Email ElizabethThe Ease of a Sacramento Short Sale With Jennifer Kelly at Wells Fargo
A prospective seller called me yesterday to discuss a distressed property in Sacramento that she wishes to perhaps sell as a short sale. We didn’t have much time to talk before she had to leave for an appointment, so I will follow up with her today. I like to be prepared for my discussions with sellers, so I access all the information that I can find for our consultations. The more information that I can give to a seller, the better. Because an informed seller is a seller who makes the right decisions.
I know the answers to many problems that plague sellers. It’s my business as a Sacramento real estate agent to know the answers. I don’t have to go to somebody else for an opinion. Although, I would never give a client legal or tax advice because that is not my speciality, and I am not licensed to talk about such matters. But real estate advice or short sale advice, I’ll talk your ear off. And I’ll be right. You can trust the information I provide. That’s why sellers choose Elizabeth Weintraub as their real estate agent.
There is another person in the short sale business who is not in the limelight but is simply incredible. That person is Jennifer Kelly at Wells Fargo. She works in a certain department, and I don’t believe she handles all short sales, so please don’t call her for general advice or leave messages in her voice mail. No exceptions, people. I am mentioning her because she is superb and the standard to which all short sale service departments should strive to achieve.
I contacted Jennifer yesterday because the seller with the pending short sale situation fell into Jennifer’s department. I could tell by looking at the tax records that this was a short sale that Jennifer might be in charge of approving. I emailed her to verify that this short sale would fall within her jurisdiction.
Six minutes later, I kid you not, 6 minutes later, Jennifer sent me a complete package of documents that pertain to this seller’s particular situation, with specific instructions, on top of a preapproved sales price. In 6 minutes!
You can’t get somebody to answer the phone in 6 minutes at other short sale banks. You can’t get a short sale APPROVED at many banks in 6 months much less 6 minutes. Jennifer is a busy person. She’s always out talking to companies, managing those in her department, helping sellers understand what’s happening and making sure her short sales are processed correctly.
I don’t know anybody who measures up to the professionalism of Jennifer Kelly at Wells Fargo. She soars far above the crowd with superior customer service skills. Wells Fargo is lucky to have her and probably does not pay her enough. She makes me look even better to my sellers.
I cannot wait to tell this prospective seller today that I have every document she needs to complete and her short sale price is already preapproved, and I don’t even work for her yet.
Home Selling, Bird Poop and Crows in Land Park
I’d like to talk about selling homes and bird poop. I don’t mean selling bird houses, I mean selling homes in Sacramento where birds poop all over the grounds and decks. Especially on balconies. It’s so gross to be throwing open the French doors to buyers, announcing the gorgeous view of the golf course and hills, and then you happen to glance at the floor of the balcony to discover not just splatterings of bird poop droppings but huge piles of guano. Guano. Black and white and sticky and ishy.
This is not the way to sell a luxury home. You can’t just sweep your guano into a corner of the balcony and hope it will disintegrate or the rains will wash it away. Eventually, you’ll have to shovel it into a trash bag and hope the bottom doesn’t fall out as you drag it out to the trash. I’ve met sellers who have done precisely this, so I am not making this up. After you remove the bird droppings, it takes a brush and an almost industrial soapy cleaning liquid to clean the stain, and the stain might never go away.
The best way to keep birds away from your home is not to attract them in the first place. Some people affix rows of what look like upside-down nails to window sills and overhangs. You can also buy noise machines, imitation bird calls of prey, wind socks, or just turn on the water and spray them off. Don’t leave out food for them, either.
I am presently doing battle with black crows. For years, they hung out across the street in my Land Park neighborhood, and rarely came into my yard. But now, one of them has discovered our back-yard water fountain for the finches. We get house finches and gold finches this time of year. They sit on the rim of the water fountain to sip water. If they can’t all fit on the rim, they take turns waiting on the telephone wire overhead or in our crepe myrtle. The fluttering action is like bird TV to our 3 cats, who watch from the bedroom window, completely mesmerized.
They especially like to visit our lawn for an early morning breakfast after the sprinklers go off. The crows pull worms the length of my arm out of the lawn. One of the crows has taken a fancy to dipping his half-eaten worms into the water to rinse it off.?Yeah, worms are covered in grass and dirt, buddy, get over it. So finicky. Sometimes, he uses the water dish as a place to store his secret treasures. I found a 2-inch chunk of chicken from a burrito. I know it was from a burrito because the wrapper was on the ground. With it was a mushroom or maybe 2 worms intertwined; I couldn’t bear to touch any of it, so I looked away and scooped it out of the fountain water, flinging it with a digging trowel. Soon as I refill the fountain with fresh water, the crow comes back. He’s mad, too.
So, he flies up on our roof and starts pecking at the vent pipe cover from our stove’s exhaust. Peck, peck, peck, he is slowing chipping off the brown paint. I wonder where my sling shot is. My mother used to shoot BBs at squirrels. I am becoming more like her every day. That will teach me about flinging his treasures from my water fountain. I can hear him smirking up there. You don’t cross a crow. They don’t forget. They are smart.
I don’t forget, either. I remember incidences from years ago from which one day justice is served. But I also would not dream of showing my prospective home to buyers with bird poop all over the place. You shouldn’t, either.
Make Your Sacramento Home Appealing to Home Buyers
Most first-time home buyers in Sacramento want a home that is ready for immediate occupancy. They don’t want to buy new carpet or paint much beyond maybe one wall. First-time home buyers generally don’t have a lot of extra money to spend on such things as new appliances, either. Often, I hear sellers say they don’t want to fix anything because the buyer might not like it, so they’d prefer to leave it up to the buyer to do. What they’re really saying is they just don’t want to do it. The thing is they might have given that buyer a good excuse to buy somebody else’s house instead of theirs.
Now, it’s true that in this seller’s market we’re experiencing in Sacramento, buyers will overlook a lot of things. However, if you want top dollar, then you need to present your home in top condition. It doesn’t necessarily mean staging it, but if you want to get more than anybody else in your neighborhood, for example, then you need to give buyers what they want.
What do buyers want? Depends where the home is located. In the suburbs, like Natomas or Elk Grove or Lincoln, for example, buyers want immaculate, sparkling kitchens with newer appliances, modern cabinetry and slab granite. Indoor laundry. Separate family rooms and fireplaces. Soaring ceilings. An open floor plan. At least 3 bedrooms, and some kind of office space. A garage. Nice fenced yard with grassy lawn.
They don’t want to buy a single-story home that is surrounded by looming two- and three-story homes, which can block sunlight and offer little privacy. Little known fact: many buyers, if given a choice, would prefer one level over multiple levels.
If you are confused about what to do to sell your home, ask a Sacramento real estate agent to help you. An experienced agent can tell you what you need to do to sell your home and what you don’t need to do. Just don’t do it halfway. Don’t paint all the rooms in your house but leave one room a bright purple because you ran out of steam. Buyers might wonder what else you didn’t have the energy to do. Or, they will call it the purple house and probably not buy it.
Who Benefits From Sacramento Open Houses?
I am a big proponent of open houses in Sacramento in certain neighborhoods and locations, don’t get me wrong. As a successful Sacramento real estate agent, part of my business benefits greatly from open houses, and so do some of my sellers. However, many sellers falsely believe that an open house is solely for the seller’s benefit, and it is not. We primarily hold open houses because our sellers ask us to and because it’s good for future business.
We get to talk to homeowners in the neighborhood who have no intention of buying the home but want to find out how much their home might sell for and to inquire whether we will list it for them. Holding a home open also tends to stop the phone inquiries from neighbors wondering how much the home is listed at, so it’s kind of a preventative measure, too.
We get to talk to home buyers who are not working with a real estate agent and want to find an agent to help them to buy a home. Many buyers don’t know how to get started buying a home, and they think going to open houses is a step in the right direction. They also might not know any real estate agents.
Buyer’s agents love open houses because they don’t have to call ahead and schedule an appointment to show their buyers the home. They can just come on over with the buyer in tow and feel assured that no other agents will try to snatch their buyer away. It makes showing a little bit easier for them.
The public adore open houses. In fact, in California, it’s like the state motto and state-wide pastime. Got nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon? Why not go tour open houses and see how other people live? It doesn’t matter if you’re not in the market to buy a home.
First-time home buyers are often directionless for the first few weeks of home shopping. Open houses in Sacramento help first-time home buyers figure out what type of home in which neighborhood they might want to buy. They can spend a lot of time in the home, picking it apart and finding things wrong with it. Most of them are not buyers for that particular home.
Then we come to the sellers. The sellers who often insist on an open house because they are hopeful it will sell the house. An open house will do a lot of things for a lot of people, but it doesn’t necessarily sell the house that day. A buyer might come back on another day to buy. You don’t always see the results immediately.
How to Get Rid of Email Spam
This morning I received a very odd piece of email. It would appear that a couple of years ago, a person signed up to receive emails from me for home listings in the outskirts of Sacramento metro. He did it through my company website, which is not my professional business website. You are at my professional business website for Elizabeth Weintraub if you are at elizabethweintraub.com. Apparently, this person grew tired of receiving emails or maybe decided not to buy a home, I have no idea, but whatever the deal, he complained to his internet service provider that he was receiving spam.
Spam that he signed up for and asked to get. That’s the part that blows me away. Not only that, but like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, he has always had the ability to unsubscribe by clicking his heels together and tapping the mouse on the unsubscribe link. Automatic unsubscribe. That’s all there is to it.
Major corporations do not entrap people or send them to virus-ridden websites or use the unsubscribe link to send out more spam, because there are laws against it. Reputable companies unsubscribe you, that’s why they send you the link. Because they are required to give you the ability to opt yourself out.
It’s bad enough if you’re the person who asked for the information and then you refuse to unsubscribe your own dumb self, but what if you never specifically asked for any information? Here’s how that happens. I should point out that when you buy things online, be very careful about giving out your email address as you’re not always required to provide it. Moreover, companies often design order forms that automatically check boxes to send you newsletters and more information (i.e. spam), and if you don’t uncheck those boxes, you will get crap from the company whether or not you think you asked for it.
But those companies can also send you unwanted emails even if you didn’t ask for anything because they will say they had a pre-existing relationship with you. Because you ordered something from them. So, if you give them your email address and, after you receive the product you ordered, emails are still arriving, then click the unsubscribe button.
Better yet, consider using a throwaway email such as yahoo or gmail for your online purchases.
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