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Not All Short Sale Homes in Elk Grove Should Sell as a Short Sale
The number of Elk Grove short sales are declining
Why would a homeowner in Sacramento or Elk Grove do a short sale if the homeowner didn’t have to? That’s a question that’s been plaguing me because from a logical point of view it just doesn’t make any sense. What kind of real estate agent would railroad a seller into short sale status if that seller could sell as a regular traditional sale and not take the hit to her credit report, much less her emotional state of mind? As a Sacramento REALTOR, we are all required by the Code of Ethics to do what is in the best interests of our sellers.
To be fair, railroad might be a strong word. An agent might be completely clueless, I suppose, or an agent might be tempted to take the path of least resistance, that which seems easiest to her. Selling a home on the edge of a short sale as a regular sale can be tricky and complicated, but it can be done because I do it. Fast appreciation from spring of 2013 has turned many would-be Sacramento short sales into equity sales. It makes my heart break when I see a home sold as a short sale within a few dollars of being a traditional equity sale. It makes me wonder why a little more money could not have been squeezed from the sale, and why nobody tried to do it. It is laziness? Ignorance? Or, does the term railroad apply?
Take this homeowner in Elk Grove, for example. This is a guy who wanted to put his home on the market last fall because his wife was losing her job — a typical story in today’s real estate market. They called because they wanted to hire the best Sacramento short sale agent they could find. The problem was the home was cluttered, not that it needed to sell as a short sale. OK, every room was filled to the brim just about. Bedrooms filled with boxes. It was like a person came home from the grocery store to unpack the bags and just never put anything away except stuff that needed refrigeration.
The sellers were told to move out and into their rental property. Once the home in Elk Grove was vacated and the carpets were shampooed, it would show very well. The sellers were fairly well positioned to salvage credit and make a tidy profit. Instead, shortly thereafter, the sellers hired a “friend of a friend” and sold the home as a short sale . . . and a fixer, to boot. Later, the sellers sheepishly apologized to their first real estate agent and admitted they had probably done the wrong thing; they had panicked.
What’s done is done. No need to say anything negative about their present real estate agent.
My mother always said if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Of course, our REALTOR Code of Ethics requires it, too.
Van Morrison, Nob Hill and a New Elk Grove Listing
The last time I stayed on Nob Hill in San Francisco was a few years ago, before my friend Rose Mary and her husband retired to Boston. Rose Mary worked in my real estate office alongside me as a Sacramento real estate agent, and her husband has an MBA in taxation, which made him an excellent guy to do taxes. We had suggested they join us for a quick trip to San Francisco for dinner, followed by a concert at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Well, by quick trip, I mean it’s about 90 minutes by car in good traffic.
Rose Mary and her husband drove. My husband and I road the Capitol Corridor train from Sacramento and caught a ride back home with them. I scoured the Internet for a good hotel rate. Our friends used Hotwire. They hoped to score a 3-star hotel at a 1-star rate, which is sensible. I, on the other hand, being less sensible, hoped to score a fabulous suite at a discounted price. We landed one of the Telegraph Suites on the 19th floor of The Fairmont Hotel at about 50% off. The room offered panoramic views of the city, from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate. To our delight, we had a personal telescope allowing closeup views of Alcatraz.
I don’t recall the band we went to see. I only remember the torture for Rose Mary and her husband. It wasn’t Laurie Anderson, this time, that was another time, and yet they still accompanied us to this concert. Maybe it was The Twilight Singers, with Greg Dulli? In any case, we could not get seating together, which meant my husband and I had assigned seating in the balcony but Rose Mary and her husband had standing room only on the first floor.
The evening didn’t end well. Rose Mary threw up in the bushes outside of the Great American Music Hall, for no apparent reason. But I bet she felt like a kid again.
Our second time staying on Nob Hill in San Francisco, we could not obtain such a great rate at the Fairmont Hotel, so we settled for a suite at the Huntington Hotel, overlooking Huntington Park. The suite is spacious but the bathroom is very tiny. Management thought to provide coffee service from 5 AM to 7 AM in the lobby for travelers from New York, but there is no self-service coffee machines in the rooms.
We came to San Francisco’s Nob Hill this time to see Van Morrison.
But first, let me tell you about my new Elk Grove listing that came on the market early this morning. This is a regular sale in Elk Grove, more than 3700 square feet, with 6 bedrooms and 4 baths. Two bedrooms, one of which is the master suite, are located on the first floor. The other four are on the second floor, along with a giant great room boasting hardwood floors, which was used as a media room. The second floor also has a built-in office space in the hall.
It’s located in the desirable Britschgi Ranch off of Bond Road. This was the last home built in the subdivision, in 2008. It shows like a model. It features clerestory windows, soaring ceilings, and a large open floor plan. You will find many upgrades. Even the rounded windows are covered in custom plantation shutters. Perfect new Elk Grove listing.
Best of all, it is affordable. 9244 Crowell Drive, Elk Grove, CA 95624 is exclusively offered by Lyon Real Estate at $499,000. Call Elizabeth Weintraub, your Elk Grove agent, at 916.233.6759. Even though I am in Nob Hill, I still work on my listing in Elk Grove, like I do all of my listings.
Crooks and Real Estate and the Internet
My husband used to cover criminal courts as a beat newspaper reporter in Chicago, and he says crooks get caught because many crooks are stupid. Can’t say that I know very many crooks, if any, but my personal feelings are if a person is stupid enough to be a crook when the other choice is to not be a crook, it seems likely that the person is stupid enough to make a stupid mistake.
I’m not talking about the people who are starving for a baloney sandwich and nobody will give them any money as they stand begging at the corner of the freeway, so they swipe a loaf of bread from the corner grocery; I mean the guys who would knife you in an alley and grab your wallet, along with your wedding ring. Or, kick in the door of your home and run off with your big screen TV after pulling out all of your copper plumbing.
Speaking of which, another seller in Sacramento just had his AC unit stolen from the yard while selling his home. I mentioned this to sellers yesterday as I listed their home in Elk Grove. Some people install cages over their exterior AC units. But this couple have a neighbor who kind of sounds like Gladys Kravitz, so they will probably be OK. I have neighbors like that in Land Park, and one of them is a retired police officer. There was once a time when you didn’t want anybody poking a nose into your business, but not so anymore.
Which brings me to the point, and I apologize for the long-about way I went to get here, that not only are we dealing with real-life crooks in Sacramento who are in our faces, but we have crooks who run amuck all over the Internet. These people don’t think of themselves as crooks, which makes it even more challenging. However, they swipe content that belongs to the person who wrote it and post it on their website as original content. That qualifies for crookism.
Now, I think it’s bad enough when a Sacramento real estate agent, for example, hires a professional writer to write a blog for that agent, because that’s not what blogging is about and it’s misrepresentation in my book, but it’s a hundred times worse when they intentionally swipe content.
Imagine my surprise this morning when I came across a response in Trulia that was copied and pasted by an agent in San Francisco, and it was my words that this agent swiped. Not only that, but it was my words from a response to another post I made on Trulia. So, he stole the content from the same website that he plagiarized. Where I, the original author, would likely spot it.
I noticed it because I recognized my own words. Most people don’t write like I write. I string phrases together and use certain words in a way that other people don’t. It’s one of the reasons why About.com hired me. I have a unique voice. And when somebody tries to take it from me, I will put a stop to it.
You can’t take photographs or words or articles that you find online and republish them. Everything online is copyrighted, and to reprint, a person needs permission. You can’t just give credit to the person who wrote the piece, either without obtaining permission. Getty Images is suing a real estate agent because she re-blogged (with permission), another agent’s blog (not mine), and the image in that blog belonged to Getty Images.
The moral to all of this blathering is help the hungry, don’t swipe AC units, and don’t steal online material.
When One Thing is Not Like the Other Things
A Sacramento real estate agent needs to possess extraordinary powers of observation, just like a journalist. My late father-in-law, a former Chicago Sun Times journalist, would often boast to strangers (and his family) that he was a “proFESSional obSERVer,” which was generally used in a conversation to support dissent, to build a case for his opposing point of view. Half-jest but half-serious, too.
Sometimes, an agent can tap a simple component in the power of observation by isolating and analyzing the one odd thing that stands out from the others. This happens when one thing is not like the other things. Let’s take a situation when sellers receive multiple offers from buyers for, say, single-level homes in Elk Grove. Even better if a single-level Elk Grove home is located on a cul-de-sac, with hardwood floors throughout and a 3-car garage. Then, in the middle of dozens of offers arrives a lone cash offer for significantly more money. Sort of stands out like a sore thumb. Like when one thing is not like the other things.
That offer would be the one thing that is not like the other things. A seller might want to grab that offer and latch on to it like Gollum stroking his precious ring. This is the part in which a Sacramento real estate agent might caution the seller, and make sure the seller understands the possible consequences. When one thing is not like the other things, something might be wrong.
For example, I wandered through my vegetable garden a few days ago, on a hunt for ripened serrano peppers. Because it’s October, the garden is overgrown; oddly enough, we have tiny little tomatillos that are no bigger than an olive. For some reason, the tomatillos are fairing poorly this year; their entangled vines are crawling up the sides of another garden box, blocking the path. My focus was on the tomatillos, wondering whether my husband is right and we should yank them out.
As I passed the hydrangeas, something caught my eye. Among the decaying purple and pink flowers, I spotted a peculiar object. Whoa. It was not like the others. It was a cucumber. That stopped me in my tracks. A cucumber does not belong there. This is one thing that is not like the other things. The cucumber had crept over on a vine and worked its way up the hydrangea branch. Just the right size, too. I plucked it and ate it on the spot.
That is an example of when it’s a good thing that one thing is not like the other things. Sometimes, though, when one thing is not like the other things, it can be a bad thing.
Take the cash buyer who offered way above everybody else for that home in Elk Grove. The cash buyer caused the sellers unnecessary stress and commotion throughout the entire transaction. Demanded kickbacks, insisted the seller pay for an inspection that the buyer ordered himself and made up his own rules as he went along. The buyer reneged on verbal assurances and in general made himself a royal pain to the seller. At closing, he made his buyer’s agent wait four hours at the home, in an empty house, to deliver the keys.
Three New Home Listings in Sacramento Metro
As a Sacramento real estate agent who lists a lot of homes, I’ve got to replenish inventory that closes with more homes for sale. It’s the same with anything in life. If I run low on milk, for example, I might have to stop by the store on the way home and pick up another carton. I apply the same principle to items in my own home. If I buy a new piece of furniture or article of clothing, something else must go out the door. It’s a system of checks and balances. It also means after a few homes close escrow, more homes had better go on the market or this agent would soon run out of homes to sell.
Fortunately, the replenish system has been working well for me. I love to sell homes, even if I have to sell homes twice. You’d kind of expect that to happen in a short sale but not in a regular real estate transaction. Two homes that should have closed escrow last month did not, and they canceled. Both were traditional sales involving buyers who could not get a loan at the very last minute. The files sat in underwriting and were spit out. Denied.
Both sellers were understandably distressed and dismayed. I get their pain. In one situation, I told the seller that I was confident we would put the home back on the market, sell it for more money, and he’d look back at this particular cancellation and say it’s the best thing that could have happened. That was my intuition talking.
I love it when my intuition is right. It generally is, and I can rely on it. That’s exactly what happened, too. The next buyer paid cash, no appraisal. In the other sale, the replacement buyer had written a contingent offer. Sellers are often wary of contingent offers, but they can also be used as a benefit. And the contingent offer buyer removed the contingency within a couple of weeks and closed as well. Both of these escrows closed on Friday.
I’ve replaced these two sales with three more listings: An energy-efficient home in West Sacramento near the river at $240,000. An Elk Grove home, updated kitchen with granite counters, new appliances and wood floors, featuring 4-5 bedrooms, more than 2,700 square feet, turn-key ready at $395,000. These homes are open for viewing this afternoon. And last, but not least, a short sale home in Sacramento near Calvine, offering allergy-free floors, 3 bedrooms, formal living room with a brick fireplace and cozy family room at $225,000. Check out my new listings:
142 4th Street, West Sacramento, CA 95605
