Email Elizabethbest real estate agent sacramento
What Makes a Sacramento Real Estate Agent the #1 Top Producer?
What makes a real estate agent a #1 Top Producer in Sacramento? Lots of real estate agents can call themselves the best Sacramento real estate agent or the top Sacramento real estate agent, but what criteria do they use to qualify themselves? Some agents, I suppose, just call themselves #1 because nobody told them they can’t do it and they’re simply clueless. If you don’t know any clueless real estate agents, then hey, I bet you’re one of those guys who say they don’t know any gay or lesbian people, either. Some people can’t see past their own noses.
I heard there was a big war — and maybe the war is still going on — over which agent has the right to call herself or himself the #1 Top Producer in the entire world, universe and on the planet earth. I’m astonished that this Sacramento real estate agent, yup me, Elizabeth Weintraub, sold enough homes last year to have my ranking pushed to the #1 position for Sacramento County at Lyon Real Estate for number of homes sold.
Even if a certain unnamed agent who no longer works at Lyon Real Estate was still at the company, my number of homes sold in Sacramento County far exceeded that agent’s production, more than double the number. A client who lives in Wilhaggin called last week while on vacation at Marco Island to ask if I would be interested in going to Italy with her, and when I mentioned my accomplishment, she gasped in an incredulous tone, “You mean you sold MORE than XYZ agent?” Yeah, I did.
Never in my life have I been the number one top producer agent in Sacramento County at Lyon Real Estate by selling such a phenomenal number of homes. This is a first for me. And I’ve been in the business for 40 years. My clients were a mix of traditional sellers with equity, investors, first-time home buyers and some were short sales. Upper-end homes, lower-end, I sold them all. I don’t discriminate.
I suppose that if I do it again in 2014, I’ll start to get used to it, and it won’t be such a big deal to anybody, much less me. But when you earn a distinction like this, and it’s good for business to let people know, that’s what you should do. If other agents look at that advertising and mutter under their breath: who does she think she is? I can tell you. I’m the #1 agent in Sacramento County at Lyon Real Estate. Smiley face. I’m excited. My passion for what I do is paying off.
Some agents qualify their top-producing status based on dollar volume. But if I sold only one home for, say, $25 million, how much respect would you have for me if I called myself the #1 agent? I would say I sold the highest priced home in Sacramento County, if that’s how I qualified. Other agents might qualify themselves by selling the most homes in any given ZIP code, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as they disclose how they arrived at that designation. I think where agents get into trouble and begin to lose credibility is when they make broad statements without clarification or hide the facts.
And let’s not forget that some people erroneously believe that a top producer has no time for them, and that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth. The status can backfire, publicity-wise. I got to be a #1 Top Producer by providing individual, personalized service. That’s my secret. Each client is a precious gem. Plus, I have two team members who support me, and a fabulous transaction coordinator. No agent is an island in this business; I don’t care who you are –but the day you surpass me in production is a day I will be happy for you.
Source: Trendgraphix Top Producer 2013 by Units, January 2014.
Image: Sacramento Bee 2/9/14.
Looking at Sacramento Homes for Sale From a Buyer’s Perspective
New Home Listing in Sacramento
It’s very difficult to color correct photographs when a kitten is attacking my television monitor. Typing doesn’t seem to excite little Tessa as much as when I move the mouse around and magic happens in front of her eyes. She appreciates when I use the tool that lightens shadows, and she is madly in love with the adjustments I make using Levels in Photoshop. As a Sacramento real estate agent, I often agonize over my photographs because I want to make sure that each and every photo does its job properly online.
Now, I try not to say anything about other agent’s listings when I see photographs that let’s just say don’t do the home justice. The major thing about presenting a home online is the photos should offer a clear picture of each room that is suitable for viewing and tell a story to the buyer. Contrary to some popular views, we Sacramento real estate agents are not trying to sell a home online, on the internet, we are trying to whet a buyer’s appetite enough to get the buyer motivated to view the home in person.
Sacramento home buyers have choices. Their first introduction to Sacramento homes for sale is online, typically. They might have automatic emails set up by their buyer’s agents, which deliver listings to their inbox as soon as those new listings hit the market. That’s the easiest and the smartest way to search for a home to buy in Sacramento. If a buyer is not receiving emails, that buyer may not realize how much she is at a disadvantage.
When buyers get an email, it may contain a bunch of homes for sale because new listings come out every day. To access the information, it involves clicking on the property address. That’s one click. Up comes the listing with one photograph, the property description and specifics. The listing offers the ability to look at more photographs by clicking a second time. If a buyer does not like the first photograph, a buyer might not click a second time. Moreover, if the buyer does not like the second photograph, the buyer might not click through all of the photographs and will simply discard the listing by moving on to the next home for sale.
Each photograph must encourage the buyer to click again. The marketing verbiage should make the home sound unique. Even if the home is identical to almost every other home in Elk Grove, for example, there is something unique that makes it different that made the existing sellers want to buy it, and that is what will make a new buyer want it as well.
Jackson in box with Tessa
If you’d like to talk more about what this Sacramento real estate agent can do for you, please feel free to call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. I love selling homes in the Sacramento Valley, and I’m not afraid to say I’m good at it.
And, my kitten Tessa? She says she’ll buy them all. This one, and that one, and the next one, too. You can see that she sticks her nose into everything. Even when I’m trying to take a photo of Jackson, our ragdoll.
No Homes for Sale in Sacramento
The real estate market in Sacramento is a little bit like that website depicting reasons why You Will Not Go to Space Today. I could easily create a website about why homebuyers are not buying a home today, except I can’t draw very well. Great Sacramento real estate agent, but lousy artist. I know my limitations.
A guy called yesterday to ask about a Sacramento listing. Said he found it among his list of homes for sale. He was looking on Zillow, poor guy. I don’t know how to get the word out to buyers that looking on Zillow is the wrong place to look. So is Trulia and, if we’re really talking about homes for sale, Realtor.com is not that hot, either. All of those websites are missing listings, showcase expired and sold homes, and they take too danged long to update. If you’re gonna buy a home in Sacramento, you better be getting your listings from a Sacramento real estate agent, either from an agent’s MLS-connected website or, even better, directly from MLS yourself.
You can’t get new listings directly from MLS unless a) you are an agent or b) an agent sends them to you.
But it doesn’t really matter because there are very few to no homes for sale in Sacramento. The guy who called yesterday was stammering because he could not remember the street address and was frantically searching for it during our conversation. I don’t think he expected me to answer my phone or to answer it as quickly as I did. Hard to say. But as he was stuttering, repeating himself and trying to buy time to find the address, I felt like telling him the home was probably sold, except I didn’t want to offend him; he sounded so sad and depressed. My heart goes out to first-time homebuyers, but if they already have an agent, I can’t help them.
I have new listings coming up this week. First, I will tell my Elizabeth Weintraub team members about them. Then, I will let agents in my office know that we have new listings. Many real estate companies in Sacramento withhold listings from MLS for 72 hours because we can. Lyon Real Estate agents are market leaders in Sacramento. By the time these listings show up in Zillow or Trulia, they will most likely be sold. This is a tough market with so few homes for sale. Almost every day buyer’s agents call and email, asking if my pending sales are falling apart or whether I am taking a new listing.
If home buyers are relying on Trulia, Zillow or Realtor.com to help them find a home to buy, I hate to say it, they are not buying a home in Sacramento today.
The Value of an Experienced Sacramento Real Estate Agent
Do you ever wonder about the experience levels of some of the professionals you pay? Not to knock medical assistants or dental hygienists, but don’t those TV ads trying to lure deadbeats educate aspiring students bother you somewhat? They make me want to ask my doctor’s assistant where she went to school and what she did before she became a medical assistant. Most of us probably want to believe our doctor’s assistant went to college, earned a degree, on top of fulfilling a calling to the medical profession, a passion to help people, and is dedicated to medicine. I don’t know if you get that with a 6-month course and education financing through HSBC.
Yet many people would never in a million years ask a Sacramento real estate agent how long she has been in the business. They are about to spend or receive the most money they will probably ever see in one lump sum in their lives. Do they check out the real estate agent they are about to hire?
Not that length in the business is a sole determining factor because a person can be a real estate agent for many years and do no business at all. Holding a real estate license doesn’t make a person a real estate agent. Renewing said real estate license doesn’t make a person a real estate agent. I’m not a big fan of the alphabet letters either. The certified-whatever designations. That’s probably because many years ago I was involved in the seminar business, and I know that seminar companies are in the business of selling seminars. In other words, an agent can pay for a real estate designation. It doesn’t mean the agent learned anything. It also doesn’t mean the company that awarded the designation taught an agent anything.
Real estate agents learn on the job. End of story. They learn by selling homes in Sacramento, for example. The more homes a person sells, the better that real estate agent becomes — or you would hope. An experienced real estate agent is a different kind of real estate agent.
Every real estate transaction is different. That’s what makes being a Sacramento real estate agent exciting. It’s what motivates me to turn on my computer and go to work every single day. It’s always something new. A new challenge, new people, new events. And when you throw a short sale into the mix: an opportunity to practice patience, improve tolerance and to solve difficult problems.
Everybody is welcome to hire a novice, but why? Novices will cry and moan and say everybody has to learn somewhere. But do you want them practicing on you? You have a choice when you hire a real estate agent. We’re not all the same. I will close over $30 million in sales this year. I sell more than 100 homes a year — so I must be doing many things right. I believe experience is important. If it matters to you, let’s get together. You can read client reviews of Elizabeth Weintraub and decide for yourself. I have pages of recommendations. What you see is what you get.
