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The Enormously Big Deal of Buying a House
When it comes down to choosing between buying a house in Sacramento or having a baby, the latter is a bigger deal for most people, yet you can’t rule out the enormously big deal of buying a house. The Washington Post talks about the financial constraints felt by many in today’s economy and how, while waiting for improvement, some decisions are postponed, as in this part of the article: “Choices large and small hang in the balance — whether to buy a house, go to college, get married. Have a baby.”
I don’t know about you, but all of those choices seem ginormous to this Sacramento real estate agent. I don’t spot a “small” choice in that grouping. Not only that, but buying a house is often said to be the single most expensive investment a person can undertake. They are all big choices and decisions, accompanied by their friends: anxiety, risk and anticipation.
As a person who works with people to sell and buy Sacramento real estate, I can tell you it’s also a highly emotional experience, mixing the love of all things drywall and wood with Ben Franklins. One moment a person is hyperventilating and the next cooing. I never know what I might find on the other end of the phone when I answer.
It’s my place to be empathetic and listen. To be that rock to lean on. To offer support and guidance and help sellers and buyers through my decades of experience to make the right decision. Sometimes it means taking the lead and saying, OK, look, here’s what we’re gonna do. Offering that solution. Other times, I need to sit back and wait for the information to sink in and for the parties to reach a state of calmness, awareness and decision-making capability.
I help people make a transition. And transitions are a big deal in life. Your Sacramento real estate agent is a coach for you, not a crutch, but we can be that, too, if that’s what you need.
Not Every Sacramento Home Seller Wants to Deal With a Counter Offer
When an agent says to me, you can always issue a counter offer to my buyer, that sounds like code for: the buyer is unreasonable, because I don’t think an agent is trying to tell a veteran how to sell real estate. But you never know in this market. We have a very weird market in Sacramento right now made up of serious buyers and squirrelly buyers and lowballing investors. I never know on which the roulette ball will land, as it is like a roulette wheel.
I can share with an agent that we have multiple offers, and yet the buyer’s agent will send me an offer that is contingent on selling the buyer’s home without a Contingency of Purchase addendum, much less a pre-approval letter. You can’t make this stuff up. Oh, and on top of it, maybe the agent hasn’t shown the home. It makes you wonder if buyers aren’t thumbing through MLS listings like a Neiman Marcus catalog and saying when I win the lottery, I’ll buy this house and that house and that house. And agents are writing offers for these guys. Blows my mind.
Most sellers in Sacramento do not enjoy bidding wars, believe it or not. They hope that a nice family will purchase their home at a fair price and close escrow — live there happily ever after. That’s what sellers want. Not every seller will want to deal with a counter offer. It’s stressful for many sellers. Negotiating does not come as easily to some of us as it does to others.
Myself, as a top-producing Sacramento real estate agent, I negotiate daily for a living, and I love to negotiate. But I’m also sensitive enough to realize that many of my sellers do not want to negotiate. They don’t want to deal with counter offers and all that they imply. They just want to sell their home.
If we receive 5 offers, the sellers, more likely than not, will take the path of least resistance and choose the best offer for them. Especially if it doesn’t involve a counter offer. If you’re thinking about writing an offer for a home in Sacramento, you should ask your buyer’s agent to call the listing agent to discuss what you might want to do. Although a listing agent cannot and should not ever speak for the seller, a listing agent can help to guide. You might have to write your best offer and stop trying to ding around.
On top of all of this, no offer should ever land on a listing agent’s computer without an advance call from a buyer’s agent. Not in this Sacramento real estate market.
Don’t Make These Sacramento Home Buying Mistakes
It can be a slow process, trying to buy a home in Sacramento, but it’s even slower if you don’t know where you want to live. Home buyers just starting out might have unreasonable expectations, and those types of expectations can lead to disappointment.
Before engaging a buyer’s agent to show homes, it’s common for buyers to identify and target a few communities. Agents can be a great resource, but buyers should really ask an agent to show homes when the buyers are ready and able to write a purchase offer. That’s not to say that an agent can’t help buyers to choose a place to live because that’s what we do. However, there are plenty of open houses every Sunday in Sacramento where buyers can go to look at homes, talk to other agents, get a feel for neighborhoods, without a personal escort.
Agents don’t hold all of the information anymore regarding homes for sale, but we do have access to MLS, which a buyer does not. We can send a buyer listings in certain areas defined by custom searches or however a buyer would like to receive the information. The best home buying website is generally the buyer’s agent’s own website or a feed directly from MLS.
Here are some of the common home buying mistakes I’ve heard about over the past few weeks that can easily lead to disappointment and frustration:
- Looking at homes with sales prices way above the buyer’s affordability point. It makes no sense to look at homes priced at $400,000 if your pre-approval letter maximum is $300,000.
- Dragging your agent through the same square-foot model home over and over, which a buyer does not like. If you really hate that closet and bathroom, it won’t look any different in the same model with different paint on the walls.
- Expecting a buyer’s agent to immediately respond to your email questions about new homes you just found on another website when she is showing homes to another client for a few hours.
- Asking personal questions of a seller to satisfy idle curiosity that have no bearing on whether the home is suitable for you and your children.
- Finding a home that fits your needs and pricing but not buying that home because you wonder if there might be some other home that is better for you. There is always another home.
Bottom line, if a home buyer needs to personally inspect 200 homes before buying a home in Sacramento, that buyer is probably not yet ready to buy a home. And that’s OK. But let your agent know and discuss expectations before asking an agent to show homes.
Sell the Seller Benefits When Buying a Home
When most Sacramento home buyers envision buying a home, they tend to view their first home as a place to live in-lieu-of an investment. This means they want the home to be in tip-top condition without any defects. They strongly care about the sales price only if nobody else does. If there are no other offers, in today’s fall market, they might offer less than list price in hopes of negotiation. Yet, if the house truly meets their needs, home buyers will pay what it takes.
I think about how this compares to some of the homes I’ve bought in my life. I came into real estate as a buyer’s agent for investors, and I started at a small Newport Beach real estate company, which I later bought. My training was untraditional but valuable. Today, I strongly believe that every agent should at least work a few years for a major broker before trotting off on their own, if that’s what they desire, because there is so much to miss by not having the proper training and absorbing social etiquette about the business. It’s only in retrospect that I see this about myself. I was lucky in my ignorance.
When this Sacramento real estate agent decided to buy her third house, I found out everything I could about the seller. I had been watching this particular home in the Sunday open house ads (before the Internet). It had a white picket fence — a Dutch Colonial. It was so darned cute, oozing curb appeal. The listing agent was informative and told me things she probably should not have such as the sellers had bought another home across town and moved out months ago. She told me where they moved, which was a very expensive part of town. People just blab if you ask the right questions.
The house had many problems. It was overpriced; featured a lovely gaping hole in the living room ceiling; the hardwood maple floors were in terrible condition and the wallpaper was atrocious.
I made an offer that the listing agent said would not get accepted. It was less than list price. My earnest money was $500 and there was no down payment. This was 25 years ago, when loans were assumable, and I offered to assume the existing financing. My offer meant that the seller had to take money out of a savings account to pay the commission and closing costs, because there was no money generated in the offer to pay these things.
The listing agent expressed doubt that the seller would take my offer and actually said that in all her years in the business, nobody writes an offer like that. That’s because she was in traditional real estate and not investment real estate. In my mind, I figured I would fix up the house and increase its value; make it my own. I can tackle just about any home improvement project by myself. DIY is not difficult.
To help the agent submit the offer, I drew up a list of benefits for the seller, explaining why the seller should take the offer. I laid out how much the seller has already spent over the past 6 months or so trying to sell the house. Mortgage payments had to be made even if the seller wasn’t living there. I compared that sum of money to the smaller amount the seller would need to pay to close escrow. I pointed out that banks might be reluctant to loan money on a home with a hole the size of a small car in the ceiling. And I ended it by documenting the release of liability from the loan that the seller would obtain when I formally assumed the loan.
The seller signed the offer. The agent practically fainted. This was very different from the way homes are sold today. But sellers still sell because it’s a benefit to themselves to do so. That part has not changed.
I think home buyers pass up some great opportunities in the Sacramento market by insisting on buying a move-in ready home. They can’t personalize the home or express themselves when it’s already done for them. And they pay more for updated homes, making them completely dependent on future appreciation and principal reduction to build equity. But I just go with the flow and help everybody achieve what they want. That’s my job.
HGTV: Cancel This Escrow
I’d like to see a new show on the cable network HGTV called “Cancel This Escrow.” They could film three different buyers during the escrow period — after the contract is signed but before the deal closes — and viewers could guess which one of them is likely to have cold feet and cancel this escrow. I mean, all three of them could threaten to walk away from a home closing, but only one of them actually will. Then we could listen to their excuses for buyer’s remorse and reasons to cancel this escrow:
- The palm tree tree in the back yard doesn’t have any flowers.
- The garage floor has four quarters divided by cracks.
- This house is painted brown, yuk.
- The street isn’t wide enough.
- One of the electrical outlets doesn’t work.
- It doesn’t have a built-in microwave.
- There’s no exhaust fan in the bathroom.
- I don’t like the way the light reflects on the ceiling fan blades.
- The garage door springs are missing a safety latch.
- Somebody left an empty can of paint on the roof.
While Elizabeth is on vacation, we are revisiting her favorite blogs from previous years.
