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Story of Selling a Damaged House in Elk Grove
The damaged house in Elk Grove was not this bad.
There seems to be a lot of rehab investors, both in town and outside of Sacramento, who expect advance phone calls from listing agents, because they email me all the time about buying a damaged house. The worse, the better, they say. I wonder if they haven’t heard about MLS? You know, that place where all the listings go? Or, maybe they haven’t noticed that Zillow and Trulia are also pulling listings from MLS? Or, perhaps they think my supposed greedy little heart will seize the chance to smash my seller’s hopes and I’ll engage in some secret, behind-the-scenes deal with them to be the only buyer because all agents are money-grubbing fools? I’d say gag me but I’m recovering from the flu and don’t want to think about that reflex.
Take this damaged house in Elk Grove, for example. This was a short sale home that had been abandoned for a while — what we call a fixer. There were no utilities and, in fact, there were utility liens recorded against the property. It needed flooring, paint, a new roof, pest work, stucco repair and there was a minor plumbing leak in one of the upstairs’ bathrooms. The home was located in a popular neighborhood in Elk Grove. Even though it needed work, which meant few owner occupants would make an offer, it should have sold sooner than it did. The reason it didn’t is many rehab investors don’t want to go back to the old market of years gone by, it seems, they expect higher profit margins. Higher profit margins are typically not available in a short sale. Short sale banks typically won’t fund an investor’s bank account.
We put this on the market last May, and it sat for 3 months without a viable offer. We received a number of lowball offers but none high enough to where the comparable sales suggested the bank would accept the offer. See, guys don’t understand why we won’t take a low offer and send it to the bank. That’s because they’re not on the listing side, doing possibly a ton of work for zero results. I’m not completely alien to fixing up homes and flipping, as I did it myself for 10 years. I also know how to compute comparable sales and deduct for repairs.
Come August, we decided to take the highest offer we could get, which wasn’t enough to satisfy what we felt the bank would want, but since it involved a 203K loan, the buyer had room to move up, if necessary. It’s one thing if they pay cash and the bank wants more money. It’s quite another if the buyer plans to live there and is obtaining financing, so a $10,000 increase could mean a difference of only fifty bucks in a mortgage payment. Not surprising, the bank asked for a higher price, it demanded our original list price. See, I’m often right on the nose with how they think because I’ve been doing this for so long.
The buyer bailed. Fortunately, we found other buyers, several at one time. The seller chose the most committed buyer. I went back to the bank and negotiated a price somewhere between the lowball offer and the original list price. I know these are trouble, walking into these listings. It’s hard to show homes without electricity. It’s hard to get a loan without utilities. It’s almost impossible to get the bank to agree to allow payment of utility liens. And people are often afraid of abandoned homes with damage. These homes appeal to a small majority. Not to mention, the lowballers come crawling out of the woodwork looking for a steal, and it makes me feel like I should put on white socks so I can see the fleas jumping on me.
Throw on top of these situations, other individuals in title who won’t cooperate with a short sale, and a seller whose second mortgage was charged off but not reconveyed and therefore included in the short sale, all of which makes it a recipe for a whopping fun time.
Yet, it closed. They all eventually close. Because this Sacramento Realtor does not give up. If I can close a horrendous situation like this, imagine what I do with a beautiful home in Elk Grove that’s in pristine condition.
Thoughts About Green Tree Short Sale Collections
A Green Tree employee at that notorious debt collection agency offered a vile suggestion to a homeowner in Elk Grove. This homeowner is a single mother with financial struggles, like many other suddenly divorced underwater homeowners in Elk Grove. It’s tough enough to raise children on a dual income much less a single salary. When she tried to explain her budget woes to the debt collector, Green Tree said: You should feed your children macaroni and cheese.
Where do they come up with this stuff? I have to suspect that it’s not in the script because if Green Tree compiled a script — and I’m not saying whether management does or doesn’t as I have no idea, but you’ve got to think that it does hand employees a script of objections — that script would be much more nasty. I suspect the person who made that statement figures a Mac ‘n’ Cheese diet?is a viable solution because it would be a solution in his or her own circumstance.
That kind of thinking probably stems from the same sort of person who might think it’s OK to chain your children to a tree in the backyard when you go to work. Who needs to afford daycare when you’ve got a 50-feet elm out back?
Sometimes short sale sellers hear from Green Tree that if they don’t make a payment, that Green Tree will not approve their short sale. Which is not a true statement. It’s a lie. The short sale department and the collection department are separate.
Green Tree debt collectors are not that different from debt collectors who work at any other collection agency. They will still call a borrower at work and hound. They apply pressure. They aren’t always very nice. Maybe they feed their own children macaroni and cheese as a sole diet? How happy can they be with their own lives if they have to spend all day on the phone calling delinquent borrowers and trying to squeeze a payment out of them? What a horrible job for these poor souls.
What would happen if people refused to take jobs like that?
If you need to do a Green Tree short sale, I close my Green Tree short sales and can offer suggestions to help ease your transition from underwater borrower to free-and-clear relief. You can call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. It doesn’t cost anything to do a short sale, and I’ll never tell you to subsist on macaroni and cheese.
Some Homes in Elk Grove Sell 3 Times Before Closing
There are ten million stories in Elk Grove, and this is only one of the homes in Elk Grove that has been sold several times before the buyer stuck with the program. The listing in Elk Grove closed on Friday, a mere 21 days after going into escrow. The buyer’s agent was on the ball, efficient, reachable by cell and text, and an all-around pleasant guy. I’ve been so fortunate lately that I’ve lucked out with such great buyer’s agents to work with because they can make the entire experience memorable or forgettable.
I tend to put fresh hell situations out of my mind. There is no sense in dwelling on them. But I do want to revisit this particular transaction because it is indicative of other listings of in Elk Grove. It is not an anomaly.
First, this home was initially listed by a property management company. To me, this like a mortgage broker trying to sell real estate. Or an Elk Grove listing agent deciding to manage rental property. We all have our specialities and should not try to wear 2 hats. The qualities that make a person a good property manager does not equate to making a person a good listing agent. The seller lived in the Bay area and didn’t know the difference. She thought a property manager could sell her home, but the property manager tried for 3 months and didn’t get anywhere.
The main problem with this Elk Grove home was the carpets were filthy. Why didn’t the property manager notice this? When buyers spot dirty carpeting, the first thing they think is it will cost $20,000 to replace, or some other crazy number, and they pass on buying the house. I recommended an excellent company that specializes in cutting out and replacing damaged portions so it’s invisible. They also do a bang-up job of removing spots.
I listed the home in mid September and we eventually received 9 purchase offers. The first offer was 10% under list price from “a throw offers at the wall and hope they stick” cash buyer. Unacceptable and we countered, no response. The second offer was a bit under list price, we issued a counter and the buyer accepted. A few days later, for no reason, the buyer canceled. We went into escrow with a second buyer near the end of September, and a few days later that buyer canceled. Then came 5 more offers, most with closing cost concessions, and another offer I couldn’t open because the file was corrupted and I had to wait 2 days for the agent to fix it.
I was a bit worried that the seller might be getting discouraged or start to believe that all buyers for homes in Elk Grove were off their rockers. In actuality, she was very happy with my performance and continued to comment all through the transaction that she had wished she had found me in the first place.
Then came the offer the seller could accept. It was clean. No concessions. No mistakes. No lowball offer. We zinged through escrow in 21 days with no request for repairs, just like it should be for a fairly new home in Elk Grove built in the last decade. Eureka, we closed. It was a relief but it wasn’t easy to close on this home in Elk Grove. It just goes to show that one can easily put a home under contract; it’s not so slam dunk to get it closed. This is when you need a professional, an experienced Elk Grove agent who doesn’t give up and doesn’t quit until the keys are dangling from the buyers’ hot little fingers.
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.
