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Request An Appraisal Waiver When Purchasing A Home
Request an appraisal waiver when purchasing a home, can help you win in this competitive market. I was showing my sister homes and we had lost on a previous offer to cash. We found another property and they had to write an offer well over the list price. They called their lender to ask if the appraisal could be waived. We were not in contract yet. My sister was putting 20% down and having to make up the price difference between offer and list price. They called their lender and asked to run the automated loan approval with an appraisal waiver.
The lender ran it through both Freddie and Fannie. Freddie said yes no appraisal needed, 12 offers and we won! We are all so happy for Cat and Greg. Having an appraisal waiver can help to compete against cash offers.
The loan was approved today and inspections completed yesterday, so far all going so well. Thinking out of the box in this climate is what helps an offer to win. If you want to potentially win in the multiple offer market, request an appraisal waiver when purchasing a home. Call Weintraub & Wallace Realtors. We can be reached at RE/MAX GOLD, Sacramento, and Elk Grove offices, 916-233-6759
— JaCi Wallace
Get a Real Estate License To Buy A home
This post below, A Real Estate License Won’t Help You to Buy a Home was written in 2012 by my partner Elizabeth Weintraub and is still very relative today. Because the market is strong, every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to get a real estate license. Enjoy.
Some people in California think it’s a good idea to get a real estate license just in case they ever want to buy a home in Sacramento. Because if you have a real estate license, then you can collect a commission, which is reflected as a percentage amount of the sales price. All commissions are negotiable and generally paid by the listing broker to the selling broker, so while you might think this could amount to a lot of money, it’s generally not by the time it reaches the buyer’s agent pocket. Not in the overall scheme of things.
Yet, almost one in every 35 people in California has a real estate license. It’s hard to turn around at a party in Sacramento and not spill the drink of a Sacramento real estate agent. Snort as you may, not every person who holds a real estate license should be holding a cocktail much less trying to earn a living from said license, but that doesn’t stop them from getting drunk and / or practicing real estate.
On top of this, we’ve also got the agents who want to represent themselves to buy a home in Sacramento. Especially agents from the Bay Area. You know what they say about that, right? A fool for a client. I look at my own situation. I’ve been in the real estate business for more than 35 years, so I’m not exactly a rookie. I like to think I know what I’m doing. But if I were buying a home out of my area, I would hire a local expert. The few thousand I would earn (and I use the word “earn” loosely) to represent myself is not worth the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, I could lose.
Besides, my expectations are very high. I’m a high maintenance client. I would not want to work for myself. Some people might call me a pain in the ass. I expect exceptional service. Nope, I’d much rather hire a buyer’s agent and make unreasonable demands of her. That’s part of the service an exceptional real estate agent provides — client management.
If you want to buy a home call Wallace & Weintraub Realtors, with RE/MAX Gold we will help you to save time a call us today at 916-233-6759.
Elizabeth Weintraub
A Real Estate License Won’t Help You to Buy a Home in Sacramento
” A Real Estate License won’t help you to buy a home in Sacramento. ” This excerpt was written by Elizabeth, several years ago. A blog that was absolutely right on target. I agree a Realtor has no professional distance when they are buying, without representation, no matter how much experience they have. Can you be fully objective when you are also the client and not familiar with the area?
When buying out of the area and representing yourself it is like rolling the dice, I prefer much higher odds. A local expert is always worth the cost. Often when we are representing clients we can potentially save them $1,000’s of dollars. In some cases, it has been 10’s of thousands and yes even hundreds of thousands of dollars saved. As we are executing without a conflict of interest, emotions are in control. I often tell clients when their emotions are engaged, though I understand the worry, I must stay focused to navigate the transaction. My job is to keep us moving forward through each milestone. — JaCi Wallace
It’s hard to turn around at a party in Sacramento and not spill the drink of a Sacramento real estate agent. Snort as you may, not every person who holds a real estate license should be holding a cocktail much less trying to earn a living from said license, but that doesn’t stop them from getting drunk and/ or practicing real estate.
On top of this, we’ve also got the agents who want to represent themselves to buy a home in Sacramento. Especially agents from the Bay Area. You know what they say about that, right? A fool for a client. I look at my own situation. I’ve been in the real estate business for more than 35 years, so I’m not exactly a rookie. I like to think I know what I’m doing. But if I were buying a home out of my area, I would hire a local expert. The few thousand I would earn (and I use the word “earn” loosely) to represent myself is not worth the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, I could lose.
— Elizabeth Weintraub
If you would like to buy a property for yourself and you have a real estate license, or a broker’s license, call Weintraub & Wallace Realtors with RE/MAX Gold for professional representation every time. We can be reached at 916-233-6759.
–JaCi Wallace
Some Sacramento Home Buyers Should Not Buy a Home
A good reason not to buy a home in Sacramento is a buyer might not be able to afford it. Looking at the situation purely from a financial point of view, it should not be that difficult for some Sacramento home buyers to understand why a seller would refuse to make a home “affordable” for them by discounting the sales price below market value. Especially an investor who looks at his investment the same way one might consider shares of stock: it’s impersonal, and the only thing that matters is whether the price has gone up or down.
Non-affordability is not an argument nor a negotiation tactic. If you’re standing by the entrance to a freeway with a sign that says Will Work for Food, it’s possible a passerby might offer you a job or a good-hearted driver might flip you a twenty, but asking for charity when you’re buying a home is not quite the same thing. Yet, that doesn’t stop buyers from requesting it. Further, a refusal does not mean the seller is a meanie and big ol’ grouch, either.
An agent asked my seller yesterday to “have mercy” for his buyers, because they are young, with a small family, struggling and pregnant. These stories have a time and a place, we encounter them every day, but do they pertain to housing, to Sacramento real estate? Are sellers heartless, cruel and without compassion if they don’t reduce a sales price so cash-strapped buyers can purchase a home that is outside the boundaries of their financial reach?
I wonder if buyer’s agents should push a product that people can’t afford to buy? Not every buyer needs to own a home. Not every buyer should own a home. Maybe, just maybe, the buyers should not buy a home. There is no shame in renting a home, and millions of people are tenants. If people did not want to rent a home, there would be little reason for investors to buy single-family homes or condos as a long-term hold investment.
Yes, I realize just about every Sacramento real estate agent you run into will say you should buy a home. But maybe you should not.
How a 21-Year-Old Can Buy a Home
My 21-year-old niece should be buying a home but instead she is spending an entire month’s take-home-pay to acquire a Sphynx kitten. I didn’t know what my sister had sent me when I first laid eyes on the photograph. She had sent a photo to my cellphone without any explanation, just asking what I thought. I said it looked horrid, like a Gollum
creature. That’s when she sprang the news that it was my niece’s new kitten and not some kind of joke.
When I asked my sister why my niece was still living with her instead of buying her own home, the answer was my niece doesn’t make enough money. Well, she does make enough money, she just doesn’t have two years on the job yet. She dropped out of college to take a job at a franchise shoe store in Minnesota selling shoes. Why? Because she likes shoes. Well, I like ice cream but you won’t see me handing out ice cream cones at Vic’s. Sometimes, I wonder if we are cut from the same cloth.
With a salary of $30,000 a year, my niece would easily qualify financially to buy a home. There are small homes in stable neighborhoods available for $100,000. With $3,500 down, my niece’s monthly payment at 4% interest, including taxes, insurance and private mortgage insurance would run about $625. That’s a 25% front-end ratio and very doable. It is cheaper for her to buy a home than to rent.
The neighborhood my sister lives in is near Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. Homes are less expensive in this area of the city because planes fly very close overhead. You can almost see what passengers are drinking onboard. But it’s only a couple times a day, small price to pay for affordable lake living.
And let’s face it, you just can’t live with your mother forever, can you? Although, my sister says it’s like Grey Gardens at her house, and I believe it.
Photo: Laura’s new kitten, M. Burgard
Photo: Gollum, Photobucket
