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You Can Choose a Sacramento Realtor Before You Are Ready
People often call to ask: is it OK to choose a Sacramento Realtor even if I’m not yet ready to sell a home? The short answer is yes and, in fact, it is strongly advised and encouraged. Choosing a Realtor early on is to a seller’s advantage. This simple act can save a seller a lot of money because sellers don’t really know what they need to do to get ready for the market as much as they think they might know.
I see my neighbors down the street, for example, doing things that make me think they are getting ready to sell, and I heard it buzzed about the neighborhood that they’re trying to sell by owner. People try to do a for sale by owner because they wrongly believe they will make more money, even though it’s a proven fact they won’t*. But they want to save that commission, and while they’re so busy saving that commission on the front end, other money is leaking out the back door.
*The typical FSBO home last year, reports the National Association of Realtors, sold for $183,000 as compared to $230,000 for others. Mind you, that’s just the sales price and not the net profit, which also gets mangled during many transactions.
Nothing beats professional representation.
One of the things I noticed yesterday was a termite company truck parked down the street. Somebody must have told these people that they needed to order and pay for a clear pest report, which is untrue. But they don’t know that because I’m betting they haven’t talked to a Sacramento Realtor who works in the neighborhood. Many of my sellers in today’s real estate market do not pay for pest reports nor pest completions because it is not required in all instances.
I have a number of new listings coming on the market after Labor Day, some of which I’ve been working on for more than a year: an enormous home in Galt, another home in Lincoln Crossing, a duplex in Fair Oaks, a single-story in Natomas. It’s never too early to call a Sacramento Realtor and ask for help. We won’t advise you to throw away money. We’ll tell you where to best invest to prepare your home for sale. We’ll help you to find contractors, if you need them. If you have questions such as whether it’s better to sell your home with a tenant in place or as a vacant home, your Realtor will answer those questions.
You can call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I am an experienced Realtor who works in four counties and a consistent top 1% agent. You may as well hire one of the best. We’re not all the same.
What Are California Home Sellers Required to Tell a Buyer?
When selling a home in Sacramento, many home sellers have no idea what they are required to tell a buyer and what kinds of disclosures for selling California real estate they must provide. A crucial service that real estate agents provide for home sellers as a Sacramento listing agent is to explain to clients how to complete the real estate disclosures and related paperwork. Because of all of the lawsuits, it’s not easy to complete the paperwork. The lawyers make the paperwork very difficult for a regular homeowner.
For example, in the Transfer Disclosure Statement, a question that is often overlooked because it does not have a number next to it and the type size is small is whether the seller lives there. It asks: Seller is BOX [or] is not BOX occupying the property. A seller called me yesterday to ask if she was an occupant because she did not know the answer to that question, yet she is a reasonably intelligent woman. It’s possible that she was at somebody else’s house when she was completing the TDS and perhaps interpreted the question literally. Dunno.
Why can’t the form ask if the property is a rental or a residence? Or, to make it simpler, do you live in this home? Or, do you live in this home 12 months out of the year? Or, have you ever rented your home? Is your home rented now?
This is just the first question. What else are California home sellers required to tell buyers? You’d be amazed.
I have no idea how sellers who represent themselves as a For Sale by Owner manage to complete their real estate disclosures without competent direction. These are the documents that after escrow closes the buyer may choose to sue the seller about, to go to court over. The one thing that is often standing between the seller and a judgment are the seller disclosures. They have no clue what are California home sellers required to tell buyers.
It’s not so much what a seller says sometimes as how the seller says it. A Sacramento real estate agent, while she cannot complete the form for a seller nor give a seller legal advice, she can certainly offer guidance. Let’s not even talk about the four-page Seller Property Questionnaire at this point and its question about pre-1978 that nobody but an agent understands.
Home sellers need to be truthful and honest and answer each and every question. They should keep nothing from the buyer. If you have a question about your real estate disclosures, call your Sacramento real estate agent before answering.
FSBO Seller to Agent: Will You Find a Buyer for My Home?
As a busy Sacramento real estate agent, I receive all kinds of odd calls during the day, but probably the strangest call I received lately was from a FSBO, a for sale by owner, who asked me to find a buyer for her. Now, I know the way I was supposed to answer that question, the way a real estate agent who is hungry for listings might do it, but I couldn’t bring myself to stoop that low.
I was supposed to say sure, I would help her find a buyer, knowing that there was no way in hell I would. Then I would email her and talk about the market and other sales in the neighborhood, and day by day, week by week, I would wear her down until she is so damn tired of trying to find a buyer all by herself that she will turn to me, the real estate pro, and list. Because that’s how it works with FSBO sellers.
No, thanks. I’m not wired like that. Instead, I leveled with her. She didn’t like it one little bit. There are a lot of people in the world who just don’t want to hear the truth because it’s not the version they expect.
But you know, I wasn’t the person who called this real estate agent and flat out stated she had no desire to hire me as her listing agent because she wasn’t planning to hire any listing agent, and starts off by implying she has no respect for the job that I do because any person with a for sale sign and a hammer can slam it into the yard to find a buyer, but she wanted my help anyway. Oy. I tried to explain this was the wrong way to go about it, but she didn’t want to hear any of that.
I asked if she knows where buyers come from? No, she didn’t. Well, obviously not because she was calling to beg me to bring her a buyer. Buyers come from a listing. When a listing agent puts a listing into MLS and across the Internet, that agent gets buyers. That’s the way it works. No listing in MLS, no buyers.
Another reason she has no buyers and has taken to calling complete strangers from the Internet is because she thinks that agents who do have buyers are dying to work with her. No, they are not, and in fact, they go out of their way not work with a FSBO if they don’t have to and have a lick of common sense. They don’t want the liability, and they certainly don’t want the extra work that comes with trying to close an escrow with a FSBO seller who is unrepresented. Whoa, she was very unhappy and told me that was not true.
Well, between a person who has been in the business for 40 years selling homes, and a FSBO seller who is so desperate she is calling random agents to try to find a buyer, I think we know who has a better handle on the real estate market and the way things work. But you know what, I am on my way to Maui this morning with a team member for a little R&R in an oceanfront suite at Fairmont Kea, and you know what they say? Hair today gone to Maui. And my hair looks great!
The Lead Based Paint Disclosure for Sacramento Sellers
One of the (many) problems inherent in selling a home yourself as a for sale by owner is FSBOs typically don’t have the seller disclosures. All sellers in California are required to disclose certain conditions and information about a home. Most of the time, a seller never gives these things a second thought because her agent handles that for her by providing the forms. We are constantly, as Sacramento real estate agents, thinking about managing risk for our sellers and, by extension, ourselves.
I try to have that “disclosure talk” involving potential lawsuits with each and every one of my sellers. I must put the fear of god into them because of the way some respond. For example, yesterday, a seller sent me a series of emails about whether his home has or does not have lead-based paint. He couldn’t remember when he bought the home what the seller at that time had disclosed. He wanted to make sure he disclosed the same thing. I love sellers like him to pieces. They are conscientious.
The lead-based paint form is a federal form that is required for every California real estate transaction in which the home was built prior to 1978, and I use it for transactions involving newer homes as well. You never know where a person might buy lead-based paint. It’s still sold in some states.
The lead-based paint form states there might be lead-based paint in the home. It puts a buyer on notice that if a buyer is concerned, the buyer needs to further investigate. This might involve having the paint tested. There is also another law that says you can’t hire a painter to paint a home who doesn’t comply with lead-based paint removal procedures.
My seller wanted a yes or no answer. Should he say yes he has lead-based paint or should he say no, he does not. Not everything in life requires a yes or no answer. Some things simply need to be disclosed and a seller should disclose what a seller knows for certain to be true. My seller was pretty happy yesterday that he had a real estate agent. While we can’t fill out these forms for our sellers, we can direct and help them to make the right decisions.
Sacramento Home Sellers Dump House at Huge Loss
Impatience lost a couple of Sacramento sellers $50,000, and I don’t have the heart to tell them. These sellers don’t read my blog, and I doubt they know anybody who does, so it’s not like I’m breaking the news to them in this manner. Besides, it wouldn’t have changed anything for them because they had already made their decision; they just apparently didn’t have the heart to tell their Sacramento real estate agent about it.
Instead they elected to remove their home from the market so they could refinance. At least that was the story. One can’t get a loan on a home if it’s for sale in Sacramento. Maybe they started out thinking about a refinance and then some EP (equity purchaser) guy called? Maybe that EP guy was a client of another agent whom he wanted to cut out of the deal or maybe the guy just regularly combs the canceled listings, calling sellers, trying to strip out every last dime of equity and leaving a few scattered pennies on the table? Hard to speculate, and it doesn’t matter.
The situation is the sellers grew impatient. Their home wasn’t selling fast enough. It was due to price, like most homes that don’t sell fast enough. The price needed to be a little bit lower but the sellers continued to hold out hope for their price until they just gave up. Out of the blue. What I know is they asked to cancel the listing because they planned to refinance, and the next thing I saw they had suddenly sold their home at a gigantic loss. It’s called a For Sale by Owner.
The new owner then put the home back on the market for $50,000 more than the owner had paid for it. Along came a buyer who contacted me. The buyer contacted me because I sell a lot of homes in this particular neighborhood in Sacramento. My buyer bought it. That $50,000 is going into the pocket of the EP guy. Telling my former clients that they messed up would be pointless and mean. But it’s not pointless for readers of this blog. It’s a good example of what can and does happen.
If they had only waited for the fall market in Sacramento and continued to list with their Sacramento real estate agent.
Yoda says: Patience you must have, my young padawan.
