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Do Sacramento Buyer’s Agents Push Up Home Values?
Here is a new dig about real estate agents that I haven’t heard before. A potential seller of a home in Land Park called to talk about her overpriced home and how it got that way. During the conversation about how and why she paid too much for it — which I’ll get to another day in another blog — she mentioned that she was trying to buy a home in East Bay. When I mentioned I have a close friend who works in her targeted city and she might want to contact that agent to see homes, the caller threw out this crazy idea.
What I believe she was saying is that she doesn’t trust real estate agents, which is too bad. Because there are many excellent real estate agents in the business, and not every agent should be painted with the same tainted brush due to a few bad apples. This home buyer was reluctant to work with a Sacramento buyer’s agent who is a neighborhood specialist, i.e. an agent who works and lives in the neighborhood. Her feeling was the agent would try to drive up prices in the neighborhood by making her pay more for a home.
In other words, she believed the agent would not in good faith negotiate on her behalf in order to make the agent’s own home worth more. What? First, I told her, understand that agents are highly unlikely to try to push her to pay more to increase an agent’s own home value because they’re just not that diabolical. Second, comparable sales are good for only 3 months and unless a person is selling her home within that 3-month period, that sale won’t matter one little bit. A home that sold last year has no bearing on home values this year. Not to mention, one home sale does not increase the value in any given neighborhood.
What buyer’s agents want first and foremost is to make their buyers happy. They want satisfied buyers, buyers who are thrilled with the purchase of their new home and with the agent’s performance. Also, because they are home buyers who someday will be a seller, and the agent wants to eventually list the home as well. Agents want clients for life.
Buyer’s agents who are REALTORS have a fiduciary to the buyer and must hold that buyer’s interests above their own. Not only that, but Sacramento buyer’s agents want to get paid. They want to close the transaction but not at all costs. They are more focused on bringing together a buyer and seller on price than on manipulation of said price. A Sacramento buyer’s agent will do everything in her power to represent the buyer to her fullest and best abilities. Moreover, that neighborhood specialist will probably know more about the neighborhood than an out-of-area agent, which would be to her advantage!
A client called a few days ago to ask if I remembered her. I recognized her voice immediately. I also have Caller ID (ha, ha). She bought a bank-owned home in College Greens 5 years ago, and today it is worth considerably more than she paid for it. Location is everything, I reminded her. She bought in an excellent neighborhood and on a highly desirable street. She was just calling to say thanks for the holiday card. It was delightful to chat with her.
That’s the kind of happy buyer I want. It’s the kind of happy buyer just about every Sacramento real estate agent is after.
Trust and Dual Agency in Real Estate
While I was at the doctor’s office yesterday getting a shingles vaccine, the nurse practioner asked what I was doing the rest of the day. This was only 10 in the morning. Well, putting a home into escrow and listing 2 homes, I replied. The earth didn’t stand still. No trays of medical instruments shattered to the floor. It was obvious to me that no real estate agents were in the doctor’s office yesterday or the next question would have been WHERE? Because inventory is a prized possession right now. If you’re a Sacramento listing agent, you’re suddenly everybody’s BFF.
More on that a minute. About the shingle’s vaccine, though, did you know almost everybody over the age of 60 is supposed to get it? And did you know it’s only one shot, one time; it doesn’t guarantee you won’t ever get shingles, plus it’s pretty expensive. My husband says it’s not as expensive as the stuff we got for malaria when we went to Ecuador but it’s expensive enough that insurance companies want your signature on a document that proves you received the vaccine. I guess they are concerned that some doctors’ offices submit false reports / claims about patients receiving the vaccine, so they try to verify that the patient actually got it. If they don’t trust doctors, whom do they trust?
Trust is a funny thing. Some people don’t trust anybody, no matter what. Take desperate buyers. I’m a little wary of them right now because some will go to any lengths to buy a home. Some buyers can be cluelessly insulting as well. They will call and beg me to represent them. They could be buyers with a real estate license telling me I can keep all of the commission, or they could be buyers dumping their agents in favor of working with the listing agent. They think they will get an edge because they believe all listing agents can be bought and manipulated. That kinda ticks me off on several levels, which I suspect throws them for a loop.
One guy yesterday tried to explain California real estate law to this California real estate broker. He rattled on and on about how it is completely legal for me to represent both the seller and the buyer. I won’t always do dual agency. There are some situations in which the line is so thin and finely drawn that dual agency could step over it. Plus, I’m way too busy to have to stop and calculate whether I am fairly representing both sides of the transaction. I just wanna represent the seller in some cases. Only have fiduciary to the seller. It keeps life simple. I like simple.
Buuuuut you’re giving away all of that money, people stutter. You would have thought I’m telling people the sky is green and the grass is blue. My integrity is not for sale. My ethics are not for sale. I don’t know why that’s so hard to understand. What they may see as stupid, I see as risk management and what’s best for my seller. Fiduciary carries weight with many agents, as it should.
As for my two new listings, one is in Curtis Park, and it’s a positively charming 1910 bungalow that is guaranteed to capture your heart. The other is in West Sacramento in the state streets and it’s updated, a three-bedroom, two-bath with hardwood floors. Call this Sacramento real estate agent for more information: 916.233.6759.
The Lengths Some Sacramento Investors Will Go
When I started in real estate in the 1970s, I represented mostly investors looking to buy a rental home. I also cultivated investors by showing regular homeowners how they could tap the equity in their homes to buy investment properties. It was a completely different world of real estate back then. You may find this difficult to believe, but I never asked my investors for their opinion or how they would like to write a purchase offer. I bought all of their properties in my name as assignee using promissory notes. The world of Sacramento investors has changed a bit.
The premise back then was as a real estate broker I could better negotiate and ferret out the good deals for them. After I bought the property, I assigned it to my investors, they put cash into escrow and we closed a week later. I received a commission and they got the property. It was a strange way to do business but it worked for many years.
One of the advantages to this system was I could act very quickly when a new home came on the market. Back then, we didn’t have computers. MLS books were printed once a month with weekly updates. Real estate agents found homes for sale through networking and the daily newspaper. It’s hard for me to even imagine doing business like that now. It seems so dark ages, like etchings on a cave wall, to think about having to stop at my office or a telephone booth if I needed to make a phone call.
Today in Sacramento the market is desperate. Sacramento investors are nearly hysterical. And first-time homebuyers are in tears. The problem is no inventory, and it’s getting worse as we head into the time of year that is generally the slowest — December. Five years ago there were almost 10,000 homes for sale in Sacramento County. I just ran a search in MLS, and we have 1,373 residential homes for sale in Sacramento County. We have 5,162 homes in escrow with accepted purchase offers. But most frightening is over the past 30 days during the month of November we have closed 1,370 homes. That’s only the number of homes that have been reported and many companies lag MLS input by a few days, so that number will increase by the time all is said and done.
We have less than 30 days of inventory. There is nothing to buy and the demand is extremely high. To say it’s a seller’s market is like saying we have a little rain here in Sacramento right now. We have a torrential storm.
Investors have figured out what they need to do is target the top producers. They are calling the biggest listing real estate agents in Sacramento and begging for first chance at writing an offer. I rank up near the top so they are calling this Sacramento real estate agent. One of them, and I won’t tell you who it is, called yesterday. They offered to kick back 66% of the commission to me if I would give them an edge in negotiations and make suggestions as to how they could beat out their competition.
I don’t think they were prepared for my response. That’s because this approach must work with other real estate agents or they wouldn’t be doing it. I said: “You know, it sort of sounds like you guys are asking me to compromise my fiduciary and give you a leg up in exchange for additional compensation. To grant favors. To ensure you win the purchase offer. I know you probably don’t mean it that way, but that’s exactly how it sounds.”
Their response:“I take it you’re not interested.”
Bingo.
If you’re looking for a Sacramento real estate agent to sell your home, give Elizabeth Weintraub a jingle at 916.233.6759. I answer my phone.
Wishful Thinking Won’t Close a Short Sale
I’m not from Missouri, so you don’t have to show me the money. But I do have built-in radar that makes me question certain things. If something seems off, I tend to explore it. That’s my nature. I grew up with the expression: Question authority, because I lived through the 1960s. You will notice I did not say I completely recall the 1960s, but I did survive those years.
Today the expression is: Question everything. When one is a Sacramento short sale agent, one tends to question everybody and everything anyway because a real estate agent has a legal fiduciary to her client. I look at what people do and not so much what people say. Sometimes, agents can be bamboozled. Some of them so badly want to hold a deal together that they’ll let things slide and they’ll believe their own wishful thinking. For example, I am working on a short sale in which the buyers were unwilling to meet the bank’s demands. They sent a signed cancellation. Then, after talking with a third-party vendor for Bank of America, I was able to get the bank to agree to look at a different solution.
I presented this solution to the buyers in the form of an addendum. That was a couple days ago. The buyer’s agent says the buyers will sign the addendum. Every time I ask him for it, he says it is coming and he is working on it. But the addendum has not arrived. There comes a point in which somebody needs to be the grown up in this situation. Today is that day. We need to examine the facts. The facts are we have a signed cancellation. We do not have a signed addendum. We have a verbal that the buyers will sign the addendum but the addendum is not in my hands.
It’s nothing personal, but that short sale is going back on the market today. My advice to my sellers is to sign the cancellation and find another buyer who is willing to perform. As a professional courtesy, we gave the buyer’s agent until 9 AM today to produce the document. If it shows up, the home won’t be released to inventory, but I am not holding my breath. I wish people would do what they say they will do. But that’s what they call wishful thinking. If you’re looking for a short sale in the Sacramento area, call me.
