Email ElizabethThe Problems With Carbon Monoxide Detectors
This Sacramento real estate agent is not out to solve the world-wide problems of death, destruction and mayhem, but it would be nice to figure out how to ensure a carbon monoxide detector is installed in a home at the time of sale. The small things. I like to focus on the smaller picture because those things I should be able to do something about. Making sure carbon monoxide detectors are installed is not really a newsworthy or noble cause. Not like the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, electing to personally kill, clean and consume his own food for a year.
I can barely cut off a fish head and clean out its guts. If I had to shoot my own cow or strangle a chicken, I’d give up meat. Then I’d starve to death because I don’t much care for hard, raw vegetables like eggplant or zucchini, for example, veggies that multiply and are easy to grow. I’m no Sarah Palin. Nope, nobody would ever confuse us, thank goodness.
Neither was my mother. My mother as a teenager took a job in a chicken plant. It involved plucking the feathers off of a chicken — after wringing its neck. This was in the 1940s. I would never eat chicken again if I had that kind of hands-on experience. I like my food not to resemble the animal from which it came. Let’s face it, some foods are better off being disguised, like bacon. It would be so much easier for me if I were a committed vegetarian but the truth is I like being carnivorous. I just don’t want to get all up-close and personal about it.
I have to get up-close and personal about carbon monoxide detectors, however. My job requires it. Whenever I list a home in Sacramento, I have that “talk” with my sellers. I explain what happens when the buyer’s appraiser comes out. The first thing the appraiser looks for is a reason not to be in the home, and that reason to leave is no carbon monoxide detector. If the carbon monoxide detector is missing, the appraiser can’t finish the appraisal. This means he gets to charge another $125 to come back.
When that happens, the buyer yells at her buyer’s agent. You know the direction crap rolls. This means the buyer’s agent calls me to yell. Although, I will not yell at my own client. Sometimes, I suggest that sellers put a sign on the wall with an arrow pointing down to the receptacle where the carbon monoxide is plugged in, especially if it’s a spot that is not easy to see.
When the California law requiring carbon monoxide detectors in a home went into effect a year ago in July, this forward-thinking Sacramento real estate agent bought 50 carbon monoxide detectors and stuffed them in my front trunk. If I ever rammed into the rear end of some SUV, the road would be littered with dozens of carbon monoxide detectors, but at least I’d never be without a carbon monoxide detector when I needed one. So, I used to just give them to my sellers when I listed their home. But that didn’t necessarily solve the problem.
I have almost poked out my eye on more than one occasion trying to open that theft-proof packaging. Once, I stabbed myself in the chin and drew blood, and then ran around the vacant house trying to find toilet paper. Why do people take partially empty rolls of toilet paper with them when they move? How expensive is toilet paper? The other problem with that solution is when the sellers moved out, they take the carbon monoxide detectors with them as well. By accident.
This is a huge problem for home buyers because they are the people who get stuck paying for a second trip by the appraiser. Short of handing a buyer $125 when they write a purchase offer, I think instead I’ll try to be more diligent. That seems the easier path.
CHDAP Loans for Sacramento Home Buyers
Buying a home in a seller’s market, especially in our Sacramento seller’s market is super tough. Which is worse, you think? Being a CHDAP buyer in a seller’s market or being a VA buyer in a seller’s market? Because no doubt about it, we are in a seller’s market in Sacramento. And the buyers who really get my empathy are those who are struggling with having to write offer after offer after offer, and getting none of those offers accepted.
Fortunately, the Elizabeth Weintraub Team members don’t experience much of this. We often find our buyers get a whopping edge in negotiations. We’re experienced, and that alone is a major factor. Sometimes, other listing agents advise their sellers to accept our offers because they know us. They know we will perform. If it’s a short sale, our buyers will wait for short sale approval. They are educated about the short sale process. Our buyers are prequalified and have the preapproval letter and proof of funds to show it.
But I hear from other agents whose buyers are not so lucky. One agent last month told me she had written 15 offers for her buyer. It was tough because her buyer was relying on an FHA loan. We accepted her offer; most sellers are sympathetic with FHA buyers because they once stood in those shoes. The CHDAP buyers, however, are relying on down payment assistance because, for whatever reason, they often don’t have enough money to buy a home. VA buyers are different story. They are not required to put any money down but it doesn’t mean they don’t have it.
CHDAP stands for California Homebuyer’s Downpayment Assistance Program. It helps first-time home buyers with the downpayment and / or closing costs. There are income limits. CHDAP loans take longer to close, often 45 days or more. In a short sale, many lenders expect to close 30 days from approval. Some short sale banks will not grant extensions. This makes buying a short sale extremely difficult for CHDAP buyers. Moreover, in a competing multiple-offer situation, a CHDAP buyer is very unlikely to win when pitted against a cash buyer.
I question whether CHDAP is the right choice for a first-time home buyer who wants to buy a short sale in Sacramento. It might be better, depending on the situation, for a home buyer to scrape up the downpayment, ask the short sale seller to pay their closing costs and be done with it.
Give the Seller Time to Accept Your Purchase Offer
When you’re buying a home in Sacramento — or anywhere else in California, for that matter — you should give the seller enough time to accept your purchase offer. This sounds like a simple concept, but it’s not. It’s more complicated than you might think. There are two things going on that affect the legality of your offer acceptance. You’ve got the time period in which the seller can accept your offer before it expires, and you’ve got the person to whom your offer needs to be delivered to be considered “in contract.”
You can easily lose a home over offer acceptance and offer delivery. In our California C.A.R. purchase contracts, this acceptance and delivery is discussed in paragraph 29. If an agent does not insert his or her name as the agent for delivery, the purchase contract is not considered delivered until the buyer receives the offer in his or her hands. If you want the deal to be done quickly — over and sealed — then the agent’s name should be noted in paragraph 29. But most important, give the seller enough time to accept the offer. Because anything can and does happen in real estate.
In the old days — the days of bellbottoms and stinky patchouli oil — agents used to write offers that expired “on presentation.” Sellers had all of 3 seconds to decide whether they wanted to accept an offer. There was no sleeping on it or I’ll get back to you. It was Take it or Leave it.
Today, we seem to be a much gentler bunch and, by default, our standard purchase contracts give sellers 3 days to ponder whether to accept, counter or ignore an offer. However, when those 3 days come and go, the purchase offer has expired. If you’re in the midst of buying a home in Sacramento, you don’t want your purchase offer to expire. Neither does the seller.
My sellers of a regular home (not a short sale) in the Sacramento area put that home on the market just before leaving for vacation. They figured this would give buyers plenty of time to view their home, without any inconvenience on the sellers’ end. The MLS comments to the buyer’s agents informed those agents that all offers would be reviewed on the day the sellers came home. That day is clearly noted in MLS.
So far, the first 5 offers will or have expired. We will be staring at expired offers when the sellers come home because the buyer’s agents did not give the sellers enough time to accept the purchase offer. Nobody read the MLS comments! If you’ve recently signed a purchase offer to buy a home in Sacramento and haven’t heard anything from your agent, read paragraph 29. Maybe your offer wasn’t rejected. Maybe it has expired.
Sacramento Real Estate Agents: Ramp Up
I love waking up in the wee hours of the morning to find a bunch of purchase offers in my email. Well, it beats stepping into cat puke. I don’t know why cats seem to wait until 4 AM to chew on houseplants as a new fun-filled activity and run around the bedroom horking when they should be sound asleep. Anybody who shares a home with cats knows exactly what I mean. As I sit here wiping my toes and scrolling through my email, I can overlook a bad start to my Sunday because little is as exciting as receiving purchase offers. If I’m thrilled, imagine how my sellers feel!
This is the best market ever for Sacramento area listing agents and sellers. After years and years of begging on my knees for a buyer to write an offer, the tide has changed. Flipped overnight. It used to be I would not dream of putting a home on the market if it wasn’t staged to perfection, shining from top to bottom and ready for foot traffic. I would be on hands and knees licking the floor looking for dirt. Now, when tenants whine at me me that they don’t have time to pick up the empty beer bottles, toss the half-eaten pizza in the trash, much less make the beds, they think I won’t show the house. Ha, I can shrug my shoulders because the home will still sell. It will sell fast. It will sell for top dollar.
The truth is this Sacramento real estate market is so burning hot at the moment a listing agent can sell even the worst property in a heartbeat. Buyers are making offers on homes sight unseen. I have to check my SUPRA stats to find out if agents have shown the property before sending me an offer because I need something to help us determine the strongest buyer. Believe me, if I have 5 identical offers from 5 buyers but only one of those buyers has looked at the home, guess which offer this Sacramento real estate agent is advising her seller to accept?
Agents complain that they can’t submit offers fast enough so they have to submit without showing. No, they don’t. They just need to get their act together. An agent lamented that he could not show a home yesterday during the time period it was convenient for the tenants to show it. He asked if he could send his buyers over to the home without an agent escort. No, he can’t. But I heard that some buyers were wandering around the home by themselves. Just because we’re in the middle of a home buying frenzy in Sacramento does not mean it’s OK to set aside standards of practice. If anything, we, as Sacramento real estate agents, need to ramp up our professionalism to ensure quality service to our clients.
And stay out of the cat puke. You know what they say. When the market gets tough, the tough Sacramento real estate agents get going.
When Does a Sacramento Short Sale Agent Quit?
Before I talk about when to give up on a Sacramento short sale, let’s look at attitudes. A person’s attitude affects everything a person does and how that person is perceived by others. A person can choose to be happy or miserable; nobody can make you miserable without your own permission. I will give you an example. OK, it’s kind of a funny example but what else do you expect from a loopy Sacramento short sale agent?
I read the birthdays in the paper. The Sacramento Bee lists the oldest people first and whittles that list down to the younger people or, as I view them, the insignificant. Hey, I’m not an ageist, it’s just that I have learned to stop reading the list when I get about 20 years past my own age. That’s because there are some birthdays of celebrities which make me feel good about my own age and some that do not. I use those dates as a measuring stick because I don’t have any kids who do that for me.
Donna Douglas, for instance, from the Beverly Hillbillies, was born in 1933. The fact that she is 79 now makes me feel happy and hopeful. Brigitte Bardot is 78. Raquel Welch is a youngster at 72, and Jane Fonda is 74. On the other hand, you’ve got Janeane Garofalo at 48, Brook Shields, 47; and Molly Ringwald, 44. How did those women get to be so old so fast? Oh, wait. They are all much younger than me. Which makes me, at 60, ancient, older than dirt. No, that doesn’t induce warm, fuzzy feelings. So, see, I just stop reading when I get to the women in their 40s.
But when it comes to Sacramento short sales, I never stop. I never give up and throw in the towel. And I always try to keep a positive attitude because it affects the outcome of my work. That’s the secret to being a successful Sacramento short sale agent. Not every agent in Sacramento is cut out to do short sales. Some of my closings are littered with failed attempts by others in which I was successful and they were not. I was successful because I didn’t quit.
I will argue with short sale bank negotiators until the cows come home. If a short sale gets rejected, it’s just one step closer to acceptance because I’ve eliminated that particular path. Other agents don’t understand nor embrace this attitude. I know this because I often spot their withdrawn and canceled listings in MLS, and I wonder why they gave up. Only a rookie quits. Very few banks refuse to do short sales nowadays. They aren’t going to spell it out for you but there are ways to close even the most stubborn short sales.
It’s best to hire a Sacramento short sale agent who sees the glass as half full. My performance is living proof of that. My production is more than $25 million in sold and pendings already this year. Hey, Lauren Bacall is 88. You know how to whistle, don’t you?
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