Email ElizabethDid Karma Close This Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale?
Do you believe in karma? You might be surprised. My husband and I had dinner last night at one of our favorite restaurants in Midtown Sacramento: The Waterboy. When the bill arrived, my husband whipped out a gift certificate. Who sent us that? Turns out it was a gift from a client. A husband and wife for whom I had done a Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale. They were a couple another Sacramento real estate agent might refer to as high maintenance. Agents call clients “high maintenance” if clients behave outside the norm or require more work, reassurance, or explanations than other clients.
I call it business. I’ve been around the block.
This couple had asked me to come into the office on a Saturday to talk with them. I ordinarily do not consult with clients about a short sale because I am not a lawyer. I don’t really give in-office consultations nor do I charge an hourly fee. I get paid on commission. Believe it or not, I do most of my real estate business via phone and email. Very little of it is in person. I am not high pressure nor would I ever try to force a seller into doing a short sale. Sellers typically need to come to that decision on their own, but I’m happy to help walk them through the pros and cons of their particular situation on the phone.
Although I do sell real estate on the weekends, I don’t do it in person. I don’t get dressed up, put on makeup and drive down to the office. I paid that price years ago, and I don’t do it today. If a client wants to meet with me in person, we meet during the week in daylight hours, like any other business person. It’s a misnomer that an agent must be on call 24 / 7. I am not ashamed to say that I have over $20 million in closed and pending sales so far this year, so if I’m telling you that I don’t have to go into the office on the weekends to be successful, it’s the truth.
Yet, this client desperately needed to meet on a Saturday. She and her husband lived out of the area and they could not meet any other day in Sacramento. So, I made an exception for them. It wasn’t a big transaction, either. It was a small short sale in Antelope. Around $125,000. I might have grumbled a little to my husband, but I went. You know why? Because these people needed my expertise. Who else would do a Bank of America Cooperative short sale for them? There aren’t very many short sale agents in Sacramento who know how to do this kind of transaction; in fact, I don’t know of any. I specialize in Cooperative short sales. They needed help. They were also really nice people. I like working with nice people.
Every client is different. They don’t always fit the mold we agents set. Some need a little bit more help and explanations than other clients. I certainly wasn’t expecting a gift certificate from them to The Waterboy, though. That was a surprise. See, karma has a way of coming around.
What Will a Sacramento Home Seller Take?
Would a seller take this to sell a house? Would a seller take that to buy a mouse? Would you, could you, in a car, take them, take them, here they are? This is what it’s like putting a home on the market in Sacramento today. Offers falling out of the woodwork and from all directions. I tell sellers that I’m almost afraid for them because I know what will happen, and they do not. Sam, I am. I am prepared. But sellers are freaking out. I know it before it happens.
There is a long parade of offers coming my way today. Thinking ahead, I had mentioned to a seller last week that we should go on the market on Monday so we can all enjoy a relatively quiet Labor Day Weekend. Meaning her home will probably be sold by this Wednesday, at the latest. What is a little bit wild are the calls and emails that I’ve been receiving from buyer’s agents. They all want to know what the seller will do and what the seller will accept.
The answer to those kinds of questions is I do not know. I am not the seller. I am just the listing agent. I’m not inside the seller’s head. I don’t make decisions for the seller. It’s the seller’s house, and she can sell to whomever she wants in this market. It’s a seller’s market. If your buyer is not a cash buyer, you’re probably at a disadvantage, but not necessarily. There are some sellers who care more about the type of person who is making the offer than the type of offer. But let’s not fool anybody, cash offers, as long as the buyer is not a jerk, are more likely to win.
Especially in a short sale situation. In the past, like a few months ago, a cash buyer might be a drawback and not as desirable to a short sale seller. That’s because cash buyers are often distracted by a new listing, something else shiny to buy, and they can bail with great ease. But today, they are very unlikely to walk away because there is nothing else for them to buy. So, that makes a cash buyer just as attractive commitment-wise as, say, my personal favorite, which are VA buyers. VA buyers will stick with the deal because they have no other place to go. But now, neither do the cash buyers.
This is a really good time to be a seller in Sacramento. If you’re searching for an experienced and straight-forward Sacramento real estate agent to help you get top dollar for your home, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. I’ll help you to navigate these crazy multiple offer waters and get the edge in the market. It’s what I do, Sam, I am.
Open House Etiquette for Home Buyers
Because I write for a national homebuying website on About.com, I get emails from people all over the country. This morning I received a note from Helen, a distraught homeowner: “I would appreciate your comments on homebuying clients upon seeing through your house for sale without asking to use the washroom, making a mess and using the clean hand towels. I cannot for the life of me think that a person could be so inconsiderate. My question is how would you handle the situation without being discourteous or rude?”
Dear Helen: I would chase their car down the street and beat on the trunk with an Armenian cucumber.
My advice is if you live in Sacramento and decide to grow Armenian cucumbers, please know they are very prolific. We have a garden bed of these cucumbers behind our garage in Land Park. The vines run the entire length of the garage to the south, turn the corner and are creeping along the west side of the garage. When you see an Armenian cucumber in the grocery store, the cuke is probably about a foot long and maybe an inch and a half in diameter. Some of our cucumbers are four feet long and four inches in diameter. You could play baseball with these cucumbers. Well, actually, you could only bat the ball once. The integrity would not allow a second foul ball.
But baseball season is heading into its final month as our Fall Open House season is almost upon us. Soon as Labor Day is over, we begin our second home selling season in Sacramento. September will be a fast and furious month for home sales. We still have no inventory and yet very low interest rates — although, I am working on a handful of new listings for next week. So, please check my website after Labor Day for new listings.
Until then, here is an article about Open House Etiquette for aspiring home buyers. And look on the bright side, Helen, in case you are reading this blog, at least your visitors thought to use the “washroom” instead of doing their business wherever they were standing. My mother was positive some people were born in a barn because that was one of her favorite questions. Although, why she would ask me never made any sense. I was fairly certain she was present at the time.
How the Elizabeth Weintraub Team Sells Sacramento Homes
My Sacramento sellers often remark on how astonished they are that I quickly respond to their needs. I respond in the medium of their choosing. Email, text, phone, doesn’t matter. Email is probably the fastest as I’m in front of my computer during the week more often than not. What they don’t realize is it’s not that I’m so lightning fast — although I am probably faster with a response than most Sacramento real estate agents (which is why I win so much business) — the reason I quickly respond is because if I don’t, I’ll most likely forget about it.
I’m a busy Sacramento real estate agent. I’ll call a seller once but if she doesn’t respond, I’ll probably never call her again. I don’t hound people. That’s not in my nature. Some sellers are afraid to call a real estate agent because they worry that the agent will continue to call and call and call and pressure them to do business with that agent. I suppose some agents fit that description, but I’m not one of them. With that attitude, I’ve sold more than a 100 Sacramento homes over the past 12 months.
Which is why it’s easy for me to stop what I’m doing when a seller makes an inquiry and respond. Moreover, a Sacramento home buyer gets special treatment. You see, I have team members who will follow up on buyer leads. It’s important for my sellers to know that no inquiry from a curious home buyer will ever fall by the wayside when they hire the Elizabeth Weintraub Team to sell their home. We snap to attention when a home buyer calls. When I receive a buyer inquiry via email, for example, it is immediately forwarded to a team member for a response.
The Elizabeth Weintraub Team members are dedicated. Their job is to follow up. They keep trying to contact the buyer until they speak with the buyer. If you want your home sold, we’ll get it sold. If you have a question about selling a home in Sacramento, you’ll get a response from me right away during business hours. Not 2 days later or when it’s convenient. If I am not with a client, you’ll get a call or email or text immediately upon contact. Not an automatic response, a response from a real live real estate agent. I don’t know very many other Sacramento real estate agents who can promise you that.
Avoid a Short Sale Charge Off
The first thing you need to know about a short sale charge off is the bank is not your friend. But that is true for just about every aspect of a short sale. Sometimes, I want to grab people by their shoulders and shake them into understanding that the banks are not on their side. If you’re reading this right now, listen to me, your bank doesn’t care about you. The only thing the bank wants from you is the money you promised to pay.
If you’re about to embark on a short sale with your bank and you have accounts open at that bank, close them. Put your money elsewhere. Because the likelihood is your bank will close those accounts for you. A short sale makes you a bad credit risk. A charge off on the short sale is an even worse credit risk.
Banks charge off loans because they can deem them uncollectable. The time period varies but a charge off typically takes place after 4 to 6 months of missed payments. A charge off affects your credit report is an adverse manner. You might hear a short sale lender such as Green Tree or Citimortgage (One Main Financial) say you must make a payment on your second mortgage, for example, or it will go to charge off. If you can keep the loan from charge off, it is better for your credit report. Not to mention, once the loan goes to charge off, if it leaves the institution, it will most likely be sold to a collection agency.
I know it’s odd that there is a financial market for uncollectable debts. There are profit-making ventures that have figured out a way to monetize charge offs. Like a vulture swooping down to gobble up a decaying carcass.
However, there are drawbacks to a charge off. A collection agency could nix your short sale by demanding a much higher payment than any of the parties in the short sale can pay. If you’re applying for a HAFA short sale, it is possible the new collection agency does not participate in HAFA, and a charge off could disqualify you from HAFA. Not to mention, if a collection agency determines it can make more money by personally pursuing the borrower, it might reject the short sale all together.
I advise my clients to get legal advice because I cannot give them legal advice about a charge off. Logic says one should avoid a charge off, if one can. I’ve closed quite a few short sales in Sacramento in which a second loan has gone to charge off. As long as it stays with the same bank but moves only to another department, the delay in the short sale is generally not astronomical. Fortunately, thanks to California Civil Code 580e, a charge off is no longer considered recourse after a short sale in California, like it used to be. But it still doesn’t look good on your credit report. And it can mess up your short sale.
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