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Travel Tips: Don’t Use Citicards
I look out on that travel horizon, and I see a long road between now and August for this Sacramento real estate agent. That means I will most likely have a lot of work to finish before the end of summer. August will be my next vacation. I do not look forward to the end of summer because summer is my favorite season, even though I live in Sacramento, one of the hottest cities in America. As one of my clients once said, if Sacramento’s spring weather carried through into summer, it would be just like living in Carmel and our homes would cost a million bucks or more. Well, not quite because it’s a 100 miles to the ocean, not 100 yards.
For my clients, though, the fact that I have no vacations planned for a long, long time is good news for them. Although, with WiFi available almost everywhere, yes, even on a remote atoll in the middle of French Polynesia like Rangiroa, it’s not always evident if I am in town or if I am gone; I still pay attention to my real estate business and my clients. Unless I tell them I am out of town, my clients believe I am always in Sacramento.
You know who does know when I am gone? My credit card companies. I have learned, for example, to call Citicards and tell them when I am going and where I am going. To give them advance notice of my whereabouts. VISA and MasterCard especially (I don’t know about American Express or Discover) are cracking down on credit card fraud. They track individual accounts, so if they spot unusual activity they might not authorize the transaction without speaking to the customer.
A tip for travel: Always call your credit card company before you go out of town if you plan to use your credit card elsewhere. Tell them when you are leaving and when you will return.
Yet, that doesn’t always work, and I am living proof. Even though I called Citicards and told them where I was going on vacation, when I checked out of the St. Regis Resort in Bora Bora, the credit card company flagged my account and froze it. Sometimes, it’s not a good idea to have Big Brother watching you. It’s kind of creepy. Especially after you’ve put them on notice.
This is the second time Citicards has done this to me, which means I will no longer use their card for major purchases. The line has to be drawn somewhere. They say they are protecting you but both you and I know whose butt they are protecting.
Photo: by Elizabeth Weintraub, cruise ship in Papeete
A Cash Offer to Buy a Home is Not Always Cash
A South Pacific reef lobster-related cut still smiles on my thumb. That and a few no-see-um bites is all that remains from my 3-week vacation in French Polynesia. At least that’s all I spot as I do a full body check, heading out the door this morning to my Midtown office. Eyeballs have contacts. Check. Keys. Check. Pants. Check. I’m good to go. The life of a Sacramento real estate agent never really stops, it just slows down a little bit over the holidays. It’s like my life goes into slow motion and all the seas are calm. As a reminder, I give you this red hibiscus found on Bora Bora.
There will be more listings to take this week. Which is good because the inventory is so low in Sacramento right now that buyer’s agents are emailing and asking me to notify them before a listing goes on the market. That won’t do anybody any good though because there is no “first shot” at a property. All listings are exposed to the widest pool of buyers possible, which means complete mayhem in this market but that’s the way it goes. It doesn’t matter if the listing is a regular home for sale by a seller with equity or if it’s a short sale, every seller deserves equal opportunity among the vast number of buyers.
Sellers don’t want limited exposure. The short sale banks don’t want side deals going on, either, or buyers sneaking in the back door. Everybody gets a chance to buy. I realize it’s super tough to buy a home in Sacramento; it’s tough for many buyers in this market. That’s because some buyers are waiving cash around. Cash offers tend to get priority. Few buyers can compete with a cash offer.
I recall a few weeks ago a buyer’s agent emailed me while I was in Bora Bora. She asked if she could write an offer as all cash and yet reserve the right for her buyer to obtain a hard-money loan. That’s kind of back-door way to write an offer, and while I understand why a buyer would do it, it’s not really a true picture. The true picture is the offer is a hard money loan with the right reserved to pay cash. If you want to be honest about it. So, that’s the way she wrote it, and the seller accepted it.
You don’t need to play games to buy a home in Sacramento.
Photo: Adam Weintraub
Major Bank Settlements Pay Cash for Short Sale
Can you get money for doing a short sale with Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo or Citimortgage? That’s most likely the question in the minds this morning of many past, present and future short sale sellers. You might get enough cash to take a French Polynesia vacation, you never know. The New York Times reports payments as much as $125,000 to reduce principal balances could be offered as a result of these bank settlements. And the bank I see paying out the most in Sacramento is Bank of America on those Cooperative Short Sales. Yup, banks will pay cash for short sale.
Remember way back when, when this Sacramento short sale agent suggested that Bank of America was actively dumping those old Countrywide loans? It seems I was right on the money with that call. If I spotted a Countrywide loan in a short sale, on that hunch alone, I routinely directed the seller to a Cooperative Short Sale. Never had a Cooperative that way rejected. I have probably initiated more Cooperative Short Sales on my own through Bank of America than any other short sale agent in town.
I recall one instance in particular. I was dealing with a third-party vendor, either REDC or DTS, don’t recall, there are so many. This particular third-party vendor was telling me we had to do a HAFA, and I insisted, no, it needed to be a Cooperative Short Sale, even though I was going out on the limb a little with that demand.
I was driving through Midtown Sacramento with the top down on my car, so it was hard to hear the caller on my Jawbone, but we argued for a good 14 blocks, all the way from J Street to Broadway. Finally, I suggested she call her supervisor to discuss because I didn’t want to hear from her again about a HAFA when this short sale was destined to be a Cooperative. Sure enough, a day or so later, the bank switched to a Cooperative despite the negotiator’s initial objections. That seller received more than $10,000 to do the short sale and no documentation was required. It can pay to disagree with an individual’s assessment. Because individuals aren’t always right.
For months, Bank of America has been releasing servicing. Sometimes, the service release happens smack dab in the middle of a short sale, which is a rude awakening. The bank needs to pay Fannie Mae $11 billion and needs to get that money somewhere, so it’s dumping its loan portfolios. Part of the problem with that is it’s reducing competition among lenders if Bank of America withdraws from the mortgage market. When competition is reduced, it hurts consumers.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. If you’re looking to see if you could be a lucky recipient of cash for a short sale, call this Sacramento short sale agent and I’ll check it into for you.
Photo: Flower of Tahiti, by Elizabeth Weintraub
Lunch in Vaitape
The thing about wearing a flimsy poncho in the rain while walking down the street in Vaitape is not that people look at you funny and laugh, which they do; it’s that the poncho sticks to your skin and makes you sweat. Profusely. Even though you may be a woman and you don’t sweat. Women perspire. Men sweat. But my husband is not sweating because he is soaking wet and is not wearing a poncho. He might even feel a bit morally superior but his passport is soaking wet and mine is not.
However, if I cared what people thought about me, I would not run around scaring them half to death by letting my hair do whatever it feels likes doing. In the rain, it feels like frizzing out. I’m sort of a cross between Bride of Frankenstein and Lyle Lovett. But do I care? No, I do not. I also do not care because I put up with enough abuse in my other life as a Sacramento short sale agent.
What I care about today is the enormous mosquito bite that appeared out of nowhere just slightly above where Ecuador would be if Peru was my naval. I did not put insect repellent on my stomach. And this is what I get for that oversight. A huge honkin’ mosquito bite that is causing me to want to rip the flesh off of my belly by grabbing the closest sharp object and scraping it off me.
We are having a wonderful time, regardless. Looking for lunch in Vaitape. Rain dripping down my nose as I tighten the strings around my little hoodie. We stop to admire a banana plant. Some 10-year-old boy with hair swinging down his back rode by on a bicycle and yelled “banana” at us, just in case we were too stupid to figure out that we were looking at a banana tree. We did not know where we were headed exactly, but figured sooner or later we would come upon the restaurant we were looking for, which would be Le St. James on the bay in Vaitape. How hard could it be to find a restaurant in a city with fewer than 5,000 people? Not very hard.
I include a photo I shot here for you. The prices are incredibly cheap for a $75 lunch as compared to dinners at St. Regis. All prices are quoted in Franc-er-roos. You can spend 20,000 Franc-er-roos quite easily for lunch. Maybe 30,000 Franc-er-roos for dinner. We split a dish of curried shrimp on angel hair pasta, downed 2 Coke Lights and I ordered the beef prepared four ways. Tartare, grilled rare, carpaccio and something called half-cooked that was actually half-cooked. The Le St. James Restaurant seems like a pretty decent place for dinner, too. It’s just that it takes a golf cart ride, then passenger ferryboat, then shuttle bus, then walking 8 or 10 blocks by taking your life in your hands though the center of Vaitape to get there.
But how often do you get to Bora Bora? And when you do, stop for lunch in Vaitape.
Know Your Area Before Home Buying
Overwater bungalow at St. Regis Resort at Bora Bora.
The water is very still this morning, unlike the turbulent waves and constant ripples of the past week. I can see the sun barely begin to poke through the clouds. Even the air is hushed. There is some kind of creature rustling the palm fronds over my head. I prefer to think that it is a bird and not a rat. I have not seen a rat. Plus, a rat up on the roof would probably have to be a water rat since my structure was built over the water, and I don’t know if there is any such thing as a water rat in Bora Bora. But there are birds.
I spent several hours yesterday tracking down the types of birds we have seen. Two in particular. I researched them online until I was satisfied that I had located the correct birds. You might wonder why a person would spend an inordinate amount of time on her vacation to do this, and I guess there are two reasons. I like to be aware of my environment, and I am inquisitive. If you are aware of your environment, it heightens your enjoyment of said environment. You feel more connected to it, part of it.
It’s no different than how you might feel about your neighborhood or your home. If you are unfamiliar with a place you might want to move to, then hire an expert who can advise and assist, such as a Sacramento real estate agent to help you before home buying. If your agent doesn’t have the immediate answer, she has the resources at hand to get it for you.
Buying Sacramento real estate is not only an emotional decision for most people, it’s also somewhat logical and based on each person’s individual lifestyle. How will you know if your lifestyle is a good fit for an area if you don’t ask questions of your real estate agent? You don’t really need to know if an area will fit you, you need to know if you will fit in to a neighborhood. Doing homework before home buying pays off. I had a lengthy conversation before I left for my vacation with a fellow from Hawaii. I could sense instinctively that he would most likely be happier living in Curtis Park than in Land Park, and I didn’t draw that conclusion from anything tangible.
I present to you on this page a couple of Chestnut-breasted Mannikins (Longchura Castaneothorox) above. They were brought to Bora Bora from Australia and are not endemic. To the right are Red-Vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus Cafer). One of the bird sites lists the bulbul as one of the top 100 most invasive species as it has established itself in the wild not only in South Pacific islands but all the way to Dubai.
That bird on the roof just flew off and landed on another roof down the way. It is definitely a Chestnut-Breasted Mannikin. Whew.
