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When a Short Sale in Elk Grove Takes a Year to Close
Happy couple after closing a short sale in Elk Grove © Big Stock Photo
People love to hear my tales about true stories that happen in Sacramento real estate, especially when it comes to long-suffering short sales in Elk Grove. Why Elk Grove? Because so many of the neighborhoods in Elk Grove were built during 2004 to 2008 or refinanced during the boom, which means Elk Grove has had its fair share of short sales. Also, many of the loan modifications promised to homeowners turned out to be jokes.
Lots of short sales close within 3 months, but every so often I get that oddball short sale that turns out to be a huge challenge.
Many oddball short sales are problematic due to condition because buyers just don’t want to do any work. They want a turnkey home in a nice neighborhood, and they don’t care if they buy the home for a little bit less if it needs work. They prefer to buy a home that requires zero work even if it means paying a little more.
I have sold this pool home in Elk Grove 5 different times. I listed this in October of last year. I was beginning to wonder if this was maybe a flashback to the early short sales of 2006. It was a boomerang, every time we’d go into escrow, BAM, it would fall back out again. It didn’t help that there were 3 loans, all with HUD. Yup, it was an FHA short sale through Bank of America, one of the worst types of short sales among the hundreds I’ve closed. We worked our way through it and got the Approval to Participate and received an approved price of $350,000.
Things were looking up, and we were very close to receiving the short sale approval letter when all of a sudden, BAM, Bank of America dumped the servicing and the loans for this Elk Grove short sale were sold by HUD to an institutional lender, BSI, which seems to specialize in buying underwater mortgages held by FHA and others.
The negotiator at BSI told us they were sending out an agent to do a BPO and obtain an estimate for the repairs. Instead, they sent a representative of an investment group that planned to buy the property from the bank after foreclosure. How do we know this? The guy told the seller who he was. Grinned and carried on about how they buy foreclosures directly from the bank, bypassing the trustee sale. The seller should have kicked him out of the house, but he didn’t.
We were a week or so away from foreclosure. The bank suddenly decided it wanted an additional $40,000. This was about the time somebody in the neighborhood stole my sign post and dragged the panel to the high school. Then some agent in Elk Grove — probably a doofus with too much time on his hands and not enough business — reported my listing to MetroList and accused me of relisting the home without written permission, which of course I had. I don’t understand the problem with some agents.
Now, other listing agents might have given up at this point. Just washed their hands of the whole mess. Not this Elk Grove Realtor. I promised my seller we would close. First, I told the negotiator at the bank that I knew all about the scheme to sell the home privately to an investment group and to intentionally thwart the seller’s chances of a short sale. There are laws against this kind of behavior. And I let him know that I had advised the seller to obtain legal advice.
A lawyer? BAM, the foreclosure sale was postponed. We ultimately found another buyer who was willing to pay the higher price and do the repairs required by the buyer’s lender in advance of closing. Those kinds of buyers, btw, are few and far between these days. By the hair of our collective chinny, chin, chin, we closed escrow today, a day early even.
Wild Turkeys in Elk Grove
Wild Turkeys at Laguna Villa Way in Elk Grove
Wild turkeys on the loose in the city of Elk Grove is nothing new but they used to run away from you. Now, they don’t. The turkeys I spotted yesterday just stood there on the sidewalk in front of this guy’s house, acting like they owned the neighborhood. Two males, spaced apart, strutted back and forth as though they were guarding the driveway and were not about to let that vehicle depart. I stopped in the street, rolled down my passenger window and shot a photo with my iPhone.
The guys across the street were unloading stuff into the back of their car trunk and laughing at me, like I was a silly tourist. I’m not a goofy tourist, I’m an Elk Grove Realtor who sells a ton of homes in Elk Grove, and I was on my way to a client’s home just a few doors down. This may be an everyday sight for them, but I was a tad jarred. Those wild turkeys also seem especially prevalent in Laguna West.
I sold another home around the corner and I had to write into my agent visual inspection that I had noted a wild turkey occasionally would dart across the front lawn. That particular home was located uphill, so the turkey must have used additional leg muscles, expended additional energy, to run up that hill when the turkey could have chosen any other home on the block except that one. The seller said every morning the turkey shoots across his lawn before he leaves for work, implying the turkey was harmless and never inflicts damage.
Well, my question is what does the turkey do after the homeowner leaves? They can fly, you know.
You would think that I would know more about turkeys than I do, especially since I once raised turkeys, along with ducks, a goat, a rabbit, geese, what have you, when I lived in Costa Mesa, CA, in a neighborhood called Goat Hill. I’m thinking perhaps my particular turkeys were females because they used to follow me around the yard and try to peck at my gold rings, anything that was sparkly. Their beaks are sharp. Plus, when I would beg them to “please do your turkey thing,” meaning to spread out their tail feathers and look like a turkey; yet, they steadfastly refused. It wasn’t until years later, maybe during my trip to the Galapagos, that I discovered what males birds do to their bodies to attract females.
I hope these wild turkeys don’t decide to trot up the street to visit my new listing. That home has a pool and you know how birds are attracted to water. Oh wait, not turkeys . . . I have this picture in my head of ducks in the pool at Tony’s yard on the Sopranos. See, I do know something about fowl. Fortunately, I am a much better Elk Grove Realtor than a naturalist.
Eastern Star Hall in Midtown Sacramento Goes Up for Auction
The more I talk with people, the more it becomes apparent that many are not cognizant of their surroundings. I might talk with a seller about homes in Elk Grove that I’ve sold which are located a few blocks away from their house, and they’ve never been down those streets. They’ve never even heard of some streets. I guess they don’t walk around their neighborhood or, if they do, one street must look like the other. It’s not just people who live in suburban areas, either.
I suspect it’s because people are too busy or don’t care to explore. If there is no reason to go over to some side street, why would you? Most people probably just drive to work in the morning and make a beeline back at night. Ask an Elk Grove Realtor, though, and she can tell you where the parks are located, which are “through streets” with a lot of traffic, and the distance from your potential home to Elk Grove schools.
I suppose those who are involved in community activities are very aware of which streets are in their neighborhood and what goes on, but still, I am constantly amazed when people don’t even know the name of the street behind their house. And, they don’t think it’s odd that they don’t know.
Some people who live in the city, like, say, in homes in Midtown Sacramento, for example, might not always pay attention, either. That’s one of the reasons this Midtown Realtor enjoys the cellphone game of Ingress. It points out works of art, historic buildings and other “portals” right under our noses in the midst of the city that we might otherwise pass by unnoticed. For example, I read in the Sacramento Bee today that the Eastern Star Hall is expected to show up in Auction.com, listed at $750,000. I know exactly where it’s located because it’s an Ingress portal.
The Eastern Star Hall is a historic building built in 1928, located at 2719 K Street, right across the street from Sutter’s Fort (also a portal, several). It depicts 5 women with those darling bobbed cuts, doing daring things for the 1920s, like drive a car. It reminds me of my grandmother. I have a photograph of her from 1919 when she cut off her hair in defiance and took up smoking, just like the guys. She came to the United States from Hungary in 1899. Thoughts of my grandmother often cross my mind as I deploy mods and link portals at Eastern Star Hall.
It will be interesting to watch what happens to this building. My real estate office is located a block away on the corner of 28th and J Streets, and I drive by the Eastern Star Hall to hack the portal many times a week. I wonder about its fate, and whether others who live and work nearby notice it.
Persistence is a Mantra for Elk Grove Realtor
Confidence and persistence go hand in hand. While there are those who will certainly disagree, I happen to believe that persistence is a good thing, especially when it applies to Sacramento real estate. How important is it to be a person who finds a way to get things done and who doesn’t let adversity spit in her face? That’s what I ask. I’m one of those people who will do just about whatever it takes to accomplish my goal or the objectives of my clients. You will never hear me say something can’t happen if I can figure out a way to make it happen, and it’s within my power, then that thing will happen.
I preface my blog today with that statement because it will help to explain how I almost became the newspaper headline: Elk Grove Realtor Found Dead Speared to Gate. I had just closed escrow on another home in Elk Grove and had given the buyer’s agent a couple of days to get the keys out of the lockbox before I drove over to Stonelake. I paused on the front porch when I discovered a contractor’s lockbox attached to the fence. How convenient, I must have switched out the lockboxes at some point, which I often do. I tried several times to enter the code but it would not open. Hmmm. The reason it will not open has got to be that it is not my contractor’s box. Therefore, logic dictated that my own Bluetooth iBox was most likely in the back yard on the gas meter. Except, I was denied physical access by an electronic gate, which was closed and would not budge. Dilemma.
This was the pivotal point at which another Elk Grove Realtor would have shrugged her shoulders and elected to come back at some other time when the occupants were home. But not this crazy person. Oh, no, I was not leaving without my lockbox.
First, I am not completely insane nor illogical. I texted the buyer’s agent and asked if he had the code for the contractor’s box. Sure enough. My heart pounded with glee. I opened the contractor’s box. Uh, oh, the key was not there. Empty. Rats. OK, I am not tall enough nor strong enough to hoist my body over the iron gate with spikes. I’m in my 60s for crying out loud. But if I had a ladder or some big guy to assist, I could do it at the low point because an electronic box attached to the house could serve as a stepping point to the ground.
I texted the seller. He directed me to a relative’s house but she was not home. Anybody else? Oh, yes, there was Lisa, who lived a few doors down. I knocked on her door. “Hi, I am Elizabeth Weintraub, your neighbor’s Realtor,” pointing toward the house with the for sale sign still in the yard, “and I’d like to borrow your ladder so I can climb over his gate to get my lockbox.” Surprisingly, she gave me her ladder. Well, she first called the seller to verify because I probably looked like a crazy person.
I stood in Lisa’s front yard while she made the call behind closed doors. All of a sudden, a tiny hummingbird flew up to me and hovered within 6 inches of my face. I wondered if I resembled a flower because why would anybody be standing still in the front yard if she wasn’t a botanical of some sort? Hummingbirds generate a lot of noise up close, in case you’re wondering. A school of hummingbirds would be almost deafening. This was a female hummingbird. Suddenly the neighbor came around the corner and thrust the ladder into my hands. Eureka.
Trying not to break off any branches of a shrub, I positioned the ladder at the low end of the gate, and carefully squeezed my body around the corner, trying not to let my foot slip. One slip and I’d be gored by a spike. One tiny misstep, major injury, if not death. I considered the headline: Elk Grove Realtor found dead speared to gate. Nothing horrible happened. I grabbed the lockbox, and hauled the ladder back to the neighbor. Her parting words to me were she was sorry she had to make the call because “you totally look like a Realtor.” No makeup, jeans, a t-shirt, wild curly hair and Chanel flip-flops. Yeah, right. Perhaps it was my Italian roadster parked next to the sign.
Glancing down at my cellphone, I spotted an email from the president’s office at Quicken Loans. Quicken had located an appraiser who could go out to Anatolia yesterday to complete an appraisal, after every other appraiser in Sacramento was booked and at least a week out, and we were up against contingency deadlines. This is how persistence pays off. I do what it takes to get the job done, and that persistence is why my sellers are happy to pay my commission.
The photo on this page is of my sister, Margie, but the ladder photo was shot yesterday at the home in Elk Grove. Photos by Elizabeth Weintraub.
Listed Homes in Elk Grove Can’t Get Into MLS Fast Enough
In this hot seller’s market in Sacramento real estate, a cancellation by a buyer can turn into a blessing in disguise. When you work so hard on getting an offer accepted by obtaining document after document that proves the buyer’s mortgage worthiness, and you’re making countless phone calls to assure sellers that by waiting to respond is in their own best interest, and after having out-of-area parties finally agree to sign all of the documents, it can seem a bit defeatist when the buyer announces a chance of heart. You might say to yourself: why did I do all of that work?
And of course, the home can’t suddenly appear back on the market as though it was damaged goods. So the listing agent starts over, with a brand new listing and a new MLS number, and a fresh approach. It’s a situation of damned if you do and damned if you don’t, meaning do you put the home immediately into pending status and take a chance the buyers won’t flake or do you wait and get buyer’s agents irritated because they’re showing a home that’s under contract. I generally choose to change the status of those listed homes in Elk Grove as soon as possible.
There is not much one can do when an offer quickly arrives with a 3-day window, and you don’t want to make the poor buyer suffer by waiting out the whole 3 days. You can only stretch it so far. When no other offers arrive, it’s best to deal with the offer at hand and treat it as the precious gem that it is, so when the buyer cancels for no good reason, it can initially be a let-down.
Except in this market. The odds are if a buyer cancels, the next buyer, if handled properly, will pay a whole lot more for that home. I’m betting sellers are wishing that buyers would cancel right now. I can hear them, “Hey, we only got list price, and we could get more if we were back on the market.” It’s very competitive out there. More competitive than it’s been for years. And I’ve seen some wild markets over the past few decades.
I’m ready for it. I am dropping my doughnut holes of listed homes in Elk Grove into that hot vat of grease, spacing them one by one, until they fluff up and float to the top, a beautiful shade of gold, ready to melt in your mouth. Oh, wait, let me shake a little sugar. If you’ve got a home in Elk Grove to sell, call a top Elk Grove REALTOR who gets results, Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916.233.6759, Lyon Real Estate.
