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Sacramento Agents Display Patience for a First-Time Home Buyer
Many first-time home buyers find Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub on their cellphone.
So many first-time home buyers in Sacramento find my name in Google when they are looking for property. All they have to do is put in a property address and much of the time, my website shows up. I’m not entirely certain how or why that happens, but I bet it’s because I am outrageously active online and have been in the real estate business forever. You can’t hardly click on a website about Sacramento homes for sale without finding my smiling face. It’s a tough choice for consumers, but not nearly as tough as some would make it.
Not nearly as tough either as, say, choosing the winners for the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016. The way I read the nominees and how they vote, the members eligible to vote can choose to vote for only 3 non-performing nominees, two performing nominees and one dead person. This hardly seems fair when the two dead people up for nomination are George Harrison and Jimi Hendrix. Both were incredibly talented and made an enormous impact on the music industry through songwriting.
But you know who will probably win, the older guy will win. The one who has been around longer and with whom more people identify. Much as I love George Harrison, I really wish Jimi Hendrix would win. Not just because he’s part of that rock-stars-who-died-at-27 group but, like Paul Allen has publicly expressed, Jimi Hendrix holds a special place in my heart as well. Part of that appeal could be due to LSD, hard to say, and I don’t think Paul Allen would argue that point. Allen still has a museum display honoring Jimi Hendrix at the Experience Music Project, which my husband and I had visited in Seattle when it opened but has over the years morphed into something else called EMP.
Tough choice, that dead person category. Not so tough as to which agent to work with in Sacramento. A first-time home buyer called yesterday to ask about condos in the Pocket and what he thought was my listing. It had my name on it, he said. He could not remember where he saw the property except that it was online. I am so many places online that even I don’t know where all of my marketing is these days. It’s everywhere. Still, even though it wasn’t my listing, I offered to help. It was only a $100,000 condo, but if I didn’t help him, who would?
Not only was that condo in pending status since June — June? Hello? Nothing can be pending since June unless there is something very odd going on. It was originally pending short lender approval and since June pending? That’s unlikely. But I also noticed a withdrawn listing that was the same model. Now, we have several avenues to pursue and follow up for that buyer. At least he is on automatic listings now so whenever a new condo hits the market, he will get that listing, and we might be able to show him both of the other condos. One way or another, we will help this first-time home buyer buy a home and close escrow.
Why Real Estate Teams Are Hot for Sacramento Home Buyers
Clockwise from top: Victoria, Josh, Dianne, Barbara, Elizabeth, Shaundra
When I first started working at Lyon Real Estate, I had considered joining a team because it seemed like the way to go. I was new in town and didn’t know a soul. Fortunately, the manager of the office steered me in the right direction. She said, no, no, no, Elizabeth, you do not belong on a team, and being a team member would drive you nuts. If anything, you need to head a team, be a team leader. I wasn’t sure what that meant back then, but boy, I sure do today.
I don’t recall exactly when I started my team, either. It just sorta happened, in an organic way, and it has evolved into the Elizabeth Weintraub Team that our clients love. We put our clients first. I know that sounds hokey to some of you, and some of you are probably heckling under your breath, saying, yeah, right, but it is true.
Working as a team means a client always has representation. It means as a home buyer, for example, a client has at least two agents at all times working for her or him. My stellar team members, Barbara Dow, Josh Amolsch and Dianne Slutsky, work independently and they work together as a team and they work with me. We strategize together. When it’s time to write an offer, we put our heads together and come up with a plan. Barbara, Josh and Dianne for example, might all have an idea that did not occur to me and vice versa.
The focus of this real estate team is to make sure our buyers win the home they want and that our sellers get top dollar. We respond immediately. If you call one of us, and we’re on the other line, we call you right back. If you send us a text, we respond. If you email, we mail you. If a team member is with another client and cannot talk at the moment, and you need an answer NOW, you are free to call me at all times or another team member.
Home buyers and sellers can’t get this kind of service from a single agent because it’s impossible. But a real estate team can give it to you. You might have to try us to believe it. We work to exceed your expectations. Real estate teams are the wave of the future. Call the Elizabeth Weintraub Team at 916.233.6759.
WSJ, Trulia and Zillow List Best Real Estate Agents in America
Best Real Estate Agents in America for 2015
The purpose behind the Real Trends 1000 List of Best Real Estate Agents in America is to sell crap to the agents on the list. Being named to this list means I will endure yet another year of harassment and haranguing from manufacturers who want to make me a plaque to celebrate my accomplishments and charge me an enormous sum for the privilege of hanging the ugly thing on my wall so our 3 cats can shoot spitballs at it. Real Trends will also sell my name to thousands of spammers. It’s the price of success, and it sorta sucks. Still, it also means the Elizabeth Weintraub Team ranks #7 in the Sacramento region, which is impressive, I suppose.
Real Trends now works in collaboration with the Wall Street Journal, Zillow and Trulia. Every year they put out a list of the best agents in America.
A couple of new clients called yesterday to request help with Sacramento real estate, people who probably did not know this list exists yet called me anyway. One was a buyer who said he had previously worked with a team in Nevada and was thrilled with the results. Because it’s difficult for one person to be in 10 places at the same time unless that person has a team for support. He gets it. He understands why working a team is the way to go. Happy-as-clam clients, that’s what we strive for. Clients for whom we strive to meet every need. Instantly.
This buyer wants to move his family to either Curtis Park or East Sacramento, probably with a more dedicated focus on homes in Land Park. Those neighborhoods happen to be my specialty. I live in Land Park. He hit the jackpot with us. I personally match buyers to team members who possess intimate knowledge, and we work together to make magic happen.
He knows the benefits of working with a team in Sacramento, so one less thing to explain. It doesn’t cost extra to get a team to work for you, either.
Another client, a seller with a home in Natomas, called to talk about sales strategy and market conditions. She wants me to list her home in Natomas as soon as the tenant moves out next month. She found me online and read my reviews. She gets it. As a natural course of progression in these types of conversations, she asked how much I charge, and I explained my standard fee that has remained unchanged over the past 40 years. Then, I went one step further to justify and to explain that she can find some cheap-ass agent, and she cut me off right there.
Said she’s been down that road with an agent who would cut the commission, and she does NOT want to work with a discount agent. I don’t blame her. She understands the value full-service agents bring, and knows the entire transaction will be smoother and she’ll make more money with an agent who is full service. And she’s absolutely right. I love working with smart people.
While my team and I are honored to be on the list of the best real estate agents in America, we much prefer focusing on clients and making them happy. I work with my sellers one-on-one by providing personalized and customized service. My sellers enjoy the privilege of sole access to me. I handle the listings and my team shows homes. That’s what sustains a successful Sacramento real estate business year after year. Not the top 1000 list of best agents.
Agents Must be Qualified to Work on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team
Josh Amolsch, Dianne Slutsky, Elizabeth Weintraub, Barbara Dow
You can’t make up this stuff. Yesterday morning at 7:33, midstream reading the Sacramento Bee and chewing a piece of gluten-free whole-grain toast, I noticed my cell phone vibrate on the kitchen table. Local caller. I picked it up. The caller asked if it was too early to call. Now, you’d think she would have considered that fact before entering my phone number . . . I responded: obviously not since I answered. I can be a smart aleck sometimes. She wanted to know if I am a top producer Sacramento Realtor like she read on my website, sounding as though she wondered if I misrepresented myself.
Just what one wants to hear early in the morning. Are you an honest person? I asked who she was and what she wanted, which seemed to somewhat bristle her. She repeated her question. Why, why does this 7:33 AM caller want to know how much money I make, and why is she interrupting my breakfast?
Turns out she wanted to know if I would consider putting together a team of agents and whether I would hire her if she got her real estate license. You’d think the first thing she would have done was peruse my website to determine that the Elizabeth Weintraub Team already exists, and she could have looked over my closed listings to realize that I am indeed a top producer Sacramento Realtor, but not everybody has the patience nor the where-with-all to successfully navigate online.
Eyeing my carton of non-fat Greek yogurt, although not with the same intensity and drooly attention as our cat, Pica, I moved quickly to end the call by saying I don’t hire new agents. You’ve got to have experience and be fully qualified to work on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. Oh, says, the caller, the conversation was over then. Thank goodness. Except it wasn’t.
She went on to flatly state there is a bubble next summer and wondered if I was aware. She heard it on the radio. What is this? Jehovah’s Witnesses on my doorstep at 7:30? We still have thousands of homeowners underwater in Sacramento. Very few homes for sale. I suggested that maybe this is not the best time for her to be entering the real estate industry if she truly believes a bubble is about to burst. She followed that up by insisting she was a very intelligent woman who has a mortgage lender’s license, and had once sold her own home which, in her mind, makes her fully qualified to work to work on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team.
No, no, shoot me now. And then it got worse.
You don’t need a Realtor to sell a home, she insisted. Well, why didn’t she tell me THAT in the first place because I had no idea my services were completely useless. It’s so easy, she continued, all you have to do is call a title company. What? Even experienced agents are struggling to close transactions in today’s market — the world of Sacramento real estate is extremely complicated — and here is this nitwit who wants to enter a profession she truly believes is unnecessary?
I considered referring her to my office manager but then I might have to see her face in my office, and she would be disruptive to others around us, give more undeserving Realtors a bad name, and decided against it. Just wished her well and pitied the next agent she undoubtedly will disturb.
Why You Want to Work with the Elizabeth Weintraub Team
Josh Amolsch, Dianne Slutsky, Elizabeth Weintraub, Barbara Dow
If you’re a potential seller in the Sacramento valley who is ready to hire a Sacramento Realtor as your listing agent, you might want to consider an agent like me who is the team leader, for lack of a better term, of the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. I suppose we could have named ourselves like a garage rock band but it seems easier just to use my name because it has become its own brand of sorts. And besides, who has the time to sort through all of those goofy-ass names? We’re too busy selling real estate.
The reason you might want to hire a person like me is because I will represent you. See, people don’t think about fiduciary relationships, or even care much what they mean until you stop to ponder it. Why shouldn’t you have your own Realtor who works only for you and doesn’t work for the buyer? It just makes sense, right? Why should you purposely pay a large percentage of your home’s market value to a listing agent to work against your interests? Of course, dual agency can exist in just about any transaction if two agents who work for the same broker end up with their clients in a contract, but dual representation is slightly different, which is not our focus.
As a listing agent, I focus solely on the seller. I wear blinders on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. I’m not looking around at buyers who dangle double the commission in front of my face, and those guys know who they are. I’m working for the seller. My team members are working with buyers. They might be buyers for your home or they might be buyers for another home, but I focus on sellers. If the buyers are my former clients, I generally work alongside my team members to ensure the clients get the home they want, and I’m always available to my team members for consultations and brainstorming, should they need it. But they are extremely qualified and competent to start with, which is why I chose them. We watch out for each other and fill in when needed.
I love listing and selling homes. I excel at marketing, photography, home staging. I adore negotiations and finessing counter offers. Escorting buyers to look at homes, well, not so much. So I capitalize on my forte, on my strengths. All I do, just about every single day, is work on selling my listings. Tweaking, rearranging, networking.
It doesn’t cost anything extra to hire a Realtor who is a team leader of the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. Well all work for the same broker, like a small company within a larger company. I was first licensed in this business in the 1970s, and I have a background in title and am a former certified escrow officer. I almost went to law school, too, but then decided that career didn’t pay enough and would have interfered with my real estate business. There are only so many hours in the day, you know.
Some people think I’m sort of a doofus in the way I operate because I believe strongly in doing the very best job I can. They say: just take the job, sign that listing, and get on with it. But we all need to cling to something in this business, and I choose personal integrity. Doofus as that may sound to some, it probably doesn’t sound that way to you. You can call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Even after all these years, I still answer my phone.
