Email Elizabethelk grove agent
35 Offers for a Home in Elk Grove
I was so busy last night dealing with purchase offers that I did not have time to call my sister at our usual time to chat. She’s snowed under in Minnesota and freezing her tootsies off. I, on the other hand, am observing goldfinches swoop from my crepe myrtle tree to our water fountain and back. That’s what those birds do, over and over. It provides an excellent show for the cats, which is why we moved the water fountain to the middle of the cactus garden.
It’s nice to have some kind of control over one’s environment because there is no control over the real estate market in Sacramento. It’s simply insane. All together we received 35 offers for a home in Elk Grove. This Elk Grove agent held it open Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon to try to draw a different type of crowd. I posted that home everywhere online, splashed it from one end of the Internet to the other. Tweaked the photographs — agonized over choosing the best among 50 or so for the front photograph — enhanced the colors, eliminated the shadows, all in all I’d say it looks fabulous online. Enough to attract 35 offers from buyers all wanting to buy that home in Elk Grove.
Of the 35 offers, about one in four was an investor. The rest were owner occupants, people who wanted to live there. Two of the offers were less than the sales price, which makes one wonder about those buyers. Seven of the offers were at list price, which makes one wonder about those buyers, too. That meant almost 1 out of 3 offers had absolutely zero chance of acceptance upon inception. Yet, it also meant 2 out of 3 buyers actually had a chance to buy the home. See, the odds are improving. You may think it is hopeless to write an offer, but it is not.
One offer stood out above all the rest. I suggested to the seller that they counter the top four offers, but they picked the offer that gave them exactly what they wanted. That was their choice; it’s their home. That buyer’s agent read the confidential agent remarks and addressed the sellers’ concerns, in addition to writing a perfect purchase contract at a satisfactory price and terms. The hard part was telling 34 other buyer’s agents: you will not go to space today. It was important enough to do that I didn’t call my sister. I hope she forgives me.
How Long Will It Take to Sell My Home in Elk Grove?
Last week I talked to a seller who lives in the ZIP of 95757 in Elk Grove. I sell a lot of homes in that ZIP code, probably because so many of them are short sales, but some of them are not. It’s a desirable place to live, and some neighborhoods are located in a certain school district, which enforces the desirability of those subdivisions. This seller asked me how long it takes to sell homes in Elk Grove, and I told him we would be in escrow within 7 to 14 days, and probably closer to 3 to 7 days. His jaw dropped, but that reaction is expected because that’s what everybody does when this Elk Grove agent explains the market.
What’s going on in the market in Elk Grove and the Sacramento area in general is so wild and crazy that it’s difficult to believe. That’s in part because we’ve been depressed for so long. It’s like tying a circus elephant’s leg to a stake. The elephant eventually will give up moving, and you can remove the stake, and the elephant will stay there. It’s conditioned. And PETA will get after you for that. Yet in Elk Grove, homes are moving into pending very quickly and there are no consequences.
Unless you’re like this seller in Elk Grove I was talking to. When I showed him the pending sales to prove how quickly homes were selling, he looked at the numbers and snorted. He said the sellers were selling too quickly and for too little. Because he’s sold so many homes in his life that added up to the number 2, he knows for a fact the sellers in Elk Grove gave away money. Which is one way to look at it. Except they didn’t. They sold according to the market. They let the market dictate. And the market responded favorably for them.
Putting a home on the market for 30 days without accepting any of the dozens of offers you’ll receive is insanity. Because offer #29 isn’t going to be the highest offer. Neither is #30. Your highest offer will be among those received in the first 7 to 10 days. After three weeks, interest dies off. People begin to wonder what’s wrong.
My goal, as your Elk Grove listing agent, is to attract as many buyers as possible and let them bid for your home. In a seller’s market, like our present market in Elk Grove, a newer home in a popular subdivision priced between $200,000 and $300,000 will quickly sell. If your home is drop-dead gorgeous, buyers will be lined up down the block. An experienced Elk Grove agent can take one look at your home and tell you how quickly it will sell. Of course, selling is only the first step; you’ve got to get it closed and that’s another blog.
I will say this, if I were the owner of a food or ice cream truck, I would be driving around Elk Grove on the weekends.
A 3-Lockbox Friday for This Sacramento Agent
This Sacramento real estate agent should be adding 3 more homes to the inventory in the Sacramento area on Monday. It’s a small contribution to our sorry state of affairs in the Sacramento real estate market. We have fewer than 1,500 homes for sale in Sacramento at the moment, which is miniscule and does not meet the demand. This means when a potential seller calls to say he or she wants to put a home on the market, this Sacramento agent does her best to accommodate without delay.
I was driving back from Elk Grove where I have a lot of listings when I got the call to Rocklin. I seem to list and sell an unusually high number of homes in Elk Grove, even though I do not live there. I live in Land Park. Probably because so many are short sales in Elk Grove, and I am the best Sacramento REALTOR to handle short sales. Yet, a few that are not short sales are creeping into my listings. I closed a regular home in Elk Grove that comped out at the top around $245,000, and with one-eye closed and clenched teeth we pushed the limit to meet the rising pending demand to $259,000, yet it sold for all cash at $280,000.
Buyers are desperate to buy a home today. It’s hard to pick a sales price because it’s hard to predict how high a buyer might decide to go or how far out an appraiser will go to appraise. I realize sellers think us listing agents can pull rabbits of hats, but we can’t always predict what buyers will do. We can only guess. If your home is marketed correctly, the market will take you where you want to go. You don’t want to be too high because buyers will wonder what’s wrong with your home when you reduce. You don’t want to be too low because buyers might wonder upfront what’s wrong. You want to be priced just right, like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Which brings me to my 3 lockboxes from yesterday. One lockbox went on a home in Elk Grove that will be a short sale. Another lockbox went on a home in Elk Grove that will be a traditional sale, and the home is absolutely gorgeous. Don’t call me about it because you’ll get your chance to buy it along with everybody else next week. I don’t make side deals or give special considerations to my friends. I’m not that kind of listing agent. Don’t offer to let me write the deal in the hopes I will compromise my ethics and tell the seller to take your offer, because I don’t do that, either. Yada, yada, that’s not what you meant, yeah, right!
Another lockbox went on a home in Rocklin, which will be a short sale. It will need some work, and homes that need work are often a struggle with the short sale bank because the banks often refuse to acknowledge the homes need work. Or, maybe those darn BPO agents just don’t go inside. Hard to say, but it will be challenge, yet not a challenge that I can’t overcome.
Elk Grove in the morning. Rocklin in the afternoon. Back to Elk Grove in late afternoon. That was a lot of driving yesterday for a Sacramento agent who lives in Land Park. I love this business.
