Story of Closing at 4909 Laguna Woods Drive in Elk Grove

Last month I featured an updated pool home in Elk Grove for sale and yesterday this turnkey home on Laguna Woods Drive closed escrow at list price. Once everything comes together and the home enters MLS, activity happens fast. But it was a fairly slow beginning. For example, I started working on this listing the first week of January, in the middle of my 9-week winter vacation in Hawaii. Since then, I’ve been back to Hawaii twice. That’s how long I’ve been working on this sale.

When I came home to Sacramento in February, I met up with the seller to inspect the home. Without going into detail, let’s just say it wasn’t show-ready. I made a number of suggestions to the seller of things she could do, and she took me up on all of them. If you had seen the condition of the home when I first viewed it in comparison to how it presented cleaned up and staged, well, you would say it was the difference between night and day. Like the difference between extreme vog and no vog.

Remarkable improvement. We painted the cabinets a rich chocolate brown. Installed granite. Finished the engineered hardwood floors. In short, we transformed a 22-year-old home into a modern updated home that looked almost brand new. If you had seen the “before” condition of the home on Laguna Woods Drive and the “after,” you would not recognize it.

The seller expressed concerns about the pricing because she thought it was too high. Her home was not located in the subdivision of more expensive homes. She did not feel comfortable right away that she could get upwards of $600K for her home. The seller also fretted about a recent foreclosure affecting her value. But given the market conditions, I felt that she could. I’m right more often than not, and in this case, we were right on the money.

Everything went smoothly until we received the Request for Repair. For some reason, the buyer asked for 8 repairs, including replacing the windows, of all things. However, anybody who knows me knows what I think about Requests for Repair in a seller’s market. Especially over-the-top requests. The answer is no and no again. Of course, the decision is the sellers’ but they often follow my advice.

The buyer backed down from her requests and elected to close escrow. Now my seller can relocate to Alabama and get on with her life. Five months of work this took. But the end result is priceless and the seller was very happy. That’s all that matters to me.

4909 Laguna Woods Drive, Elk Grove, California 95758 closed escrow on May 30, 2018 at $595,000.