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How to Find a Sacramento REALTOR on the Internet
How to Find the Best Sacramento Realtor
The internet has finally become ubiquitous. When you think about it, it only took about 25 years, — which to me, of course, seems like yesterday because at my age I have little concept of the passing of time. All the signs are there. First, you had Al Gore raising a ruckus, followed by people like my dentist who, same age as me, hauls in a clerical worker to “pull up the Google” and search for an image to find types of teeth. Then there is About.com, which recently notified all of its Experts, including this Home Buying and Selling Expert, of a corporate decision to eliminate our email addresses, because they are unnecessary.
Just about everybody has an online presence today who needs it in one form or another. Although, there are people who avoid social media on purpose because it’s a time suck and wouldn’t dream of maintaining a website or blog for any reason. For example, I use Facebook when I’m bored, which isn’t very often, but I don’t devalue those who are addicted. Everybody has their own thing. In my spare time, I like to blog and write articles. Facebook, not so much.
When I think back to my first online experience, in 1991, stuff is absolutely more colorful and fast as lightning today, but it’s still just a transfer of information. Now we have instant access to anything we want to know. We don’t have to look it up in an encyclopedia when we have Siri and Google, just like we don’t have to stop at a pay phone to make a call. Why, you can be out to dinner with your partner and notice an unusual object or hear a song or simply think of an obscure question, and bam, you can use your phone to get an answer. Immediately. Because you can’t wait until after dinner.
If the real estate curious want to find a Sacramento REALTOR like me online, all they have to do is search on Google. In fact, many searches for Elizabeth Weintraub point to my website when people just type my name into a Google search bar. Even if they misspell my name, it will still direct them to me and provide a way to contact this agent, either by phone or email. So I don’t really have to publish an actual email address anywhere. Not on About.com, not on my website, and not in my blog. There is always an envelope to click that will send me an email.
The good thing is having no email at About.com now means my spam will be dramatically cut. With the internet, one almost doesn’t need an email. Landlines are vanishing and almost everybody has a cell to accept text. I don’t care how my clients find me, just as long as the search to find a Sacramento REALTOR ends on my website so I can showcase my successful 40 years of expertise in real estate.
Do You Really Have to Interview 3 Agents in Sacramento?
A home seller in Elk Grove figured he should interview 3 real estate agents in person because, well, he didn’t really know for certain, because somebody said that he should interview 3 agents. That somebody might have even been me; I write a lot of online content about real estate. But that advice doesn’t apply to me, I laughed. For starters, most people who call me to come over have already decided they want to hire me.
They’ve read my Weintraub reviews; my clients love me. They’ve perused my website and know I’ve got 40 years of experience. Flipped through my blogs. Studied the photos of my cats, checked out my travels on Pinterest. They know who I’m married to, the places I’ve previously worked, the addresses of hundreds of homes I’ve sold, the type of vegetation in my garden, what kind of Nikon I use, how late I sleep in, the awards I’ve won, and they know more about me than my husband knows and more than I will ever recall.
They probably also know about the day my underwear fell off in the middle of Albertson’s grocery store in Costa Mesa. Yeah, the elastic just went kaput while I was pawing through the potatoes. There I was in the produce aisle, in a yellow sundress under bright lights, when I realized a catastrophe was about to hit. I felt the elastic go ka-ping! Squeezing my legs together in an effort to keep the fabric from slipping and toting a bag of potatoes on my hip, I tried to quietly slip around the corner. Maneuvering a grocery cart with one hand is difficult, especially when the wheels go every which way.
Then, right there at the corner where canned tomato paste meets canned tomatoes, my underwear fell to the floor. First and last time that’s ever happened. I quickly kicked the cramped fabric under the ledge, along with loose rolling wasabi peas. I figured if I kept my eyes level and did not look down, that runaway garment did not belong to me, and I did not to have claim it or even pretend to recognize it.
Now, I’ll do an interview over the phone, but much of the time when somebody says they want to interview 3 agents, they only want to pick my brain. They want to know how they should stage their home, how much it is worth, along with tips and tricks for selling it. They aren’t really looking for a real estate agent because they already have one, but the one they have isn’t as experienced so they call me. Such a waste of time I spend chasing supposed leads.
This means I have to find a way to explain what I do and give people a reason to choose me as their real estate agent without necessarily meeting in person. No easy task. Of course, there is FaceTime, and that works well for people who feel the need to stare into my brown eyes. Unless, of course, I have fooled them by inserting my brilliant blue contact lenses. Or, they can just decide to hire the Sacramento real estate agent all my clients trust. You don’t have to interview 3 agents in person.
When a Seller Wants the Best Sacramento Real Estate Agent
When flipper investors call to lament that they just can’t find a Sacramento real estate agent to work with and are horribly unhappy with the agent they’ve got, I know something is seriously wrong, and it’s not necessarily the agent. My radar detector goes off. You can’t turn around in a crowded Corti Brothers without rubbing elbows with a real estate agent. Even using Guassian distribution, one is likely to end up with an agent who can, under most circumstances, eventually sell a home.
Nope, these flipper dudes are looking for something else. It’s not a top-producing agent who is their heart’s desire, either. They don’t want to hire an agent anywhere near the rankings of the best Sacramento real estate agent they can find. They don’t put a lot of credence in superior skills or experience, although they probably should and are making a big mistake that way.
Many flipper dudes don’t really respect real estate agents. Some agents don’t care about respect and say they will laugh all the way to the bank, but I’m not one of those.
I think these flipper guys understand the concept of highest sales price and bottom-line net profit, but the bulk of the information that is centered between those two points seems lost on them. As is an agent’s ability to overcome challenges, strategically market homes to targeted audiences and avoid problems before they pop up. None of that really matters to investors like this, which is why they are often penny-wise and pound-foolish, but that’s another story.
Such a flipper called yesterday and began his sad story of not being able to find a Sacramento real estate agent, of being awfully miserable with the one he has, and how his partner is disturbingly impatient. He rambled on about how he and his partner love to fix up homes in such a manner that a buyer would never even realize they were being flipped, which he presented as a huge benefit for us agents. What?
In the interest of eliminating needless chatter, I cut to the chase to say that my experience shows that many flippers don’t really value the services of a top producer and generally want to discount her fee by 1%, so perhaps I was not the agent for them. I am a full-service agent who earns the commission she deserves. Yes, I am saying that when selling a home valued at $300,000, the flippers will let $3,000 get in the way of hiring one of the best Sacramento real estate agents.
He seemed somewhat miffed that I would dare to be so abrupt with him. Well, what if you were selling 10 homes a year —he tried to entice. What? He must have thought he was talking to a brand new agent who was starving for business. Had he not conducted any online research or even glanced at my website? I sell so many homes a year the numbers make my own head spin. Let’s see, he already told me his partner was incredibly impatient and he’s shown himself to be clueless. Not a good combination for this agent.
And that’s when I realized how incredibly and unbelievably fortunate I am. It took me 40 years to get to this spot in my life, but it’s such a relief to be able to pick and choose my clients. It’s not really the money. It’s the self respect and the opportunity to conduct business the way I choose, with integrity, honesty and to the best of my ability.
Does It Matter Which Agent You Hire to List Your Sacramento Home?
It matters a great deal which agent in Sacramento will list your home. I’ll tell you why. When people ask me how much I charge for commission, the first thing I realize is they don’t really know very much about Sacramento real estate agents or the business, which is OK, but it tends to explain why they may harbor the wrong belief that all real estate agents are the same. Some sellers believe that agents are separated only by the amount of commission they charge, and other than that, we’re all identical.
Which is a shame because it’s not true.
Real estate agents are not the same. We are all different. We come from every walk of life, with varying degrees of education and experience. You’ve got high school dropouts working alongside of guys with Ph.D degrees. Some of us are top producers selling a hundred homes or more every year, some consistently sell at least once house a month, and some agents sell a home every few months or so just to keep toes in the water. Some of us earn our full commissions and others barely stay alive on discounted fees.
Some agents are hysterical and maniacal. Others are calm, tempered and even keel. I believe clients prefer an agent who is loyal, dedicated and works her fingers to the bones for them. Kinda like Freda Kelly, who was the secretary of the Beatles fan club for 11 years. She kept her lips zipped and ran a tight ship. Didn’t even speak out about her experiences until 50 years later.
If Freda promised a fan a lock of John’s hair, they got a lock of John’s hair. If she promised that Paul would sleep on the pillowcase a fan sent to her, you can bet that Paul’s face had been pressed overnight into the pillowcase, even if she had to nag Paul’s mom about it.
If you’re thinking about hiring an agent to list your Sacramento home, you may also want to consider the mission, qualifications and local customs of the brokerage where your agent works. Not every real estate brokerage in town, for example, supports agents who want to hold open houses. I can tell you that Lyon Real Estate is a huge proponent of open houses, and ranks itself as the number 1 real estate brokerage in Sacramento with 17 or so offices and almost 1,000 agents.
When I list your Sacramento home and agents spot the name of Lyon Real Estate, they also recognize my name and know I will handle the transaction fairly, honestly, efficiently and without preferential treatment of some agents over others. That’s not to say an agent who works by herself or at a small boutique might not be qualified in that light, but she won’t have the advantage the number 1 real estate company can offer.
I’m not the answer for everybody to list your Sacramento home. I might be the answer for you, though. I do what I say I’m gonna do. Hundreds of happy clients are proof. You can call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Don’t be that seller whose deal blows up and wonders why.
Top Sacramento Listing Agent Ranks #70 Nationally
The brokerage your Sacramento listing agent works for makes a difference — which is yet one more reason for sellers to interview agents from competing brokerages and not from the same brokerage. Some agent from Illinois wrote this morning to say she disagreed with an article I wrote for About.com — and that’s not the first time some agent has approached such an issue with disdain and horror, as though they were splashed by a spoonful of spaghetti sauce flipped off a spoon held by yours truly and directed with precision at the front of their white shirts.
There are many reasons not to interview an agent from the same brokerage much less the same real estate office, but marketing provided by the brokerage is a strong reason. Sellers should see how other brokerages market their listings, and if all they’re doing is comparing one apple to other apples in the office, they won’t see the differences among brokerages.
This is not to say that all agents are the same because all agents are not the same. It’s like a bell curve. Plus, every agent offers a different education level, experiences, marketing, strategies, analytical reasoning and they sometimes talk to each other in the office about listing presentations. If you are a seller interviewing two agents in the same office, they might even talk about you, a common element they share. It’s human nature and to suppose otherwise is a bit naive.
It’s the same as believing that maybe Nixon was not a crook. Maybe Clinton didn’t have sex with that woman. Perhaps there is no revolving door between corporate America and government. Maybe the 99% are at fault and deserve what they get. Maybe the honeybees are dying because they’re supposed to. Maybe the world is flat after all.
Of course, if you’re listing with an agent at Lyon Real Estate, you’re getting a brokerage that ranks #1 in Sacramento. A brokerage that spends a ton of money on advertising and support for its agents’ listings. Real Trends issued a report this month showcasing the top 500 agents in the country. The Elizabeth Weintraub Team ranked #70 in America for last year’s number of sales. I never thought I’d see the day that I ranked in the top 100 teams in the country. That just blows me away. See what happens when you’re busy?
The downside is Real Trends and its affiliates now want to sell me every kind of statue, plaque and award thingie, and even Trulia has hopped on the bandwagon. Criminy.
