Email ElizabethSacramento Sellers With Equity a New Trend!
You know how sometimes when your phone rings, and you either hear the phone number repeated in your ear, because you’re wearing a Bluetooth device, or you look at your phone and either way think to yourself: Oh, rats, nothing good can come from this, but you answer your phone anyway? OK, maybe you’re not in real estate then nor a Sacramento real estate agent like me. But I admit that I have, on occasion, fostered preconceived notions about who is calling me because so often I am correct about the fresh hell. There are times I do regret answering my phone and then there are other times that I am pleasantly surprised. It’s the trade-off for being proactive in this business.
Lately, what I’m finding is I am talking to more and more sellers with equity who want to sell their home in the Sacramento area. That’s a very good sign that our market is beginning to rebound and could be a new trend. I love working with sellers with equity. I would not say our Sacramento real estate market is recovering in leaps and bounds and you can get all crazy and ask whatever price you want for your home — because it’s not and you can’t — but the market is definitely turning the corner and the upward trend points to equity sellers. For the past 7 years, about 80% of my listings have been short sales. In 2012 alone I closed around 165 sides of which 129 sides were short sales. That still works out to about 1 out of every 5 is an equity sale, a seller who is not upside down.
I am predicting that if things continue on the same path I see now, my listing percentages for 2013 will be 1 out of every 3 sellers will be sellers with equity. I’d like to see at least half, you know, 50 / 50, but I suspect we have a ways to go on that. Who would have thought 7 years ago that a listing agent today would be so saturated with short sales that she’d almost forget what it was like to do a regular transaction? The pure joy?
I’ve learned so much about listing and selling homes in Sacramento from selling short sales that I can’t begin to tell you what an education it has been. I’ve learned a lot over the almost 40 years I’ve been in this business, no grass grows under my feet, but my extensive short sale experience has definitely made me a stronger and better real estate agent. If I can sell a short sale, I can sell anything. I can sell that empty cup from Starbucks you’re clutching. You need a home sold in Sacramento? You call this Sacramento real estate agent: Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I answer my phone. Even if I regret it at times.
Does Your Sacramento Agent Charge Too Much?
How would you like to be in a business in which a potential client asks you to come over to her house, in the dark and cold after business hours, so she can pick your brain without making any kind of commitment and argue about how much you charge? Thousands of sales people do this every single day. It’s not that much different for a Sacramento real estate agent, either. I’m fortunate in that most people who call me have already decided to hire me, so when they make an appointment for me to view their home, it’s because they are ready to go on the market. I would not want to stay in this business if every single appointment was a 33% chance of being hired because the seller had to interview 3 real estate agents in Sacramento before making a decision.
Not because I couldn’t outshine and win the business because I perform well against the competition, but because the odds are against my favor, so I’d eventually want to stop doing it. 100% or long shot? Which is smarter? Given the choice of visiting a seller because she tells me she wants to hire me or visiting a seller who is not sure what she wants, which do you think a Sacramento real estate agent prefers to do? Which would you want to do?
One thing sellers like to discuss is how much it will cost them to hire a real estate agent. I don’t blame them, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I used to think the commission was a big deal. It’s not a big deal. Especially if you’re apart by only 1% of the sales price.
Oh, sure, you say, easy for you to roll off the tip of your tongue because it’s not your money, it’s the seller’s money, but I’m telling you it’s not a big deal. It’s a far bigger deal how much a seller gets for her home. The sales price and the agent’s ability to market and negotiate for the seller — to be that seller’s advocate and fiduciary and try to get the seller the highest price possible — that’s far more important.
I have never had a seller tell me I charge too much. I have never had a seller tell me she didn’t get enough for her home and that I should have worked harder for her, because I would be crushed. It’s never happened. Knock on wood, it never will happen. I focus on the seller’s needs and the seller’s rights — that’s the secret of my success.
I did have a former neighbor once tell me after he closed escrow that he picked a friend of his instead of hiring me because his friend charged him 1% less than I proposed. But you know what, he made 12% less on his sale than I would have directed him to do. He gave up many thousands in profit in exchange for that little tiny 1%. To put it into perspective, he lost almost $30,000 over that bad decision. Sellers should not look at the small percentage an agent receives for the work she does but instead should focus on the huge percentage they make selling the home. Experience doesn’t cost, it pays. Hire an experienced agent you trust and that’s all you need. Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish.
Can you always find an agent somewhere who will charge a little bit less than a veteran with many years under her belt? Sure, you can. It’s in the nature of the beast. Is it in your best interest? Probably not. It’s just not enough to work yourself into an anguish over.
Why You Should See Searching for Sugar Man
Searching for Sugar Man, by director Malik Bendjelloul, is like a fairy-tale story come true, one of the coolest and astonishing movies that happens to be real. It’s an Oscar-nominated documentary about an unknown guy with an extraordinary talent who became a sensation in another country, yet he didn’t know about it for decades. He was living a simple life in Detroit, doing construction work and bricklaying, all the while he was a famous musician in South Africa.
Warning, possible spoiler: I hope that I am not giving anything away anything crucial by disclosing the movie starts out by making you think the guy is dead. That he committed suicide. That he lit himself on fire on stage one night or, if you listened to another report, shot himself in the head after somebody heckled him. Then, you find out he’s not dead after all.
And the thing is his music is good. He wrote insightful, meaningful lyrics that resonated with people, touched souls and hearts. Why he didn’t become famous in America all those years ago is a big mystery but he did become a star in South Africa. Without his knowledge. While I watched the movie, it dawned on me that Sixto Rodriguez, this rock star who wasn’t dead, was probably about 10 years older than me, and I pretty much hit the nail on the head. Much of his music was recorded in the late 1960s, early 1970s, during my teenage years, so it probably carried more relevance for me than it would for a person who grew up a different era.
There are many levels to this movie that will touch you, though. It’s not just a story about a guy who became famous and didn’t know it, it’s also about how he influenced a nation, what his music meant to the people of South Africa. What those songs still mean to them today. It’s about a man who doesn’t seem to let fame or money change who he is — he still lives in Detroit in the home he bought for $50 at a government auction in the mid 1970s. He plays sold-out concerts at huge stadiums in South Africa. He gives away his money.
Searching for Sugar Man is inspirational. It won the Producers Guild Award this weekend for best documentary. You can get it from Netflix. You can also see Sixto Rodriguez perform in person at upcoming shows at Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, a handful of European festivals and yes, more Cape Town concerts next month. You can buy Cold Fact and Coming From Reality as CDs online. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
No Homes for Sale in Sacramento
The real estate market in Sacramento is a little bit like that website depicting reasons why You Will Not Go to Space Today. I could easily create a website about why homebuyers are not buying a home today, except I can’t draw very well. Great Sacramento real estate agent, but lousy artist. I know my limitations.
A guy called yesterday to ask about a Sacramento listing. Said he found it among his list of homes for sale. He was looking on Zillow, poor guy. I don’t know how to get the word out to buyers that looking on Zillow is the wrong place to look. So is Trulia and, if we’re really talking about homes for sale, Realtor.com is not that hot, either. All of those websites are missing listings, showcase expired and sold homes, and they take too danged long to update. If you’re gonna buy a home in Sacramento, you better be getting your listings from a Sacramento real estate agent, either from an agent’s MLS-connected website or, even better, directly from MLS yourself.
You can’t get new listings directly from MLS unless a) you are an agent or b) an agent sends them to you.
But it doesn’t really matter because there are very few to no homes for sale in Sacramento. The guy who called yesterday was stammering because he could not remember the street address and was frantically searching for it during our conversation. I don’t think he expected me to answer my phone or to answer it as quickly as I did. Hard to say. But as he was stuttering, repeating himself and trying to buy time to find the address, I felt like telling him the home was probably sold, except I didn’t want to offend him; he sounded so sad and depressed. My heart goes out to first-time homebuyers, but if they already have an agent, I can’t help them.
I have new listings coming up this week. First, I will tell my Elizabeth Weintraub team members about them. Then, I will let agents in my office know that we have new listings. Many real estate companies in Sacramento withhold listings from MLS for 72 hours because we can. Lyon Real Estate agents are market leaders in Sacramento. By the time these listings show up in Zillow or Trulia, they will most likely be sold. This is a tough market with so few homes for sale. Almost every day buyer’s agents call and email, asking if my pending sales are falling apart or whether I am taking a new listing.
If home buyers are relying on Trulia, Zillow or Realtor.com to help them find a home to buy, I hate to say it, they are not buying a home in Sacramento today.
Equator Glitch Fix for Bank of America Short Sales
With a Bank of America short sale in Equator, the one thing I count on working day-in and day-out doesn’t always work. That one thing is technology. There seems like something always goes wrong with it, but you know what? I am a Sacramento short sale agent, which means I am used to annoyances, frustrations and absurdities — it comes with the territory. Technology is no different. You can’t operate without it, you just need to know what to do when it doesn’t work.
The first place to look is in the mirror. Yup, it could be operator error. The second place to look is at the hardware and connections. Is your computer plugged in? Laugh as you may but that’s what a tech support guy will ask you. Are you connected to the Internet? If none of those things is the problem, then it just might be Equator. Not Equator software itself but the way the bank negotiator set up the file.
Equator has an instant chat button. I love instant chats. It satisfies my need for immediate gratification. A few days ago I was working on uploading the short sale offer for several Bank of America short sales. In the first short sale, whenever I clicked submit, it would erase the buyer’s agent’s name and data. In the second Bank of America short sale, it would not calculate a bottom-line net because the loan field was filled out incorrectly by a Bank of America negotiator.
I connected with the support staff at Equator who explained the problems. Each of the support staff responded expediently and was helpful in explaining what was wrong. But what does that mean to me, to Al Franken, I asked? It meant that Equator needed to contact the negotiator so Bank of America could fix the problem on its end. If I would just wait a few hours, it would be fixed. I’m just so relieved it wasn’t something I did. I have pretty high standards for my own performance. At least I try not to make mistakes twice. Thank you, Equator, for giving us short sale agents Equator Chat!
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