first time home buyers
Affordable and Updated Del Paso Manor Home For Sale
The seller of this Del Paso Manor home has lived there for 22 years. This is a 1950 Lusk home, and you can see the small detailing that builders no longer do. Things like an angled corner in the hallway to make it easier to navigate mattresses around the corner, and slightly angled walls near the entrances to the bedrooms.
There is great pride of ownership evident. This is not a flipper. When a person loves his Del Paso Manor home, it shows. Sellers like this tend to take impeccable care and stick to maintenance schedules like clockwork.
You’ll find hardwood floors in the living and dining room, all of the juke boxes, btw, have been removed. A beautiful mantle graces the fireplace. Note the original shelving near the pass-through to the kitchen, with built-in glass cabinets below.
The kitchen has been redone. New cabinets with brushed nickel hardware, gorgeous flooring, granite counters, tiled backsplash, pre-rinse faucet, even a dining bar, and all of the stainless appliances are new, never been used: dishwasher, microwave, gas range and refrigerator.
You’ll find 3 bedrooms, plus a family room featuring French doors that lead to the huge back yard. The bath has been updated with tile, a newer vanity, mirror, light fixtures and cabinet.
This Del Paso Manor home is situated on a large lot, almost .20 acres, completely fenced. In addition to the garage, there is a workshop / house with windows and a storage shed. The El Camino does not stay but the seller is interested in selling it.
Come to our open house on Sunday, May 21, from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Or call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759 for a private showing.
2416 Avalon Dr, Sacramento, CA 95864 is offered exclusively by Elizabeth Weintraub at Lyon Real Estate at $329,000. See the virtual tour here.
When Agents End Up Working With Crazy Buyers
I have to be careful when I am facetious. My humor leans toward dry. Because my general nature tends to present itself as a nice person, sometimes people don’t realize when I am insulting them. I suppose that could be interpreted as a good thing. I could say I feel sorry for an agent, and another would think I truly felt empathy — when what I meant was I’m sorry the agent is such an idiot. In that event, the other side of the street is a better place for that agent to walk upon than to chance an encounter with me.
Some agents are forced to work with crazy buyers; I get it. The market is tough on many agents. The limited inventory in the Sacramento real estate market makes some agents desperate for business. But if an agent chooses to work with a crazy client, that agent owes it to the rest of us to rein in that person. You don’t give a loopy dude 10 shots of bourbon and turn him loose with a six shooter unless you’re a sucker for punishment.
When an agent knows her client is a loose cannon, she doesn’t send her client unauthorized correspondence just to stir the water further. Because that end result is no transaction for her. Like the Soup Nazi. No soup for you. The seller doesn’t want to be in escrow with a nut job. Neither does the listing agent. There is also that problem of guilt by association.
Over the years of being a Sacramento Realtor and dealing with Sacramento real estate, I have come to be highly selective. I select the sellers I work with. I work only with people I like. If I can’t find something to like about a person, I don’t work with them. Further, I am especially critical of purchase offers. I scrutinize. My job is to make sure the seller closes escrow. That means going into escrow with a person who is likely to close.
One thing I do is ask buyers to do before looking at homes is to sign an agency disclosure. It’s required by California Civil Code prior to showing any real estate. Yet many agents never present an agency disclosure until weeks of showings have passed. If buyers struggle with signing that document, which is just a disclosure, that could be a red flag. It needs to be addressed.
Not every buyer is a serious buyer. Not every buyer today is committed to closing. We have crazy buyers in the market. For a million different reasons, buyers sign offers and never move forward. Agents should be able to pick out these types of clients and correct that behavior before they ever get to the offer stage.
The agents who can’t, well, they lose credibility. Not to mention, sales. Because they spend way too much time working with clients who are not really clients.
Do Not Make the Underwriter ask for Your Home Inspection
I don’t go into my office very often because I work from a virtual and mobile office. But I do make a point of going to my office at least once a week to attend our weekly office meetings. That’s because I pick up new information and can share stuff with my fellow agents. I learned something interesting a few yeas ago that affect agents, sellers and buyers everywhere in the country, not just in Sacramento.
Most agents know that if their seller is not willing to pay for a pest completion, they probably should not include the requirement to pay for a pest report in a contract that is contingent upon financing. That’s because the underwriter will ask to see the pest report and will call for a completion certificate if work is required. It’s one of the reasons why some listing agents worry about a buyer doing a VA loan.
In our California purchase contracts published by C.A.R., there is a place to insert the fact that the buyer is planning to obtain a home inspection. Yup, you know where I’m going with this one. Sure enough, underwriters pick this up and often demand to see the home inspection. Not only do underwriters ask to see the home inspection but the underwriter, as a condition of loan approval, can require that the parties fix a laundry list of defects.
Even though your buyer’s agent might not include the home inspection in the purchase contract, if the seller or listing agent checks the box on the TDS that the home inspection is part of the disclosures, the lender can demand to see it.
I don’t know about every state, but in California a buyer always has the right to perform inspections pursuant to the contract and paragraph 14B1. It might not be a good idea to spell out specifically what those inspections are in the purchase contract. Because no home is perfect. Every home has defects. And if you have to hand over that list of defects to an underwriter, the seller or the buyer might be required to repair them.
I am no longer inserting nor identifying the type of inspections my buyers will perform. There’s no sense in opening a can of worms where enough worms are already crawling.
While Elizabeth is in Cuba, we revisit older blogs published elsewhere.
Ever Wonder Should We Sleep On It?
Lots of people struggle to make big decisions like buying a home and might wonder “should we sleep on it” before committing to the purchase. The reasons run the gamut but often can stem from fear. They don’t want to make the wrong decision. They hope that sleeping on it will turn their brain into a Magic 8 Ball and give them the answer: To buy a home or not to buy a home.
The problems with this kind of strategy are myriad. For starters, whether to buy a home is a decision a buyer should have made before ever going out to look at homes. If you’re looking at homes with a Sacramento Realtor and you don’t know if you want to buy a home, please just stop. Go to open houses on Sundays or look at homes for sale online that are not really for sale on some of those popular websites that buyers who don’t know any better go to.
Should we sleep on it, it turns out, is a good strategy for figuring out answers to a complex situation. Buying a home, however, is a fairly simple situation. You either want to buy a home or you do not want to buy a home. If you do want to buy a home and you find a home that you love, then you should buy it. If you do want to buy a home and you cannot find a home that you love, then do not buy a home until you do.
Don’t fall into the trap of feeling obligated. Every so often I’ll go shopping at Nordstrom, for example, and I can’t find a single outfit I like. Nothing speaks to me. Nothing fits right. And I might feel like I should make some sort of token purchase because I’ve invested all of this time trying on clothing and not finding anything, and that’s a stupid reaction. Don’t buy a home just because you’ve spent a long time trying to find a home to no avail. Instead, regroup and re-strategize with your buyer’s agent. Maybe you need to look in a different neighborhood or a different price range?
If you feel like you are “settling” for a home because you wonder should we sleep on it, then you probably are settling for less and should not buy that home. Sleeping on it has a way of opening that window of opportunity for the non-indecisive home buyer. You know, that other couple you spotted getting out of their agent’s car at the home showing.
Despite what your parental authorities told you when handing out all of those awards in grade school, you’re not that special or different from anybody else. Neither am I. Other buyers have the same hopes, dreams and fears that you do, and the same parameters. If you are attracted to a home, other buyers are, too. If you don’t buy it, they will, and when you wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, energized and fully committed, that home will be pending.
Do Not Be a “Snooze You Lose” Home Buyer in a Seller’s Market
Many years ago — when I used to work with more home buyers than I do now, as most of my business nowadays is representing sellers as a listing agent — I recall a first-time buyer, let’s call her Cathy, who did not know when she should write an offer to buy a home in Sacramento. We had spent all day together, chasing around Rosemont looking at homes for sale. There was one home in particular that she gravitated toward, a home without carpeting, mostly hardwood flooring, with a huge back yard, priced right, and it fit all of her needs.
Toward the end of the day, I suggested we look at the home again. We viewed the home a second time. Cathy really loved it. It’s all she could talk about all the way back to my office in Midtown Sacramento. I pulled up to the curb on J Street where she had parked, and we got out. She shook my hand to thank me for the home buying tour and was about to head off when I asked again what her gut instincts told her about the home we had toured twice. “That’s my dream home,” she responded, and spun on her heels to leave.
Just a sec, here. “Usually, when a buyer finds her dream home, that’s a sign she should write a purchase offer,” I pointed out. Cathy’s eyes opened wide. Her jaw fell open. This had not occurred to her. That was evident by the blankness crawling across her face. She had processed looking for a home but had not yet quite come to terms with how she would react when she found a home to buy. This was astounding news.
She also could not cope because she had been unprepared. She insisted on going home to mull it over, what some buyers refer to as “sleeping on it.” Nothing I could say would change her mind. There is a term for that kind of cautious behavior, for people who don’t trust their own instincts. It’s called Snooze You Lose.
I see that behavior in some of today’s home buyers in Sacramento. It’s not necessarily the buyer’s fault, either, because if a person is buying her first home, how would she know what to do or how she would feel? It’s up to her buyer’s agent to explain, in a non-threatening way, that the market in Sacramento is sizzling hot, and another buyer will purchase that home if she fails to quickly take action. We’re not making this stuff up just to throw a buyer into escrow. When you spot a home you love, you should write a purchase offer.
Otherwise, it’s snooze you lose time. Nobody likes that time clock. Remember, in any given market, if you truly adore a home, odds are another buyer does as well. Did Cathy buy that home? Sadly, no, another buyer had purchased it by morning. Cathy eventually settled on another home, but I heard about this home for years because the home she did buy was always second choice in her mind. Snooze you lose. It’s not just a catchy phrase.