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Elizabeth Weintraub Picks Up 2 Top Agent Awards at Lyon Celebration
Elizabeth Weintraub Team Roaring 20s Style: Josh Amolsch, Shaundra Bradley, Elizabeth Weintraub, Dianne Slutsky and Barbara Dow
The truth is no matter how many awards Lyon Real Estate gives to Elizabeth Weintraub, the very best award was having a rollicking good time with my Elizabeth Weintraub Team members, kicking up our heels on the dance floor and sprawling all over the 1920s gangster car, well, until the photographer kicked us off the vehicle. Never behave yourself if you don’t have to is my motto. Last night was the Lyon Top Agent Awards dealie-bop at the Hyatt downtown Sacramento. The brokerage handed out awards and recognized its top agents at Lyon Real Estate for our 2014 production, which was so last year I barely recall the harried haze.
Dinner at the Lyon Agent Awards
When we arrived, my husband swore he had spotted a waiter toting a tray filled with glasses of champagne. Try as we might, weeding our way through the neck-to-neck crowd, we could not find that guy. But we did find several bars and chose the less crowded bar. Soon as we popped into line, the bartender took off for the bar next to us. We slid over to that bar, and the bartender dashed back to his original position. It was beginning to look like we could not get a glass of champagne. Wha, were we chopped liver? I nabbed the guy back at the bar and ordered a glass of bubbly.
“I’ll have to charge you for it,”the bartender warns, mentioning that there is a guy with a tray of champagne glasses wandering about. Well, I suspected champagne guy wandered into the kitchen, where he slipped and broke his neck, or maybe he scooted out to the sidewalk for a smoking break. Actually, it didn’t matter where he vanished to, the fact remains I was standing there in all of my Roaring 20s get-up and my fingers were not wrapped around the stem of a glass of champagne. That situation needed to be rectified, and I did not particularly care if I handed over a 20-dollar bill to fix it.
Presenting Top Outbound Relocation Agent Award to Elizabeth Weintraub
With drinks in hand, we began to wander back to the front of the entrance when suddenly the ballroom doors flew open and the crowd poured in. All of the Lyon agents and their guests looked glamorous and spectacular; not to mention, there were feathers and sequins scattered all over the dance floor by the end of the night.
I picked up the Top Outbound Relocation Agent Award from Lyon, as I refer many potential out-of-area sellers and buyers to our Lyon Relocation department. People call me from all over the country to ask if I will help them to sell or buy a home. The problem is I work in Sacramento Valley, and although I can sell real estate anywhere in California, I prefer to stick to areas that are my specialty.
Elizabeth Weintraub, Top 1% of Agents at Lyon Real Estate
The president of Lyon Real Estate handed me the top agent award and said, “I didn’t recognize you tonight; you look beautiful.” OK, maybe you would have scuffed up his spats or kicked him in the shins, but he was trying to be complimentary.
Toward the end of the top agent awards ceremony, which was short and sweet this year, thank goodness, they began the countdown to the top 1% of all Lyon real estate agents. It’s always hard to know exactly where I might place every year at Lyon because they calculate the numbers internally in an odd way. I might rank in the top 10 agents in a 7-county area in Trendgraphix for number of homes sold or sales production, but not end up in that ranking at Lyon. Still, I placed in the top 1% of Lyon real estate agents, and am named to the top 3 agents in the brokerage out of almost 1,000 agents. I’ll probably pick up more top agent awards for our downtown office but, like I said, none of that compares to rocking out with my team.
I love these guys to pieces. Trust me, we know how to have a good time.
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.
How Former Jobs Helped Shape a Top Sacramento REALTOR
What kind of former jobs have helped to boost the career of a Sacramento REALTOR in the year 2014? I thought about that yesterday as I drove around Elk Grove in the rain after listing another home for sale. The jobs that I held as a kid certainly helped to prepare me for the career I enjoy today. I got my first job at 16, followed by two more jobs at age 17 that helped put me through my senior year at high school — because I had my own apartment at that age. My life is so different now than it was in the year 1970.
My first real job was as a counter waitress at the Tick Tock Diner, which was located on 6th and Hennepin in downtown Minneapolis. All of my friends thought I was a nurse because I wore a uniform and a hat. I recall hauling a dishrack of glasses, and stopping to slip a nickel into the jukebox on the counter to play I’m Free, by The Who. And freedom tastes of reality. It made me stop dead in my tracks. I wasn’t free. I was chained to the counter 8 hours a day; it made me realize the price of freedom. We all pay a price.
By the time I became a senior in high school, I needed two jobs to pay for my apartment. Both were part-time, each four hours a day. The first was selling magazines over the phone as a telemarketer. We received bonuses for our sales. This job helped me to learn how to effectively engage with people on the phone. I often veered off the script we had memorized and talked to people, like they were real people and not a target for sale. I sold a ton of magazines. It was called: “smile and dial.” I dialed a lot, got hung up on a lot, received wrong numbers, busy dial tones and no answers. But I did not give up; I met my quotas and exceeded them. I hated this job because except for closing sales, the rest of it was boring.
My other job was as a teletype operator at Northwestern Bell. This involved typing codes on cards for phone installation orders on a huge machine the size of a small refrigerator. I quickly memorized the codes. I also learned to type more than 100 WPM. I had to sit in a chair and type for four hours straight. I hated this job with a passion, but everybody around me said it was my ticket for a full-time job in management at Ma Bell. My coworker went on to achieve that status. On the path to college, I chose instead to work full-time as a telemarketer. It was the lesser of two evils and, for years, I thought I had made the wrong choice.
Both of these jobs, the telemarketing and the teletyping, definitely prepared me for a profitable career today in Sacramento real estate as a Sacramento REALTOR. Today I type faster than anybody I know, which means the words from my brain hit the screen with rapid speed. The sales aspect, the thrill of closing, well, that has helped to propel, and I still love talking with people today. Real estate is a people business. Homes are just the commodity we move. I hope if you’re looking for a Sacramento REALTOR, you call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Why You Want to Hire a Top Sacramento Agent
My month of June closings for this top Sacramento agent were enormous and totaled more than $5 million for the past 30 days in the Sacramento region. Lest you think I sit around sipping champagne while cabana boys dangle grapes over my lips and fan me cool in our summer heat let me explain that it only happened once in Maui last month; I actually work very hard to accomplish feats like this. I don’t sell one or two homes a month, that’s not my method of operation. I don’t focus on only one area or one type of million-dollar seller.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I sold more homes last month than a person can count on two hands and my listings outnumber all of a person’s digits. The sales prices of my June closings ranged from $131,000 for a condo in Woodside to $475,000 for a home in Curtis Park. You can see that I’m not solely specializing in the upper-end homes, but I also don’t do a lot of lower-end homes. Most of my sales are right in the middle between the two, where most of the real estate market lies in Sacramento.
Middle of the road is a good place for a Sacramento real estate agent. I am as happy as a cat with a bag of freeze-dried chicken treats.
I am available to sell a home for any seller anywhere in the Sacramento area, from Galt to Lincoln, and it would be highly unusual to run across an area in which I haven’t sold. I sell practically everywhere and over many long years have developed an expertise in a ton of neighborhoods. My pricing estimates are typically spot on. I talked with a woman in Elk Grove last week — because I am a noted as a top agent in Elk Grove — about selling her home. I sent the prospective seller a comparative market analysis showing her that she should expect to list around $465,000.
She did not believe me at first. She was blown away. She was certain her home was worth $399,000 or less. When she realized how much equity she had, she called a mortgage broker to find out how much she could extract at our still incredibly low interest rates around 4% and whether her home would appraise. Sure enough, her appraisal came in at $465K. So she decided to refinance instead. But I hope she will remember me when it does come time to sell.
My system works. I get results. I communicate. If you’re looking for a top Sacramento agent, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I always have time for you.
A 3-Lockbox Friday for This Sacramento Agent
This Sacramento real estate agent should be adding 3 more homes to the inventory in the Sacramento area on Monday. It’s a small contribution to our sorry state of affairs in the Sacramento real estate market. We have fewer than 1,500 homes for sale in Sacramento at the moment, which is miniscule and does not meet the demand. This means when a potential seller calls to say he or she wants to put a home on the market, this Sacramento agent does her best to accommodate without delay.
I was driving back from Elk Grove where I have a lot of listings when I got the call to Rocklin. I seem to list and sell an unusually high number of homes in Elk Grove, even though I do not live there. I live in Land Park. Probably because so many are short sales in Elk Grove, and I am the best Sacramento REALTOR to handle short sales. Yet, a few that are not short sales are creeping into my listings. I closed a regular home in Elk Grove that comped out at the top around $245,000, and with one-eye closed and clenched teeth we pushed the limit to meet the rising pending demand to $259,000, yet it sold for all cash at $280,000.
Buyers are desperate to buy a home today. It’s hard to pick a sales price because it’s hard to predict how high a buyer might decide to go or how far out an appraiser will go to appraise. I realize sellers think us listing agents can pull rabbits of hats, but we can’t always predict what buyers will do. We can only guess. If your home is marketed correctly, the market will take you where you want to go. You don’t want to be too high because buyers will wonder what’s wrong with your home when you reduce. You don’t want to be too low because buyers might wonder upfront what’s wrong. You want to be priced just right, like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Which brings me to my 3 lockboxes from yesterday. One lockbox went on a home in Elk Grove that will be a short sale. Another lockbox went on a home in Elk Grove that will be a traditional sale, and the home is absolutely gorgeous. Don’t call me about it because you’ll get your chance to buy it along with everybody else next week. I don’t make side deals or give special considerations to my friends. I’m not that kind of listing agent. Don’t offer to let me write the deal in the hopes I will compromise my ethics and tell the seller to take your offer, because I don’t do that, either. Yada, yada, that’s not what you meant, yeah, right!
Another lockbox went on a home in Rocklin, which will be a short sale. It will need some work, and homes that need work are often a struggle with the short sale bank because the banks often refuse to acknowledge the homes need work. Or, maybe those darn BPO agents just don’t go inside. Hard to say, but it will be challenge, yet not a challenge that I can’t overcome.
Elk Grove in the morning. Rocklin in the afternoon. Back to Elk Grove in late afternoon. That was a lot of driving yesterday for a Sacramento agent who lives in Land Park. I love this business.
