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Should an East Sacramento Home Buyer Lowball if a Home Needs Work?
If a home for sale in East Sacramento needs work, does that mean a home buyer can or should offer less than the asking price? Imagine this scenario. A home buying couple has been out touring homes with her East Sacramento Realtor for several days. They had been looking at homes in East Sacramento both online and in person, trying to find the home that speaks the loudest and stirs up those emotional longings. Finally, they stumble upon a home with the right number of bedrooms and baths, the layout is perfect, and the location is highly desirable, but, alas, it’s not in the best condition.
The home needs a new roof, and the elderly sellers don’t have the money to replace the roof. The hardwood flooring under the carpeting is in pristine shape but rolling up carpeting to haul off to the city dump is really not in the buyers’ future plans. Perhaps the flooring slants a little bit because the home has been around for 75 years. The hottest design trends that are featured in all of the home remodeling magazines are not found in this home; instead there is basket-weave tile in the bath, which the buyers would prefer to rip out.
Still, there are very few homes for sale in the buyers’ price range in East Sacramento. This home might be perfect in every way except for the defects the buyers noted. How much should the buyers offer if they decide to move forward? That’s always the big question. This could be the home of their dreams.
First, a buyer might want to consider the fact that the home is priced correctly and at market value, which is often the case. The price probably already reflects the work. Perhaps another home the buyers don’t much care for is priced less because it is a home that is much smaller and located on a busy street? Figuring out an offering price does not mean buyers should automatically offer less because the home does not measure up to their ideal needs. Market value does not depend on a buyers’ future home improvement plans.
Buyers, too, might point to the days on market, as the novice typically assumes incorrectly that longer days on market always means a home is overpriced. Sometimes newbie real estate agents make that mistake as well. What longer days on market can also mean is many home buyers do not want to buy a home that requires any work at all, so they pass it by. Not that it’s priced incorrectly. For many first-time home buyers, any amount of work is too much work.
The savvy buyer will instead see an opportunity to buy an East Sacramento home that will increase in value after the right kind of improvements are made. They also welcome the chance to apply a personal touch to their new home and might even spend afternoons strolling the aisles of Home Depot. Often, these types of buyers, believe it or not, are real estate agents. If you want to buy a home like a real estate agent, then you might want to talk with your agent about the comparable sales and look at the sales price the way a professional would. Because only a novice would believe a lowball offer is the right answer.
Comparing Peeple to the TV show REVIEW
Reviewing people for Peeple reviews is nothing like the Comedy Central show REVIEW
Ten years ago I was kicked off a then-popular website for criticizing the way its management treated my friends. Today, that would be akin to being banned from Twitter and would never happen. Things change so quickly in the internet world. Sometimes you just can’t believe your eyes about what unfolds in front of you. Take for example the new website Peeple that is being marketed as “like Yelp for human beings.” I read about that site and thought WTH, are we living in the UK?
This is a new website launching shortly that professes to provide a platform for people to “review” not just their pizza delivery guy but their friends, arch-enemies, neighbors, the asshole who cut them off in traffic, coworkers, ex-boyfriends / girlfriends . . .. It raises the possibility of extreme raunchiness, vindictiveness and overall incredible stupidity affecting your life more than shows you don’t watch on Reality TV do now.
It would seem that if you do not sign up for that website, nobody can post anything negative about you. So right there the dilemma for a normal, rational human being is completely solved. Yet you know people will crawl over to that site just out of curiosity and before you know it, wham, they’ll sign up, because people are idiots.
Think what this will do to real estate agents because the 2 things a subscriber needs to post a review is the person’s name and phone number. Who has their name and phone number plastered everywhere? Real estate agents. Any deadbeat who plops his butt on the face of a real estate agent wrapped on a bus bench, say, in East Sacramento, can whip out a cellphone and, because the bus is late, say something nasty about the agent.
Now, Peeple reviews is nothing like REVIEW the wild show on Comedy Central that is so darkly hilarious. Most review shows are about books, movies or food. This show is about life experiences. The host, who sort of dresses like a Century 21 agent from the 1970s is like Superman’s Clark Kent, a mild mannered dude oozing with sincerity from southern California who accepts challenges contributed from viewers to experience life events and report on what it’s like.
The reviewer gives 1/2 to 6 stars for things such as: What’s it like to get kicked in the balls? Or what’s it like to be buried alive? What’s it like to sleep with your teacher? Burning questions that all of us must wonder about at one time or another. Except when the character Forrest MacNeil (Andy Daly) tries so earnestly to perform his job, he continually messes up his own personal life. This is an excellent show: REVIEW. Peeple is just plain creepy.
Selling One of East Sacramento Homes for Sale 95819
There are times in a real estate transaction that we look back and try to figure out what we could have done to make the sale move more smoothly, and such is the case with selling one of East Sacramento homes for sale 95819. The home was perfect in every way except it was a bit “location challenged,” which some homes in East Sac can be. Doesn’t mean a home in a not-so-exciting location won’t sell if the price is right and the timing is right. They all will eventually sell.
But it does mean that we aren’t always as selective as we can be when it come to choosing a buyer. You can sort of get the luck of the draw. Of course, in retrospect, a more experienced mortgage lender would have spotted the difficulty facing this particular buyer immediately and rectified it before going into escrow. It’s not that the buyer wasn’t qualified, it was a small problem of being on title to another property that wasn’t his –which amounts to a huge problem with the file is kicked out of underwriting, where it had no place being in the first place until the situation was resolved.
It took us almost 3 months to close this home in East Sacramento 95819. During that time, we left the home on the market as a “pending, bring back up-offer,” yet no other offers surfaced. Still, it doesn’t hurt to try for the sellers’ sake.
This situation involved the buyer’s relative refinancing the home the buyer was on title to. He couldn’t qualify first go-around, which is why the buyer initially was on the title to that home because the strength of his credit helped the relative to qualify. I personally had my doubts the relative would qualify now. By some miracle, though, he did. So we waited 30 days to find out the buyer could not qualify to buy this home due to being on title to another home. Then we waited another 30 days for the buyer’s relative to refinance.
At last, we could finally focus on this particular escrow. To compensate the sellers for waiting, the best we could do was ask for the earnest money deposit to be released as a non-refundable deposit. At least the sellers would have the deposit in their own bank account, was my reasoning, in the event we had to cancel the transaction.
I realize there are East Sacramento agents who think all is well that ends well, but this was a nail-biter transaction to the very end. I was informed that we could not record on the day we had planned because for some reason the buyer had obtained a pest report that included the detached garage. I quickly drew an addendum that removed the garage from the pest. I called in a favor to a pest inspector I personally know at that pest company and asked for a revised pest report for just the house and a completion. Had it in my hot little paws within an hour. And that’s how we managed to close and just under the wire.
I am taking the seller out for a bourbon lunch next week at Ella. We both earned it. The motto of this story is a buyer is only as good as the mortgage lender who qualifies the borrower.
Sacramento Spring Home Selling Starts in the Rain
One of my Elk Grove sellers yesterday almost passed out when I called to say we had sold his home. I’m not joking. He could not believe it, and that’s putting it mildly. One day he’s a guy with a home in Elk Grove that is almost upside-down with a roof at the end of its life and the next day he’s slipping $50,000 into his pocket. I’m sure that’s the way it seemed to him. “Buttt,” he stuttered in disbelief, “We haven’t even been on the market for 2 weeks yet.”
When a listing is done right, much of the work is done upfront. Sellers don’t see the hours we agents pour over our listings, highlighting this feature, brightening this spot, cropping thusly, and plastering it everywhere online. Or the time invested to study the comparable sales and help the seller to choose just the right sales price. Or the number of inspection reports obtained from roofers, pest workers much less our own visual inspections, rearranging, color coordinating and staging the home a little bit. What they see is a buyer walking in the door and cooing, “I want this home.” It sends sellers into shock.
It was an unbelievable day yesterday for this Sacramento real estate agent. I don’t always have days like that Wednesday or I would probably drop from exhaustion. In addition to receiving an award from Leading Real Estate Companies of the World at my office meeting, bringing in a breakfast item for a potluck to honor veteran and former SAR president Barbara Harsch, and adding another curb scrape to the front lip spoiler on my car on my way to drop it at the body shop, it seems like everything happened in three’s. First, I took 3 new listings: met with the sellers, inspected the homes, shot my photographs, signed all the paperwork, explained how showings work, all that stuff.
Lyon Real Estate and I are bringing to the Sacramento spring home selling market today a gorgeous remodeled home in East Sacramento at 700 San Antonio Way at $649,000. The attention to detail in this remodel is astounding. Another new listing is a home in Carmichael, just north of Fair Oaks and east of California Street at 6145 Fountaindale Way at $350,000. This is a single-level, open floor plan with vaults and attached deck, surrounded by mature landscaping, built in 1992. The third new listing is located at 17 Oasis Court, which is on a culdesac, built in 2008 (among newer homes in central Sacramento), with 4 bedrooms and 2 baths at the affordable price of $195,000.
On top of this, I put 3 listings into contract and into escrow. Like the home of my Elk Grove seller who almost had a heart attack. I picked up 3 new clients by answering my phone as I was driving around Sacramento, too. We’re just getting started in this Sacramento spring selling season. See, focus. That’s the name of the game, and an agent must be on top of her game. Besides, it was too rainy to take my daily bike ride through Land Park yesterday anyway.
How Soon Should You Call Your Sacramento Agent?
A potential seller called yesterday to ask how far in advance she should talk with an East Sacramento agent about putting her home in Elmhurst on the market. She didn’t want to jump the gun or make too many plans before they were ready to sell, but on the other hand, she wanted to be prepared for the sale and have some kind of idea how much she might net from the sale.
One of the things she expected to do was replace a deck because she thought the buyer’s lender would force the repairs. See, the thing is unless it’s attached to the house, it probably won’t be considered for the pest report. Besides, a seller’s opinion and a buyer’s opinion might differ, so this is where consulting a local real estate agent comes in. An experienced agent’s advice can be invaluable.
It’s never too early to talk with an agent. I am working with some sellers months in advance of selling a home in the Sacramento area. Some homes are occupied by tenants, and it’s almost always better to show that home without a tenant in it, so we wait for leases to expire. Other sellers have personal family situations that make home selling at the moment difficult but easier down the road, not to mention, there is such a thing as timing the market in Sacramento because our spring and fall markets are the strongest.
We have cutting-edge echnology at our disposal in real estate. You might use Skype to to chat with your kids across the country, but a Sacramento real estate agent will use FaceTime to take an out-of-area seller on a tour of their home. I FaceTimed sellers in Texas yesterday and was able to show them mold in the bath, potential dry-rot on the eaves, weathered cabinets, a cracked tile, overgrown vegetation, and literally walk them through their home in Elk Grove as we talked, without them physically present.
If you’re thinking about preparing your home for sale and want to work with an agent, one of the services we provide is helping a seller get ready to sell. You can call this Sacramento real estate agent, Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916 233 6759. It’s never too early to talk.
