Email ElizabethFound Chihuahuas in Land Park
Words my husband does not want to hear as he’s heading out the door to pick up sushi for dinner: We need to get the chihuahuas. It happened because I was jumping on my bike to take my before-dinner bike ride through William Land Park when I received an email. I do admit that my cellphone is strapped to my handlebars, for those biking purists who could not imagine themselves hauling along a cell when riding. But then those biking enthusiasts are probably not a Sacramento real estate agent.
The message came through my email that two chihuahuas were loose and running in the street about a block away from my home in Land Park. I belong to the neighborhood website Nextdoor for the area where I live in Land Park. A kind person posted that the dogs were darting about his garage. I pedaled my bike over there. It was clear that the poster was not in a position to take care of the dogs; however, he did give them some water.
Then, I spotted a woman walking her dog, and the two little chihuahuas dashed over to greet her. I tried to tell the woman that the chihuahuas belonged to her now, but she was not about to claim any kind of ownership. She pointed to the house at the end of the street and indicated that she believed that guy owned the dogs. Even after I explained that he does not own those dogs and they are loose, she still did not take ownership. I’m not blaming her, but I was hopeful that she would. Nobody would take these dogs.
See, this is the thing. You can’t leave 2 dogs loose in the streets in Land Park. Certainly not around dinnertime when many people are coming home from work and there’s a lot of traffic. This is what I told my husband as he was carrying a big cardboard box and heading toward the street where the dogs were bouncing about. Not only that, but what if it was one of our cats who was on the loose and scared? He said somebody probably dumped them because they could no longer feed them. I countered that chihuahuas are so tiny, I mean, how much can they possibly eat?
The guy at the end of the street spotted our box with Macy’s printed on the side. Are you taking them to Macy’s, he asked? Nope, just to our yard until we can locate the owner. The chihuahuas survived the night. The skunks, possums and raccoons could not get to them because we enclosed them in a portable dog pen. My husband picked up dog food for them on his way back from Akebono.
If you are missing a couple of chihuahuas, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. These dogs have no tags, no collars. My husband says you don’t have to describe them, but you do. Size, color, dimensions and characteristics. The photo on this page is not of the actual chihuahuas in our yard.
Has Your Sacramento Home Price Increased by 30%?
In a conversation with my financial advisor yesterday, she asked if every Sacramento real estate transaction has its share of problems or if it just seems that way. She recently sold her home and bought a new home, so she’s had a little first-hand experience. The answer to that question is yes. Your agent might spare you all of the unnecessary details, but almost every real estate transaction has some glitch pop up. Part of the problems are fueled by the parties themselves: the sellers and buyers. Part is just due to the new climate: the post-Bubble real estate climate, without tossing in limited inventory and rising rates. And newspaper headlines don’t really help.
It’s not that the newspapers are wrong, it’s that people don’t read newspapers. They scan the headlines, believe they have digested the entire story and move on to other things. We live in an Attention Deficit Disorder society.
The headline in the Sacramento Bee story a few days ago was Sacramento-area home prices jump almost 30% in a year, lead 30 biggest metro regions. I read that and my stomach sank. Stomach sag is something that can happen completely out of the blue to us old people who forget that planking is our friend, but the main reason for my distress is because I know that many sellers will believe they can get one-third more for their home than they can actually get, based on that article headline. Please, listen to your Sacramento real estate agent, that article doesn’t literally apply to a Sacramento home seller. The reporter is talking about median prices for last month as compared to median prices from a year ago.
Median prices means half the homes sold for more and half of the homes sold for less. It doesn’t mean YOUR home. Every neighborhood is different. For example, we have a ton of inventory in Land Park right now. At the moment, a quick check in MLS shows 27 homes for sale in 95818 under $400,000 — which encompasses homes for sale in Land Park, Curtis Park and a few blocks north of Broadway. According to Trendgraphix, in July of last year, we ended that month with 18 homes for sale under $400K in 95818. There’s a bit of a glut right now in that price range in Land Park.
But take a look at 95757 in Elk Grove. That neighborhood is in high demand, over by I-5 / Franklin /Whitelock. Part of the demand is the schools. It’s also on the edge of construction, and many of the homes are somewhat newer, slightly more expensive than other parts of Elk Grove. A check in MLS for 95757 shows 23 homes for sale in Elk Grove under $400,000, which is a hot price point. Last year in July, Trendgraphix showed 24 homes for sale. Pressure is on this ZIPcode.
In other words, a seller will get more offers and a higher price for her under $400,000 home in that particular area of Elk Grove than she is likely to get for a similarly priced home in Land Park. Real estate is local. I sell a lot of homes in Elk Grove as an Elk Grove agent, especially in 95757, and I see it first-hand. I also specialize in Land Park because that’s where I live, and many people know I am also a Land Park agent.
As usual, the devil is in the details, and if you wonder whether your home has enough equity to sell, call a Sacramento real estate agent to get a free opinion of value. You can call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759.
Note: Interest rates are going up. Interest rates have increased by 1% already this year and, when rates rise, real estate prices tend to take a dip.
Sacramento Home Sellers’ Warning
You might be tempted to believe that all real estate transactions are win-win, even the phrase win-win makes me cringe, but a win-win real estate transaction is not necessarily always the case. The win-win misperception was misappropriated many years ago by long-dead real estate gurus. Much of the time, it’s just not true. In real estate, one party typically makes out better than the other party, not much different than some divorce cases. Although you might say, hey, in the end they are both divorced now, one party is often a little bit better divorced than the other.
I know there are buyers and sellers who want to be good friends with each other. After all, they have something in common — the house! I’m all for enjoying friendships with the people who are buying or selling your home, just don’t try to cultivate that relationship during the transaction. Bad, bad idea. Sellers belong on one side of the fence and buyers on the other. You can kick the fence over after escrow closes.
Let’s say your home was built, for example, during the geological time known as the Asbestos Era, which is sometime during the Cenozoic period, in the Quarternary. Perhaps the buyer suddenly became worried that your home might contain asbestos, but the buyer’s inspection period had expired. On top of that, say the buyers had removed all of their contingencies. As a seller, you might feel it is OK to let the buyer complete an asbestos test, even though you’ve already paid for such a test and the results were negative.
You might believe that since the home is sold AS IS, the buyer has no claims against you. You might also believe that if the buyer finds asbestos, the buyer will have to give you the earnest money deposit if they were to cancel because that’s what the contract says. But you haven’t met the buyer’s lawyer who might argue the contingency period is reopened after the discovery of new information. The lawyer might further argue that somehow the seller possessed knowledge of this defect but failed to disclose it. Little is black-and-white in the law.
The fact is once a buyer’s investigations are completed, the inspections are over. If you are a seller, don’t be a buddy and let the buyers continue investigating. The friendship a seller may have forged with the buyer (or vice versa) could come back to haunt. For maximum protection, expect your Sacramento real estate agent to handle such discussions and arrangements.
Turning a Rejected Offer into an Accepted Purchase Offer
The thing with being unequivocally direct with people is they might think you have *Asperger Syndrome when you don’t. I suspect many successful Sacramento real estate agents display a bit of those symptoms, so it might not be as unusual as one may suspect. Symptoms such as extreme focus on the job at hand, set rituals and methods of doing things, on top of leaving people to sort out the fact that you just hit them between the eyes with the direct truth, can leave others somewhat puzzled. Not everybody appreciates candor.
Sometimes, I use candor in a playful manner, just to joke around with people, but fortunately I’ve got enough social skills to figure out it’s not always appreciated. Is it funny if you make a joke and the other person doesn’t get it? Does a tree fall in the forest? But I generally don’t blurt out NO, for example, to another real estate agent without offering a solution or alternative.
I’m of the mindset that NO doesn’t always mean NO, except in certain circumstances and we all know what those are: such as NO I will not listen to Neil Diamond sing Cherry, Cherry one more time! When a seller tells me NO, the seller does not want to accept an offer, what the seller is saying is YES, the seller would like to sell the home but the purchase offer that is set before her is unacceptable and needs to be altered. It needs to be presented in a different manner.
Yet, so often buyer’s agents will take that NO answer and wander off defeated. What some of them fail to appreciate is they are working with a buyer who wants to buy that home. And guess what? I am working with a seller who wants to sell that home. You would think, wouldn’t you, that between two real estate agents we could figure out how to bring together both parties and put that purchase offer into escrow? Isn’t that what a real estate agent is supposed to do?
Despite what some real estate books might say, we are not mere messengers here to carry out the wishes of our clients. Sellers who prefer to hire an agent who will work in that manner might want to enlist the services of a discount agent, an agent who will plop the listing into MLS and let the seller do the rest. When a seller lists a home with me, I presume the seller wants to close escrow on terms agreeable to the seller. It’s my job, as a full-service Sacramento real estate agent, to make it happen.
*Note: If you want to watch an interesting new crime show on FX about a police detective in El Paso who happens to perform at a high level with Asperger Syndrome, check out The Bridge.
The Short Sale Market in Sacramento
April 2012 to June 2013 Sacramento Short Sales
At the beginning of spring, I wrote about how Sacramento short sales are slowing down and how the short sale market in Sacramento was pretty much over. I received some push-back on that statement, primarily from companies wanting to sell more short sale training programs and webinars to real estate agents. No, no, short sales are not over, they cried. Because they didn’t want it to be over.
After 8 years of the short sale business in Sacramento, some people are just waking up to the fact that it’s lucrative. Like with most things of this nature, once you figure it out, it’s gone. You’ve gotta be there when it’s happening.
It’s taken the federal government many years as well to straighten out its HAFA program. Just last month, the federal government extended the HAFA program to December of 2015, allowing closings to string out into September of 2016. The government has also decided in its June HAFA supplemental to remove the requirement of income / asset verification by the lender. When they do that, you know they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to make sure every last short sale can squeak in. There will always be stragglers. But the big push for short sales is over.
You can see on the chart on this page that short sales have declined steadily since last year. In fact, when compared to the overall market in Sacramento, short sales make up about 10% of all homes for sale in June. Some of the short sales that are in MLS as a short sale are also not a short sale because some of those sellers don’t qualify. The sellers don’t qualify because they listed the home with an agent who doesn’t know how to qualify them.
I noticed the switch in my business this spring. As a Sacramento real estate agent, I list homes all over Sacramento. Much of my inventory is now traditional sales. When the top Sacramento short sale agent in Sacramento tells you that short sales are so Barry Manilow, you should believe it.
Chart: Trendgraphix
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