Email ElizabethThings to Do After New Year’s in Oahu
This is Kailua Beach on Oahu. It is so windy. Of course, it was late afternoon, about 4 PM, when Hella and I were there yesterday. But still. These people are sitting on the beach like they are lucky to be on a beach anywhere . . . in extreme wind. It was so windy my cork Hawaiian bag from Kona spun around four times.
I guess you make the best of it. Gotta hand it to people who make lemonade out of lemons. It was so windy my hair blew out of my clip, and my hair is pretty long.
Rabbit Island. Anything more to say? No, yet . . .
have to say that I really hate the new WordPress. It is not user friendly on a laptop which is where most of their users must originate. It is annoying, and it is not my adverse nature to learning something new. I can be a lemming, for example.
Consider the fact my friend Hella and I were walking down the street in Waikiki yesterday, and I said, Hey, let’s stop at Apple and look at new phones. Was not planning to buy a phone. Just browse. Well, it took 4 different sales reps, break times and all, to sell me a new phone, and I walked out with a new 10XR, without a recent update. They promised me my messages would transfer but my last update to iCloud was two weeks ago and they did not update.
Should have updated through iTunes and not trusted these young yo-yos.
Yes, proof that you want to trust these Millennials, but you really cannot. They only know what they know. They do not know, for example, that Aimee Mann has 9 albums everybody ought to listen to. Which I introduced to the Apple store in Honolulu.
They do not know that Sean Penn read a children’s bedtime story at the Bill Maher Show in Honolulu on New Year’s about what is is like when a nuclear bomb strikes. Hey, kids should know!
This is a blow-hole along the coast of Oahu.
I apologize I did not lead with this photo. Pretty cool, yes?
Lo Siento. My favorite Spanish phrase. Such conviction and sorrow — I deliver!! I spent 6 months learning Castilian Spanish to tour Barcelona and I recall primarily: Lo Siento. All in all, it is a good phrase. It will never do you wrong,
Although. I have to warn. It can be sad.
Lo Siento.
If it is not sad, it probably should be. Any sorrow . . . Otherwise you get it right the first time. But that is how we learn. Aloha!
Do You Want to Hire a Confident Realtor?
Most people, I believe, prefer to hire a confident Realtor. Although, for as long as I can remember, people have admitted that they find me a bit intimidating when we first meet. That kind of reaction is a bit puzzling to me. I mean, I’m no Darth Vader. I’m not a particularly threatening type of person in stature or appearance. People at the post office don’t cross their forefingers and fall to the ground when they see me coming. Yet, I hear over and over that when people get to know me, their initial impression changes. I go from being a big personality to gregarious, friendly and caring.
A Sacramento home buyer called yesterday to ask if I would help her. She had read my blogs on LandParkBlog.com and said she called because I appear “competent without being arrogant and have a sense of humor.” She also believed that I could very assertive if the situation warrants. She didn’t feel intimidated, which was good. Guess she preferred to hire a confident Realtor.
Unfortunately, I had to refer this buyer to a team member because she was interested in buying a commercial property, and that’s an area in which I have no experience. I believe clients deserve an agent with expertise. I specialize in listing and selling throughout Sacramento.
If I had to pick the one thing about me that seems to intimidate people, though, I’d say it must be the confidence I project. I can’t think of any other aspect of my personality that would frighten people. I’m direct. I say what I mean. Lots of people aren’t direct. In retrospect, maybe that’s why so many of my clients are lawyers. I’m not afraid of lawyers, like many agents. In fact, I love working with lawyers.
I shared an observation with a lawyer the other day that the homes she seemed interested in buying were homes priced above her comfort level, and the homes she didn’t like were priced at her comfort level, and asked if that was a correct assessment. She said no, thought about it, but then raised the price of her comfort level. I don’t tell clients what to do; I guide clients to make a decision that is right for them. That’s my job.
See, I don’t believe there is anything wrong with exuding confidence. If some people find a person with confidence scary, maybe that fear comes about because confidence is a trait that is missing in their own personalities. To me, confidence is about knowing your own boundaries, limitations, and not being afraid to exceed them, even at the risk of failure. What do you think? Do you want to hire a confident Realtor?
No Big Rush to List a Home in Land Park
The year of 2019 is starting out very busy. I thought this weekend would be fairly quiet, but I guess as people sat around watching football or perhaps recovering from New Year’s Eve activities, they started to think about buying and selling real estate in Sacramento. That’s because I received a ton of phone calls: Should we list a home in Land Park now? Can I afford to buy a home before interest rates rise? When is a good time to put homes in Land Park on the market? Should I fix up my home or sell as is?
One home seller in Land Park asked if I wanted to come over to sign the listing paperwork or if I preferred to wait until the seller finishes making improvements. I’m not one of those agents who worries about losing clients to another agent, so there is no rush to list a home in Land Park until the home is ready to be shown.
The thing is it is in the seller’s best interest to put a home on the market when that home is in tip-top shape. In the past, I have shown homes that were not yet prepared for sale to real estate agents, erroneously believing that agents have the ability to look past defects and construction work and give an estimate of value. What I have discovered is that many agents aren’t any different from buyers. Some of them can’t see past a mess. They want to view the home in turn-key condition.
The first few weeks on the market are crucial. A seller in Land Park needs to present that home in its absolute best light. It should shine from top to bottom and be immaculate. There is no reason to give a buyer even one small reason to pass up that home in Land Park. I don’t want buyers to come away from a showing with any lingering doubts.
I prefer to hit the market with a bang. Virtual tour, in place and uploaded. Check. Perfect verbiage on every website. Check. Professional photographs, tweaked, brightened. Check. Broker / MLS tours, set up and scheduled. Check. Open house, advertising ready. Check. Online marketing, extensive exposure. Check. Bay area emails prepared. Check. No rush to toss a listing into MLS. In the immortal words probably last uttered by David Carradine: Patience, young grasshopper. And look what happened to Carradine. OK, maybe don’t.
Think of it this way: Would you push a fashion model down the runway who is limping on one foot, pulling on her second shoe? Well, some misguided eager-beavers would. I prefer to make a grand entrance. When I list a home in Land Park, I find my sellers expect a big splash.
Use Neutral Colors When Home Selling in Sacramento
A reader from The Balance homebuying website wrote yesterday. She was clear that she had written to me previously and seemed a bit perplexed that I had not yet answered her inquiry, which I had not received. She had a “very important question.” She and her husband had been engaged in “repeated discussions” regarding the color of the walls for their mother’s home. They were preparing the home for sale and could not agree on which colors constitute neutral colors when home selling. She did not understand the word “neutral.”
At first blush, one might wonder how a person could be confused. But the more I thought about it, it’s not so unusual for some individuals, especially those from other cultures, to be perplexed about color. Many Americans live in a white-bread world. No color at all. But other cultures are awash in color and relish color. Color is treated as a daily substance. It’s water for the thirsty, spiritual for the soul and serenity for sleep. Color brings the world alive.
However, when you are selling a home, neutral is the recommended choice of color, especially for walls and flooring. It evokes no emotion and does not detract from the home’s features. It presents a clean slate, a home you can move into immediately and decorate to preference. It’s a light beige, a sheer coffee-cream, sandy fair-skinned brown, boring pale tan, much like the photo above, or even a soft gray, which is trendy. Above all, it is not white.
Case in point, when my husband and I bought our home in Land Park 17 years ago, the whole house screamed for color accents. It was white. The previous owners did not use neutral colors when home selling. In the photo above, it’s not how I would stage a home for sale, but it does show the recommended color for walls. Since we are not selling, our master suite now has bamboo flooring, dual-pane windows with neutral blinds, and the walls are painted my favorite cat-puke-green color, with a slightly lighter shade on the ceiling. Not everybody’s cup of tea, but it works for us.
However, if we expect to maximize profit potential on resale, eventually we will need to embrace neutral colors when home selling.
Whose Sacramento Listing Is It?
Whose Sacramento listing is it? Well, it can be hard at times to tell if a person is joking around or not when you receive an email. I am not a big fan of smiley faces, but against my better judgment, I can be guilty of slipping them into emails. That’s because not everybody appreciates my wry sense of humor. And sometimes I’m so busy that I literally don’t have time to make sure my parenthesis is facing the right way. It’s easy to type a frowny face by mistake. I’m so happy that you sent me a photo of your new baby. Frowny face. Oops.
We can all make mistakes, honest mistakes. We’re only human. But what about the people who deliberately set out to deceive and then claim they made a mistake? Or worse, don’t rectify it? And those people are real estate agents? When you have to wonder whose Sacramento listing is it, well, I wonder if I should report them. On the one hand, I pretty much leave other agents alone and don’t turn them in, even when I spot blatant, unethical behavior. I’m not the ethics police. I also don’t have time for it. I subscribe to the theory that what comes around, goes around. Or maybe that phrase is the other way around? Whatever, somebody else, something, will get them.
Whether to report a violation is one thing, but another aspect is whether one should one talk about it in public. If it’s information the public should probably know, I say, yes, even if it tends to taint the profession. Other agents may disagree and say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
So, I’m just gonna tell you what happened. Without naming the website, I tried to manually post a new listing but the site told me the home was already claimed. Not surprising; it was listed before. I clicked on the details and noticed the home was listed for sale by an agent other than the previous listing agent. But it had the old listing number attached to it.
I called the seller to find out if she had any knowledge of this agent. Nope. The seller called the agent. Immediately, the agent dove into bait-and-switch mode. The seller made it clear that it was her home she was calling about and she was not a buyer. The agent mumbled something about this being a very confusing situation and promised to remove it.
A few days went by, and the listing was still published under that agent’s name. Hmmm. I wondered how many other Sacramento listings were swiped and misrepresented. Usually, people who would do unethical things do other unethical things. That agent had a couple of pages worth of listings. I ran the first 5 addresses in MLS. Not one belonged to that agent. What a good idea, the agent might have thought. I know how to get buyers to call me. I’ll just swipe a bunch of listings, who cares if they’re even for sale or not, and post them on a website as my own. Brilliant. No, it’s stupid. It’s unethical. And against the law.
I finally notified the staff at that website, and several people responded. It’s difficult to regulate, they say. Well, how about you make the poster check a box that says, “If this listing doesn’t belong to me, I authorize you to charge my credit card $1,000.” They liked that idea. I heard giggles. The website does not need visitors wondering whose Sacramento listing is it. And the website removed the listing.
Why should the public care? Because the Internet is unregulated. It’s difficult to trust some of what you read. You should not rely on information found on questionable or unknown websites. If you’re searching in Google for “how to make dog biscuits,” you might NOT want to follow the recipe published by survivalists-who-eat-dogs dot com. If you’re looking for a Sacramento real estate agent, ask a friend for a referral. If you find the agent online, check out that agent. It’s very easy for an agent to produce a print-out from MLS containing that agent’s production records. You might want to ask for it. And use a smiley emoticon in your request.
Happy New Year’s! Or, where I am, we say: hauʻoli makahiki hou.
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