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Do You Know Why You are Calling This Sacramento REALTOR?
Elizabeth Weintraub, Sacramento REALTOR, at antique phone booth in Dunsmuir, California
When a Sacramento REALTOR answers her phone all day long, she tends to engage with a wide assortment of callers. It doesn’t seem to work the other way around because most other people do not answer a phone call. It’s far too inconvenient to talk on the phone for many people. Texting or emailing is preferred today. People don’t want to hear the sound of each other’s voices, I suspect. It’s an intrusion. Therefore, if I want to ensure that I most likely will NOT engage in a conversation, all I have to do is tap my phone and call somebody. That phone call will go to voice mail where I can chat to my heart’s content and leave a message that will get ignored.
I get communication coming at me from all angles every single day. Text messages that show up on my computer if I’m at my home office, and simultaneous text messages appear on my cell. Ditto for emails, although the push generally comes through my computer, and they come from 3 accounts, plus there is a fourth account I check a couple of times a day. And there is always the ringing phone of opportunity. In my drawer is the graveyard of used Bluetooth devices, at least a half dozen. I am using a new Plantronics device that engages once I insert the piece into my ear, which is very handy. Plus, if I’m in the midst of a manicure, it offers hands-free answering.
Because I answer my phone, it’s the luck of the draw what I get. Often lately it’s other real estate agents asking if some random listing belongs to me. They can retrieve this information from MLS but they don’t bother. The main reason they are calling is because their buyers found a property online and spotted my name and phone number or the buyer ended up on my website. It’s common for agents to look up a property address on their own cellphones and end up on my website as well. If they belong to the 90% of the agent population who don’t sell very many homes, they are probably unfamiliar with how mobile websites work and simply do not understand why the listing does not belong to me. I continue to insist the listings are not mine but they don’t grasp the notion. It can progress to the point where I have to look up the address in MLS and give these agents the listing agent’s contact information just to get rid of them.
Still, it’s good news that I enjoy a big presence online. It means that the Weintraub listings I do have receive excellent exposure, and they are posted everywhere. You can’t tool around online and not find homes for sale listed by this Sacramento REALTOR.
I get my share of spam calls, especially from Homes dot com and I continue to file reports at the Do Not Call Registry. I ask Homes dot com not to call me, and I tell them I am on the DNC list but they call anyway. Blocking callers doesn’t always work. They are relentless. You know who else is relentless? My Elizabeth Weintraub Team members. They try to call and email and text every single person who contacts us to buy a home, and they follow up like no tomorrow. Which is why we don’t need the new Zillow service, recently offered to certain top real estate agents for free (at the moment, it’s sorta beta; if it works out they’ll probably charge for it).
A real estate agent called yesterday to ask if she could book my services to stage a home. This was a strange and puzzling call. Well, she had read an article I had written for About.com about Home Staging and decided, for some odd reason, that I was a home stager. I guess she missed the print at the bottom identifying me as a broker-associate in Sacramento at Lyon Real Estate. I shared the news that I am a Sacramento REALTOR and asked if she knew what that meant. Hey, you never know where people register on the bell curve.
I also referred the caller to a home stager in Sacramento, but the agent said she had already tried that company and those home stagers were booked for this week. Well, yes, you have to give home stagers some notice. It’s called planning your listing. The good home stagers are always booked. Still, these types of calls don’t stop me from answering my phone. Ya gotta maintain a positive outlook about it and keep that sense of humor.
Top Sacramento Listing Agent Ranks #70 Nationally
The brokerage your Sacramento listing agent works for makes a difference — which is yet one more reason for sellers to interview agents from competing brokerages and not from the same brokerage. Some agent from Illinois wrote this morning to say she disagreed with an article I wrote for About.com — and that’s not the first time some agent has approached such an issue with disdain and horror, as though they were splashed by a spoonful of spaghetti sauce flipped off a spoon held by yours truly and directed with precision at the front of their white shirts.
There are many reasons not to interview an agent from the same brokerage much less the same real estate office, but marketing provided by the brokerage is a strong reason. Sellers should see how other brokerages market their listings, and if all they’re doing is comparing one apple to other apples in the office, they won’t see the differences among brokerages.
This is not to say that all agents are the same because all agents are not the same. It’s like a bell curve. Plus, every agent offers a different education level, experiences, marketing, strategies, analytical reasoning and they sometimes talk to each other in the office about listing presentations. If you are a seller interviewing two agents in the same office, they might even talk about you, a common element they share. It’s human nature and to suppose otherwise is a bit naive.
It’s the same as believing that maybe Nixon was not a crook. Maybe Clinton didn’t have sex with that woman. Perhaps there is no revolving door between corporate America and government. Maybe the 99% are at fault and deserve what they get. Maybe the honeybees are dying because they’re supposed to. Maybe the world is flat after all.
Of course, if you’re listing with an agent at Lyon Real Estate, you’re getting a brokerage that ranks #1 in Sacramento. A brokerage that spends a ton of money on advertising and support for its agents’ listings. Real Trends issued a report this month showcasing the top 500 agents in the country. The Elizabeth Weintraub Team ranked #70 in America for last year’s number of sales. I never thought I’d see the day that I ranked in the top 100 teams in the country. That just blows me away. See what happens when you’re busy?
The downside is Real Trends and its affiliates now want to sell me every kind of statue, plaque and award thingie, and even Trulia has hopped on the bandwagon. Criminy.
This is What Sacramento Real Estate Agents Work For
The public doesn’t really know why people choose a career in real estate and what Sacramento real estate agents work for. They see the financial rewards and sometimes that’s as far as they get with their thought process. They think the end result is that paycheck, and while money helps to pay the bills, it’s not the reason we sell Sacramento real estate. It’s not what we live for and work for.
Most Sacramento real estate agents, believe it or not, are really in the business to help people. We have a specialty, a knowledge, a skill set and experience to guide our buyers and sellers to a successful closing. There are those of us, we hate to say, who sometimes don’t perform, like the agent who was previously working with a buyer who just closed escrow this week with Barbara Dow from the Elizabeth Weintraub Team.
When the buyer called about this particular home, I asked if she was working with an agent, just like I always ask. She said yes, and continued to clarify before I could disconnect. I listened. Turns out she was pretty unhappy with her agent and felt very disappointed in her search for a home. She no longer wanted to work with that particular agent. She also had been watching the For Sale sign installation in the front yard of this particular listing, and said she was planning to sit in that yard until an agent drove by to show it to her. That’s determination.
I checked with my team members and Barbara was available to immediately show the home. She explained Agency and that we would probably receive multiple offers so the buyer needed to be very aggressive with her purchase offer. The sellers were thrilled and accepted the offer. They were happy. The buyer was happy. And the transaction closed early. The buyer wrote to Barbara after closing and said this (with personal information removed):
“You have been so awesome! You made this experience more perfect than I could have ever imagined! Seriously!!! Now I am going to brag that I have the best Realtor / Real Estate Agent (not sure what the preferred title is) EVER!!!
“I grew up thinking that happy dreams were for everyone else, but thankfully I’ve been learning . . . that I deserve happiness and happy dreams, too! Thank you for being a part of this with me. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to help me. I think that the thing I like best about you is that you are genuine, Barbara and . . . that is a quality that is not easy to find nowadays, so thank you for being YOU! And being so awesome at your job!!!”
This is what we work for. This is what matters in a real estate transaction. And it doesn’t get any better this.
New Home Listings in Roseville, Greenhaven, Fair Oaks
When I woke up to rain in Sacramento this morning, my first thought was how excited I am to work on preparing my new home listings for this month, but my second thought was April showers bring May flowers — that ditty has little to do with anything because it’s still only March and because we already have flowers. By the time April rolls around, I have summer fever. I also wish we had enough rain to end the drought, but it looks like we are in a for a long struggle and need to practice continual water conservation.
A report in the Sacramento Bee revealed most of the water consumption in the Sacramento area is in Granite Bay as residents in Granite Bay use twice as much water over Sacramento residents. Larger lots, more grass, mostly. My new listings for this month are not located in Granite Bay, although I do sell homes in Placer County. These are homes in Fair Oaks, Greenhaven and Roseville, all areas I know very well. When you sell homes all over Sacramento like I do, it’s nice to be able to pick and choose which homes I want to sell and which sellers I want to represent.
While I’m selecting my new projects, homeowners are also selecting the agent they want to work with, and goodness knows, they have a huge selection from which to choose. A seller shared with me last week that one of the reasons she chose to hire Elizabeth Weintraub over the other agents she interviewed was because I did not talk AT her; I talked with her. Of course I talked with her, because that’s how I talk. Plus, I need to get to know my sellers on a personal level so I can best communicate and deliver the type of service they want. Make them not just happy but ecstatic. You can’t do that if you’re talking AT people.
If you are looking for a home in Greenhaven, Fair Oaks or Roseville, you will love this selection. First, they are all equity (traditional sales) homes, so you can close in 30 days. The home in Greenhaven sports gorgeous hardwood floors and an oversized lot, located in a pretty, tucked-away neighborhood, ready for immediate occupancy, under $300,000. The home in Fair Oaks boasts granite, is an updated and spacious single-level and offers country living in the city, priced under $400,000. The single-level home in Roseville features matted cherry cabinets throughout, granite counters, ceramic and marble floors, a popular model with a beautifully landscaped back yard, also priced under $400,000.
If you are a buyer working with the Elizabeth Weintraub Team, you’ll get first glimpse of these homes as they come on the market. All of our buyers tend to enjoy a bit of an edge in the Sacramento marketplace, and it’s not because they’re working with the smartest agents I know, but that certainly helps.
Downton Abbey Preview at the Crest Theatre
When I spotted seemingly free tickets to the Season 4 premiere of Downton Abbey, I snatched up four for my Elizabeth Weintraub Team to attend, along with my husband, of course — who will tell you he doesn’t matter because he jokes that that’s what I say when I do not. Tickets were free so a couple of cruise lines and a clothing designer could get our names and addresses, because I was required to register. Not only that, but KVIE collected another 250 names and addresses as backups in case anybody canceled.
Yet, still, none of us was allowed to sit in the lower front section of the theater because all of those seats were reserved for corporate sponsors. We did not allow this kind of marketing to damper our enthusiasm for Downton Abbey. After all, we are Sacramento real estate agents and we put up with worse stuff during our work week. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that KVIE could have sold seats for $100 a piece and people would have paid it, so there must be some kind of non-profit rules that prohibited it.
The Crest Theatre sold refreshments and there was a wine / beer section. There were not enough employees staffing the refreshment stands, and the lines were long. Not to mention, the night was pretty chilly for downtown Sacramento in December.
So, that’s all of the downside. The upside, of course, is the fact my team and I, along with my husband who doesn’t matter, got a chance to see the first hour of Downton Abbey Season 4, which is not showing in the United States until January 5th. Some of us have no patience. That’s another reason to go into real estate. Nah, I’m not gonna give you any spoilers.
My husband prepared cocktails and appetizers for a pre-theatre get-together at our home in Land Park. The photo above is Elizabeth Weintraub, with the always delightful Barbara Dow on the right. Linda Swanson was planning to come dressed as a maid but she had a prior appointment in Elk Grove to show a home. You know how that would go over. Like, who is this? Why is Mrs. Bates showing me a house?
