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Are There Valid Reasons to Dump a Real Estate Agent?
I am rarely in the shoes of a first agent who listed a home that did not sell in Sacramento. Unless, of course, the seller was unreasonable on pricing or refused home staging. I’ve seen a handful of those sorry situations in which the seller dumps the agent, reduces the price, stages the home and then bingo, it sells with agent #2, with agent #1 left standing there wondering what am I, chopped liver? Why did nobody listen to me? But bottom line is nobody can really make another person do what that person doesn’t want to do without brute force, and few agents want to clobber a seller over the head, making him stare down the barrel of a gun with a foot up his neck.
More often than not I’m on the other side of this scenario. After a seller fired his agent — or took the path of least resistance and let the listing expire before hiring the next agent — namely in order to hire this top producing Sacramento real estate agent. That’s the position I love to be in because now I’ll get paid for another agent’s hard work, plus I am most likely working for a far more reasonable and seasoned seller.
I made an interesting point to a seller a few months ago when he was thinking about hiring another agent because he had not yet received an offer. Sellers can be impatient, I understand. I told the seller that he could certainly hire another agent but he’d be throwing away his money. He did not strike me as the kind of guy who wants to lose money, but that’s exactly what he would be doing by hiring somebody else. Another agent would simply capitalize on all of my efforts, duplicate my strategy and pocket my fee. He should reward the agent who has earned the commission and let her sell his home. Put that way, he agreed, and I sold that home for him.
Having said that, sometimes there are valid reasons to fire an agent. No iffs, ands, or butts about it, in this crazy profession, most agents are not on the ball. Read more on About.com today in an article I wrote about Top 10 Reasons Sellers Fire a Real Estate Agent.
Did You Forget to Sell Your Home in Sacramento?
Did you forget to sell a house in Sacramento last year?
You might not think it’s possible for a homeowner to forget to sell a house in Sacramento but as a real estate agent, I can assure you that it happens. I often joke that if some agent just followed me around and picked up the real estate business I leave lying on the side of the road, they, too, could be a top producer. My biggest drawback is I don’t continue to ask sellers if they are ready to sell. I don’t want to insult their intelligence. But I also realize that sellers sometimes forget which agent they have called, much to my dismay.
It’s completely arrogant to assume that a seller will think only of calling this Sacramento real estate agent when she’s ready to sell. I mean, many do and wouldn’t dream of hiring any other agent because they believe I am the best Sacramento real estate agent for them, but people are different from each other — what one person does, another does the opposite. Not to mention, they have other things going on their lives than simply concentrating on selling a home. They have children, families, vacations, illnesses, financial complexities, career demands, political distractions, community involvement — complications to everyday life that often take precedence.
From now on, my plan for 2014 is to not let any business slip through the cracks. I will politely stay in touch until the cows come home or sellers tell me they no longer have any interest in selling a home.
Sellers don’t always use analytical criteria when hiring an agent. They sometimes believe by mistake that all agents are the same, so hiring the guy across the street or their Uncle Joe, doesn’t make any difference, when it can make ALL the difference in the world. They don’t know that the top 10% of agents sell 90% of all the homes in Sacramento or how to find that top 10% or even why it makes a difference.
And whose fault is that, that they don’t know? Fortunately, I know the answer to that question, and my focus in 2014 is to answer it for clients. If you’re getting ready to sell your home in Sacramento, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
The Downside of a Sacramento Real Estate Year-End Celebration
Based on Trendgraphix reports, it looks as though there is only one agent out of the 1,000 or so agents at Lyon Real Estate who sold more homes in 2013 than this Sacramento real estate agent, and that agent works primarily in another county in the Foothills of Sacramento. This is what I do when I come back from my winter vacation — clean up my 2013 records and begin 2014, fresh, on the ground and running. I also look at my big fat belly and wonder how it got that way and why it’s in my way.
Almost 3 whole chickens have crept their way into my body while I lay sleeping, dreaming of carrots and celery. I was soooo good on vacation. While I watched my husband enjoy cheesy omelets for breakfast, I spooned nonfat yogurt with berries into my face. There was no “bacon fest” like one can enjoy in January at Ella Dining Room and Bar. Even for lunch I was somewhat restrained: salads and soups. We walked and explored Key West. At night I pounded on my computer to respond to all the emails I received about Sacramento real estate. That 10-finger action alone burned many calories, I’m certain.
Most of the dinner menus in the Florida Keys involved some sort of shellfish or seafood, generally grilled. OK, there was breeeaaaaad and the teensiest bit of butter. A few desserts. All right, maybe a dessert almost every night. A cocktail, maybe. A glass or two of wine. Perhaps a 20-year tawny after dinner. But it was a minuscule glass of tawny, barely two ounces. I really detest having to face the fact that when you live long enough to cross the 60-year mark, you’ve got to watch what you shove into your face.
I did — I watched the magnificent gastronomic creations with great delight. Night after night. Never took my eyes off the fabulous displays of culinary genius placed in my view and with both hands shoved into my pie hole. Snatched a few French fries off my husband’s plate, too. I even hauled carry-out containers back to our hotel and left the lobster-cheesy-macaroni in the mini bar to rot.
The beginning was so innocent. I started out by leaving half of my food on my plate. Yeah, that’s a good plan. By the end of our vacation, I couldn’t pass by a gelato sign without stopping inside for a taste and a two-scoop treat. I hang my head in shame. Now I must pay the price for such gluttony. Maybe I will wear a cardboard box to my Sacramento real estate office meeting, with a hole cut in the top for my head to poke through.
Or, maybe I will just get back on the elliptical and resume a sensible diet. My clients don’t care if I gain 10 pounds or lose 10 pounds as long as I get the job done.
Using a Multiple Counter Offer to Sell a Home
Be still my eyes — C.A.R. is offering a two-hour webinar for real estate agents to explain how to use the new Multiple Counter Offer form. Two hours! One-fourth of a normal work day. How stupid do they think real estate agents are? Oh, wait. Duh. Don’t answer that. But two hours? Criminy. Come to think of it, I just used that form a couple weeks ago and had to point out to the buyer’s agent that it was indeed a multiple-counter offer situation, as that was not readily apparent, for some reason.
The agent didn’t realize it until I said I do not know how the second buyer will respond. I explained that he needed to know that it was entirely possible that his offer might different than the counter sent to the second buyer, because that’s how multiple-counter offers can work. As a REALTOR who works in Sacramento, I try very hard to be fair to all real estate agents, and not just because it’s required by the Code of Ethics.
It looks to me, though, that what C.A.R. basically did was take the counter offer out of the multiple-counter offer document and made the counter offer a standalone, leaving the multiple as a multiple. Yet, it’s still fill-in-the-blanks.
It’s not only buyer’s agents who are confused. Sellers also do not understand the power of the multiple-counter offer. It is one of the most remarkable documents we have in our arsenal for offer negotiation. If a seller in Sacramento, say, receives two purchase offers, a seller can issue a multiple-counter offer. The multiple-counter offer can be different to each buyer, depending on how the seller wants to work the negotiations.
Think about this for a minute and let it sink in. Nobody says that one of the offers is an offer the seller wants to accept. That second offer could even be a lowball. It could be written on a roll of toilet paper. The seller could even suspect that the lowballer wouldn’t take a counter offer if she threw in 2 round-trip tickets to the moon. Yet, that doesn’t prevent the seller from issuing a multiple-counter offer now, does it?
Once the listing agent explains to the buyer’s agent that there is no regulation that states each counter offer must be identical and that the listing agent does not know whether the second buyer will increase the offer, what do you think that first buyer will do? See, this is why sellers and buyers in Sacramento and Elk Grove love working with me.
SpaghettiOs, Dylan’s Guitar and a Purchase Offer
SpaghettiOs Tribute to Pearl Harbor
There is nothing I like better to wake up to in the morning than finding a purchase offer in my email, not counting, obviously, discovering a live husband and not a dead one in bed next to me, and let’s throw in a purring cat or two. Except all of our cats are quarantined for the time being due to a lovely fungus invasion.
Receiving a purchase offer is almost as exciting as hearing that Bob Dylan’s Fender Stratocaster from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival sold for $965,000. When I heard the opening bid was considerably less than that, like a few hundred thousand, I thought to myself: hey, anybody with a halfway decent 401K could buy that guitar. But that’s also how people end up with bowling alleys in their home, and stuffed pandas hanging from the ceiling.
People be weird. That’s one of my husband’s sayings. And now he’s got me repeating it.
While you might at this very moment be feeling more empathy for the soon-to-be former social media director at Franco American whose idea of a Tweet has shocked, enraged and caused many a snark over that Pearl Harbor SpaghettiOs dude. Just reading the comments on websites about the SpaghettiOs fiasco temporarily stole my attention away from the purchase offer.
I like to receive purchase offers because it’s the next step toward going into escrow. It’s what my sellers have been waiting for, why they cleaned up their home, prepared their home for sale and hired the best Sacramento real estate agent they could find. All for this moment in time.
