Email ElizabethIncrease in Number of Elk Grove Homes for Sale
While talking with a client yesterday in Elk Grove, the strategy for pricing came up in the conversation. The client suggested that I must have a certain way that I advise sellers to pick a price for their home. Although I sell an awful lot of homes in Elk Grove — enough to put me on the radar of companies trying to sell buyer leads to top producers — my strategy is not the same for every home. That’s one of the things that sets me apart from other Elk Grove agents.
I take into consideration the temperature of the marketplace and blend that with the seller’s goals to develop a unique home pricing and marketing strategy for that particular home. It’s also what keeps real estate so completely fascinating for me. If every real estate transaction was identical, I’d most likely not have lasted in the business all these decades.
Not to mention, the fall market in Sacramento is different than the spring market of 2013. Springtime in Sacramento was wild and crazy, coupled with limited inventory. Now, interest rates are inching toward 5% and inventory has more than doubled. The demand is still strong, especially among entry-level homes, but the strategy is different to sell. The light green columns above indicates number of homes for sale in 95624, 95757 and 95758.
Sellers can’t be as demanding as they might like. Homes need to be priced right. A seller must prepare a home for sale. She can’t leave dirty dishes in the sink, floors cluttered and expect to quickly sell. Yet, it is still a seller’s market. Just not as strong as spring.
The Elizabeth Weintraub Team has a couple more homes coming on the market in Elk Grove. Watch for these gems and act quickly if you’re looking to buy a home in Elk Grove. Our sellers don’t need two dozen offers. They simply want that one qualified buyer who loves the home. Is it you?
Chart: Trendgraphix
Fighting HUD in an FHA Short Sale
It’s sort of surprising in a way but many home buyers in Sacramento do not know what kind of loan they have, especially after a few years pass since closing. From their point of view, it doesn’t matter. They still owe all of that money for decades. Whether their loan was FHA or conventional or VA, who cares? But it makes a difference if the seller needs to do a short sale. The rules are very different.
Whenever this Sacramento real estate agent approaches a short sale, the very first thing I do is figure out the seller’s type of loan. If the loan is FHA, for example, there is no requirement to submit an offer with the FHA short sale request. That doesn’t mean a seller might not want to submit an offer, as there are reasons for it, providing the buyer is willing to wait, but it’s not a requirement and, in some situations, it can be a much easier process without an offer.
We had a short sale recently that could not close. It was the first short sale in a long, long time that had been rejected without hope of any further action. Ordinarily, I do not give up; I continue the fight and, if the bank says no, I reconfigure the short sale package and resubmit. Eventually, the banks say yes. But when HUD says no, it means no. To protest would mean fighting the department of Housing and Urban Development.
One can request a variance and build a very strong case. But after that case is presented, it’s sort of like getting an opinion from Superior Court. One could appeal but an agent can’t do it. It takes a lawyer to do it at that level.
Sometimes, clients forget that Sacramento real estate agents are not lawyers. We might seem that way, but we do not have a law degree, we cannot give legal advice, and we cannot practice law, even if our shoes are nicer.
In this particular situation, even though the home was not habitable, HUD rejected a variance request. This was a round peg trying to fit into a square hole. Apparently, there is nothing in HUD guidelines that deal with homes that are uninhabitable. Because the bottom line is when you’ve got Lily Tomlin in her telephone operator role running HUD, the answer tends to be no, especially when they can’t figure it out.
Selling Sacramento Real Estate Without Internet
While this Sacramento real estate agent was on vacation in Alaska with limited Internet access, two real estate transactions blew up at closing — which is a rarity but seems to be more common lately. These would have blown up even if I was in Sacramento. Pending sales blowing up appears to be due to a mix of buyer remorse, uncertainty and severe underwriting guidelines. Fortunately, I was able to put both of these homes back into escrow almost immediately and at better terms, even from thousands of miles away.
I also sold another home in Elk Grove while I was cruising the Inside Passage. We had just left Skagway that evening and headed back to Juneau, a long stretch without Internet. I had anticipated this difficulty before I left, which is why my team members and assistant were on alert, jumping in to help answer questions and monitor listing activity. On top of that, I had set up my iPad as a Hotspot so if we did find cellphone coverage, I could receive wireless coverage through my laptop computer.
The only problem with the iPad is I should have named my iPad something other than Elizabeth Weintraub’s iPad. Like, maybe, Breaking Bad. Although we had only 35 travelers onboard the Alaskan Dream, many of them asked about it because it showed up in their wireless connections as a connectivity port. It kind of made me feel like the only rock pigeon dangling a slice of bread from my mouth, surrounded by starving, pecking pigeons.
My Hotspot only worked though if I was near a cellphone tower. As a backup, I also left my cellphone plugged in and turned to silent. That’s because I use two different cellphone carriers, so whichever was strongest would pick up the signal.
Sure enough, around 1 AM, while I was sound asleep, we cruised into Juneau to get diesel before continuing on to Glacier Bay. See, this is how I sell Sacramento real estate in my sleep. My husband set the alarm on his cellphone to wake me up. Eureka. Internet. I quickly uploaded the offer I had received to DocuSign, cc’d my assistant to send the executed offer on to the buyer’s agent, and crawled back into bed. Of course, it was hard going back to sleep with my brain on fire.
Trip to Alaska Inside Passage and Anchorage
Coming back to Sacramento from vacation has always been relatively easy except for this last trip, the exploration of the Inside Passage of Alaska. I sit in my home Land Park office with the door open and hear the traffic from I-5 way off in the distance, and I think: it’s not the same thing. It’s not waves lapping the shore. Water is the driving force in the Inside Passage, it’s everywhere — the be-all and end-all of existence. It’s not the thunder of glacier calving. It’s not ravens’ chipper discussions of disagreement, there are no Tlinget drums a-thumping or dancers singing; it’s just those horrid skunks runningamuck in Land Park.
Still. It’s good to be home.
Every trip away changes a person, but the trip to Alaska was more life changing than I expected. It’s not like I want to pack up and move to Alaska — remember, I grew up in Minnesota; not that different temperature-wise — but the frontier, the wild frontier, it really is wild, did I mention the wild frontier?
It’s no secret that I don’t really like most people. So, Elizabeth, a person might say, how did you end up in real estate for so many decades if you don’t like people? That would be a fair question. There is no answer to that question. I guess I’ve been fairly fortunate that the people I work with are actually pretty darned nice people! Or maybe it’s just the nice people who choose me to represent them? I dunno. I’m not complaining.
But I do know that I brought way too much stuff on the trip to Alaska. Being gone for about 2 weeks, I wore 3 pairs of pants, but I packed 10 pair. My jeans, hahahahaha, I could not fit into them after the first day. Memo-to-self, on subsequent trips, bring fewer articles of clothing because one can always buy what one does not carry, and if one can’t buy it, one can do without or wear it again.
If you do intend to take a cruise through the Inside Passage of Alaska and have been holding off because you dislike those large cruise ships, you can’t go wrong with the Alaskan Dream out of Sitka. The worst thing is the meals are so fabulous that even if you skip dessert, you’re likely to gain a pound or three.
My favorite present from our trip is a gift from Tracy, the editor of Alaska Magazine. It’s a pair of socks with a bird and an Alaskan flower. I would not have bought them for myself, but now I don’t have to wish I did because Tracy did. It was such a kind gesture. Tracy met us for dinner in Anchorage at the Crow’s Nest at the top of Captain Cook Hotel. I have one thing to say about Captain Cook Hotel. Shame on you for no breakfast room service. And you call yourself a hotel!
But the view is spectacular from the Crow’s Nest. The poor waitress was a suddenly former hostess who had to fill in because they were short of a couple of waitresses that night. You’ve got to wonder about that. Where do they find people to staff these positions?
Like the poor people at the Anchorage Visitor’s Center. Couple of women susss-susshing about stuff, talking to people, when we approach. One of the staff members mumbles something to the other: “Wow, that woman was disgruntled.” I guess she complained about the weather in Anchorage. The weather in Anchorage sucks, it’s what it is, get over it. I sauntered up next to the counter and blurted: “Disgruntled people should be bopped in the head.”
Oh, my, that set off a flurry of apologies. They are Ambassadors for Anchorage. So sorry for talking about others in our presence.
I speak my mind, though. No apologies. When we were in Seward, I chatted with an employee over the counter when finishing a transaction to purchase a moose wind chime at the Sealife Museum. She shared that she moved from Michigan to Seward because the time seemed to be right for the move — boyfriend, mother, relatives, stuff — and she dove into all sorts of personal reasons why the time was now for the move.
I could say only that:
Now is Always the Time.
She verbally appreciated. Reflected upon. Several levels. I hope you do, too.
Disclosing Material Facts to a Sacramento Home Buyer
Buyers don’t care what you tell them as long as you tell them. That’s my opening statement when I hand home sellers a package of disclosures to complete. It’s the things you don’t tell a buyer that can come back to haunt you, not what you do say. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you Google: Snake Infested House in Idaho.
You take a neighborhood where I live and work as a Sacramento real estate agent like Land Park. Because I live in Land Park, I have intimate knowledge about the neighborhood, which agents who live outside of Land Park probably don’t know. If they don’t know, they can’t disclose those facts to a buyer. Although, it could probably be argued that they should know or should at least have asked questions of the seller.
On the front end of my marketing, I sell the delights of living in Land Park — the friendly neighbors, tree-canopied streets, fabulous restaurants, bike trails and our special attractions such as William Land Park, the Sacramento Zoo, Fairy Tale Town, the WPA Rock Garden, and Vic’s Ice Cream.
But there is also a downside — as there is with any neighborhood, I don’t care where you live. For example, I know which areas in Land Park routinely flood during a hard rain. I know where the feral cats, skunks, opossums and raccoons roam. Which streets get foot traffic and the origination of that traffic. When noise factors such as trains or freeways can be present. Parking ordinances. Which trees are protected. Selling homes in Land Park means more than what we used to call selling real estate in the old days: selling carpets and drapes. That used to be the definition of residential real estate sales in the 1970s. Except nowadays it’s more like selling hardwood flooring and plantation shutters.
The thing is after escrow closes, odds are something in that buyer’s new home will probably malfunction. And the minute it does, the buyer is likely to immediately jump to the conclusion that the seller knew about it and purposely withheld that information or concealed that defect. It’s human nature. We’re a suspicious bunch of people.
So, how do you bump up the odds that you won’t get sued after escrow closes? You hire an agent who can explain the inherent problems with some types of seller disclosures and can give you the right documents. You find a Land Park agent who knows the nuances of your neighborhood. I tell my sellers to disclose all material facts. If I know a material fact, I disclose it. I go into great detail about what a material fact is and why it’s important. I help sellers to recollect and disclose. We talk about the Transfer Disclosure Statement.
The other day a seller objected to a point I made in a disclosure. She wanted me to remove a sentence about the possibility that a neighbor’s dog might bark. No can do. The tenant told me the dog next door barked. I don’t know if the dog barks. The dog wasn’t barking in my presence. I noted that I did not hear the dog barking but the tenant said the dog barks. This disclosure doesn’t appear in my marketing materials. It appears on the agent visual inspection, on which I obtain the buyer’s signature, along with a pile of other documents after offer acceptance. I’m always thinking one step ahead of ways to protect my sellers yet conform to the law. That’s my job, and I take my job seriously.
The point is it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. I don’t want my sellers ever ending up in court. Not if I can help it. And I can. If you’re looking for an agent in Sacramento to help you to buy or sell a home, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233.6759.
While Elizabeth is on vacation, we are revisiting some of her favorite blogs.
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