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When You’ve Got to Climb the Fence to Get That Lockbox
When you’ve got to climb a fence to get that lockbox is a blog written by Elizabeth Weintraub, and it is timeless. Lockboxes to this day are put in very odd places. Enjoy. JaCi
You think that by locking your gate, you are keeping intruders out of your yard; think again.
Maybe you’re keeping the deer and the antelope at bay, but if somebody really wants to get into your yard, say, even a gym-challenged, 59-year-old, 5-foot woman, anybody can probably scale that fence if she was smart about it. Well, yeah, determination counts, too. I am typically a pretty determined person.
A client asked if I would withdraw her listing from MLS last week.
We had sold her home for $15,000 over the list price because she was ready to take her home off the market at the time we received an offer. You know human nature and how some buyers are, right? Sometimes they don’t want the home until they find out they can’t have it, which is how this particular home ended up selling for $15,000 over the sales price. I figured the appraisal would come in low, but I also believed the appraisal would at least meet the list price, and we could renegotiate later if we had to.
It turns out, due to lovely HVCC, we got saddled with some yo-yo appraiser.
He decided he could not figure out how to adjust the comps to use updated homes that were smaller and on smaller lots. The appraiser didn’t know how much to allocate for those minor kitchen remodels, so he ignored those comparable sales. As a result, the home appraised for $50,000 less than the sales price. It was for an FHA loan, too, so it had a case number, which would be pulled for the next buyer. So we were stuck with the low appraisal.
The seller promised to leave the gate open so that I could retrieve the lockbox.
Sure enough, the gate was locked. The fence was a bit over 6 feet. If you’re ever wondering about which way to nail the boards on a fence you’re building, consider this. If the horizontal boards are outside, you will provide a stepping place for a person to put her foot before heaving herself over your fence. However, this fence had the good side facing out and the bad side on the inside. There was no place to put my foot. I don’t do pull-ups for exercise and therefore could not pull myself up the fence. Free weights are in my future.
I could have called the seller
I could have called the seller but, that would have entailed waiting 30 minutes, and I didn’t have that kind of time. I could have gone back to my office and come back another day, but what the hey, I was already there. I wore sheared corduroy pants, an Eileen Fischer silk shell, topped by a Merino wool sweater. My shoes were cranberry patent leather, with 3-inch heels. Did I let that stop me? I walked around the home but found no good access points.
The fact that the neighbors might call the police did cross my mind.
But like a driver who often spins U-turns in the middle of the street by offering the excuse, “Hey, I’m allowed because I’m a real estate agent,” I figured that excuse would also work for crawling over a fence. If I needed more of an explanation, I suppose I could also use that I sell many Sacramento short sales. Surely, the police would pity me then.
I finally decided to climb a juniper tree in the corner partially.
Put my toe on a protruded nail halfway up and literally pulled myself to the top of the fence by using a tree limb as support. The important thing here was I elected to rest after I was perched on top of the fence with one foot on the horizontal top rail and another foot on the adjoining top rail in the corner. I didn’t care what passersby thought. Getting down was actually pretty easy, and I didn’t scratch my shoes or tear my clothes. Best of all, my display key for my lockbox was still intact in my pocket. Bonanza.
Call Weintraub and Wallace Realtors with RE/MAX Gold if you are looking for a Realtor who will do whatever is required to sell your home. We can be reached at 916-233-6759.
Elizabeth and JaCi,
Weintraub & Wallace Realtors.
Vacant Home Showing Tips for Sacramento Buyer’s Agents
This blog is about vacant home showing tips for Sacramento buyer’s agents. It’s a blog I feel compelled to write in hopes it will help other agents in Sacramento, mostly newer agents, with how to show vacant homes. But my next piece of advice really applies to every single agent who puts together home tours for buyers. That piece of advice, which often falls on deaf ears and blind eyes, is please, oh, for the love of god, please read the data contained in MLS.
MetroList constantly refines and tries to improve its system. Recently it added locations for the lockbox, which can be a pet peeve of buyer’s agents. Agents do not like to trudge through the mud or forage through a maze of bushes to find the lockbox. This is great improvement. Tells an agent right where to find the lockbox.
Although, sometimes I still get calls asking me where to find the gas meter. Since the gas meter is my favorite spot to attach a lockbox. Well, let’s just say the gas meter won’t get far on foot. Or, if you were a gas meter, where would you hide?
Now if you are a fairly new buyer’s agent about to fret over vacant home showings, please don’t. For one thing, you do not have to make an appointment unless the listing specifies and that would be rarely. Yes, that is true. When you see vacant with lockbox, that is your clue that you don’t have to call anybody, nor text nor ask for permission. Why, you can pick any old time you want to show that vacant home and just go. How easy is that?
But agents do not seem to know this. I received an email from a discount broker, won’t say which, asking if the date and time requested would work for a showing. The agent also asked if there was a better time to show than the time the agent had selected. In that email was also a request to let the agent know if I would be present at a vacant home showing. I was very curious as to why I would receive this type of email, so I inquired.
I mean, the house is vacant. It says there’s a lockbox. There is no reason the listing agent would be present at a vacant house or any house really, other than maybe a $2 million home in El Dorado Hills. Which means I can only presume the agent just wrote down the address and didn’t bother to read the directions or any information.
The agent replied that sometimes listing agents get upset if they don’t know a showing had happened. Seems very odd. The whole reason for vacant with lockbox is so agents do not need to make an appointment. Further, because there is a lockbox, SUPRA notifies me of every agent showing. So I know the minute an agent enters a vacant house. It sends the agent’s name, phone, broker name, email and time of entry.
But then my eyes fell on the license number of the agent. All new agents, those licensed within the last year or so, have a DRE license number that is numbered in the 2 million. Meaning in comparison to my license number, for example, which is 00697006. It means I obtained my license in the 1970s. Today’s new agents might have a license number like 0204256. Dead giveaway.
May I suggest a better way to let the listing agent know of plans to show, if that is a concern, is to compose a different email template. Perhaps an email that seems more professional, to wit:
This is a courtesy notice that I am planning to show 123 Main Street today at 3 PM. MLS states the home is vacant with lockbox. If that data has changed, please let me know.
How hard is that? It doesn’t require correspondence back and forth. The listing agent does not need to confirm a vacant home showing. Just lock up the house, leave a card on the kitchen counter. If the listing agent contacts you to ask for buyer feedback, it is considered a professional courtesy to send it.
