSacramento Real Estate Agent Award Scams
Being a Sacramento real estate agent with one ear to the ground for scams sometimes make me the lone real estate agent who will point out the emperor has no clothes when no other agent has the tenacity or guts. It’s one of the reasons why I was hired many years ago to be the home buying expert at About.com. I will tell it like it is. People count on me to give them the straight scoop. It’s in my nature.
Not to mention, I really detest being taken advantage of. Nobody likes to get dressed up on her day off, studiously explore a pocket of homes, pore over a comparable market analysis, drive to another part of town to meet a seller from the mountains and her Duck Dynasty husband, be given a tour of a home in which the occupant is baking cupcakes and not be offered one single bite, only to discover her sole purpose in that house is to confirm a sales price that the seller had already signed a listing at with some other agent. But it happens in real estate.
What I find more annoying is the clever schemes being carried out to supposedly honor real estate agents and their achievements. These scams are so clever they border on being evil. Companies exist that are making a profit selling awards they create in the form of plaques or advertising to agents they honor with an “award.” It’s kind of hard for an agent to complain about it when the agent is receiving recognition. That’s why I hold contempt for it.
Two such companies come to mind but there are others. The first is Five Star Professional. They claim that they select agents based on client surveys, but I have my suspicions. First, as an experiment, I wrote to Five Star to ask why I wasn’t listed in its 2013 agent list. Lo and behold, suddenly a survey appeared in my email in which I was asked whether I had closed a minimum number of transactions (it wasn’t very many, a bare fraction of the number I had closed last year). So, that meant the bar was relatively low.
Next thing I know, I receive an email saying I have been nominated to the 2014 Five Star Professional list. You know, I don’t even like the word “professional” as a marketing tool because it sounds so slimy. It’s not used for real professionals like a doctor or a teacher. People use professional when there is no actual business designation or the individual has no degree. So, let’s call it what it is: a real estate agent. No sooner did that email arrive than my phone rang, simultaneously, and my Caller ID showed it was Five Star Professional. They want to help me market my new award. They want to sell me advertising.
So does Real Trends Best Real Estate Agents in California. They named the Elizabeth Weintraub Team in the top 25 of all teams in California based on number of homes sold. I know how many homes I have sold and I probably do rank in the top 25, but so what? Soon I began receiving emails and faxes and voice mails from a company, evidently associated with Real Trends, that wants to sell me plaques to hang over my desk.
This is what happens to a top producing Sacramento real estate agent. But . . . these things also happen to agents who are NOT top producers. No wonder the public doesn’t know what or whom to believe.
You might ask how is this different than a newspaper or a magazine or an association that holds an award dinner, hires a celebrity speaker and then charges those who have “won an award” to attend? I’d be right there with you asking this question. But at least the winners don’t have to buy their own plaques.
How a Sacramento Real Estate Agent Uses a Mini Stylus
For a Sacramento real estate agent like me, there is little as exciting in my small world of technology than that of buying a new cellphone. About 10 years ago, I used a BlackBerry, and upgraded to a better model every chance I got. Then, I discovered an Android and bought a Samsung. Finally, man, a screen big enough that my aging eyes could actually read. The downside was the feel of the keys had vanished, making typing very difficult, swyping a pain, and the screen is impossible to read in bright sunlight.
Trade-offs. There are always trade-offs.
Of course, I can talk to my phone but my phone has a really hard time understanding me unless I talk like a robot. Slowly. Distinctly. Sing-songy voice. Imagine the stares I get from strangers on the sidewalk: talKING . . . like . . . THIS Beats trying to type. Even though I am fairly certain I have no profane words stored in my Android, you would not believe some of the stuff it thinks I say which I do not say. My worst horror is that I’ll by accident hit send to a client when it types eat shit and die.
The solution for this Sacramento real estate agent is to use a mini stylus. I am forever giving away my miniature styli. So, I bought a bag of 50 of them. This way I can color coordinate my outfits to match the stylists on my phone. I carry a few extra in my bag in case I forget and dash out the door wearing gray, for example, and sporting a bright gold stylus when maybe silver might be more appealing. See, this is the kind of attention to detail and type of back-up plans this Sacramento real estate agent deals with every day. It carries over into my personal life.
Just so you know, they also wear out. You can tear up the tip by banging too hard on the iPad playing Plants vs. Zombies or Jelly Defense.
On the downside, strangers approach me on the street and ask why I have this thing dangling from my cellphone or my iPad. When I show them how easy it is to type on your phone with it — the precision one can use to pull back and aim that slingshot for Angry Birds — everybody wants one. So, I just give them my stylus. It also helps them to remember this Sacramento real estate agent. I should print my name on them, now that I think about it.
The nice thing is the doohickey plugs right into your device so you won’t lose it. And my miniature stylus will plug very nicely into my new iPhone. I can’t wait until it arrives, and then I’ll have to buy all new apps. Rats.
Treating Sacramento Real Estate Agents Honestly in Multiple Offers
Much ado about multiple offers lately. So much of the stuff contained in the REALTOR Code of Ethics is simply good common sense for a Sacramento real estate agent to adhere to in her real estate practice, and it’s not “just words” to many agents. Not to mention, an agent can be reported to the Board of REALTORS and / or fined for violating the Code. It says things like a member needs to treat other members and clients honestly.
On the other hand, treating agents fairly means without prejudice, without discrimination, giving equal weight to all parties by being equitable, playing no favoritism, partaking in impartial dealings, being honorable. One of my goals when I am the listing agent and representing the seller in a transaction is to give buyer’s agents an opportunity to view the home and present an offer on a level-playing field. This means I am not sharing information about the content of offers with other agents unless authorized by the seller.
The Elizabeth Weintraub Team encourages buyer’s agents involved in multiple offers to submit their best offer upfront. Not every seller wants go through the counter offer stage in a multiple-offer situation. I have worked with sellers who enjoy that process, but many of them do not. Many sellers just want the best offer possible and do not want to dicker back and forth. So, agents who submit an offer and say “please counter us,” are a) doing their buyer a disservice by implying the buyer will offer more, which could possibly be breaking their fiduciary, and b) their words are falling on deaf ears if the sellers don’t want to counter.
During multiple offers for a home in Roseville yesterday, an agent pleaded and asked how high her buyer had to go to buy the home. I explained in that instance I can’t play favorites, and she needs to do the best that she can. My sellers did not authorize me to disclose offers.
I try to help my sellers weigh offers by looking at all aspects of the offer and not just the sales price. We discuss contingencies, debt ratios, FICO scores (if we get them), preapproval letters, and any special considerations an agent might include in the buyer’s offer. No financing rejections based on type of loan — cash is not king — closing escrow is king.
Ultimately, it’s always the sellers’ decision which offer to choose. Funny thing is yesterday, the sellers chose the offer from the agent who did the best that she and her buyer could do, and that agent did not receive any preemptive suggestions from me. This is the way the seller wanted it. Not to mention, what goes around in this world tends to come around. I hope when my Team sits on the other side of the table presenting an offer for a buyer, we will be treated honestly as well.
Commission-Gate and the Sacramento Real Estate Agent
Who knew that selling Sacramento real estate was likely to turn into its own little Commission-Gate? Over my past 40 years in real estate, this was a first for me. Now, we know buyers are a bit desperate vying for certain homes, and agents can be all over the map when trying to help them buy those homes, too. But holy moley, you don’t throw a bag of money at the listing agent, for heaven’s sake. No, I don’t want to see the gold watches pinned inside your coat, button yourself up and get outta here.
Let’s set aside the fact that it’s against the law, probably violates the Code of Ethics, and it breaches an agent’s fiduciary relationship with her seller, and look at what buyers or their agent — hard to say where the idea originated — were coming from. See, Mikey here really wants this house, see. Poor Mikey and his dame, they just wanna buy a house, and they know it’s uncool to be packing heat. They don’t wanna wear no bracelets, much less end up in the stinkin’ meatwagon heading off to the Big House; so, instead, see, they’re just gonna sweeten the deal with moolah.
I can’t believe a buyer’s agent asked this Sacramento real estate agent yesterday to accept a kickback on the commission. She offered 25% of her commission to me as a bonus if I would just get her buyers into that house. What?
Yeah, my jaw is still hanging open. I had to tell her to hang on her to cabbage and just write the best offer that her buyers could write. I’m nobody’s stool pigeon but I’m kinda floored that she had the gall to ask such a thing. Is this Chicago? What’s next? No, I’m not going there because sure as crap somebody will try to do it if I say it. I’m not putting ideas into anybody’s head, not even as a joke.
This market is not bringing out the best in people. Some real estate agents are becoming forgetful. To some, the Code of Ethics is something dark and murky, in their past; they’re too busy crawling over dead bodies to get to that pile of gold. We simply cannot set aside our professionalism because the market is hard or inventory is low. I find this kind of behavior troubling because it reflects poorly on all of us.
Is the Third Time a Charm in a Sacramento Short Sale?
There is a saying in the Sacramento short sale business that the third time is a charm. Agents who sell a lot of short sales might chuckle over this statement because it’s absolutely true. We don’t want to sell a home more than once, but sometimes, there is no way around it, no matter what we do. Apart from forcing a buyer we’ve tied to a chair in an empty warehouse to listen to Stuck in the Middle With You, we can’t really interrogate them.
OK, that was just a sick joke. But when you sell a home a third time, that’s where your mind goes and the sellers follow that thought process, too.
As the seller’s listing agent, I do comb through the supporting documentation sent by the buyer’s agents and try to make sense of an offer for my sellers. For example, I recently received a cash offer from an investor with proof of funds attached. In the proof of funds — which was outdated by more than 30 days rendering it unacceptable to a short sale bank — were a series of checks drawn in the sum of $1,000. The funds in the account were barely enough to buy more than one house. What does that tell you? Yeah, they promise they aren’t making other offers, and it’s possible they have a sick relative somewhere they’re routinely sending $1,000 checks to, but I kinda doubt it.
We closed an escrow last week that had been in the works since spring. This was a home in Antelope that was a short sale with two loans, one of which had been discharged, and then a third lien popped up during a title search. This was a judgment against the seller, so the home could not be sold without its release, and the short sale bank sure as heck wasn’t gonna allow payment of that. But I’m used to the tough deals.
We sold the home the first time to a buyer who appeared qualified. After we received short sale approval from both the first, Ocwen, and the second lender, GMAC, the buyers’ lender re-evaluated their financial situation. Somehow, that situation had changed, and the buyers no longer qualified.
We sold the home a second time to a cash buyer who was very eager to close. Somewhere along the line this buyer decided she was paying too much for the home because, after all, she had a sister who bought a home nearby who paid less. Didn’t matter to her that the homes were not comparable to each other, she canceled. Cash buyers can be fickle.
By the third time we sold the home, GMAC, the second lender, had sold the worthless piece of paper to a collection agency, so we had to get a new third party authorization, wait for a new account number to be assigned, and then submit to the new second lender. Plus, the seller had long ago vacated. We figured the judgment creditor would probably now want additional interest, but they were happy just to get paid, thank goodness. We received approval and closed last month, just after we discovered a water leak in the laundry room.
Like I said, the third time is a charm. If you want an agent who will sell that house again and again if need be, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. As a top Sacramento short sale agent, I possess a lot of patience.
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