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Full Service for Sacramento Real Estate Clients Does Not Mean Everybody
Jackson, Tessa and Pica asleep on the desk of Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub
There are days I wonder how I ever find time to oversee my business and sell real estate, yet still manage to provide standard full service for our Sacramento real estate clients while juggling the chores of life. I just do it. Lately, it’s been a bit tricky because our diabetic cat, Pica, is struggling with sudden health issues. As a result, stoic Pica gets 3 antibiotic pills shot down his throat, a Pepcid, an anti-vomiting pill, Prozac, 2 Sam-E, and a 1/2 tablet of Prednisolone each day. This is in addition to his twice daily injections of insulin to treat his diabetes and his twice daily injections of fluids to prevent dehydration.
The fluids are administered by a long needle inserted under his skin and requires a lot of patience from the cat. On top of squirting full syringes filled with baby food down his throat because his appetite shut down, and trying different samples of wet cat food to entice him to eat. It’s a struggle. Before giving insulin now, we also have to test his blood sugar by stabbing his paw with a needle to draw blood. That’s a lot of medical attention, poking, prodding, for one cat to endure.
I almost feel like a full-time feline caretaker. You haven’t really lived until you’ve had to shove a thermometer up a cat’s butt. Speaking of sticking things up a butt, this reminds me of the supposed home buyers who call, demanding an immediate showing of a Sacramento home, when they aren’t planning to use us to write the offer because they have their own darned agent who is unavailable to show . . . and it is not our listing.
I tell you what. Why don’t you come over tonight and sort my recycled trash from organic? Oh, not your job description? OK, how about you wash my car? Maybe you would like to weed our gardens or lay fertilizer? That’s makes as much sense as expecting an agent offering full service for Sacramento real estate clients to do a job for which she is not your Realtor.
If you are our client, we move heaven and earth to accommodate you. Not our client; not our circus, not our monkey.
I stop whatever I’m doing when a client needs me and calls. Half dressed, I stop. In the middle of lunch, plate into the ‘frig. I answer the phone. My clients’ needs come first. My husband is used to this by now and nothing I do amazes him anymore. How I am able to offer full service for Sacramento real estate clients is because I work with clients who deserve the best. I don’t work with somebody else’s real estate client.
Although a buyer did call me a few days ago and asked us to write an offer for her. She had viewed the home with the listing agent but for some smart reason decided she deserved her own representation. We called that listing agent and we offered the agent a referral fee, because that’s the kind of Sacramento Realtors we are. We’re not out to steal anybody’s client. But first you have to be our client for us to offer full-service to you.
Our poor little Pica, the ocicat, gets the rest of my attention this week, well, aside from a couple of new listings. He is recovering and starting to pull through, which is excellent news. His temperature has been drastically reduced, and he’s starting to eat again. I don’t give up on him, and I most certainly do not give up on our clients.
Sellers Who Don’t Need One of the Best Sacramento Realtors
If you’re looking for the one of the best Sacramento Realtors, odds are you can find a few by doing an online search. But just because the agent helps with staging or pricing and you list the home yourself or with a friend, does not mean you’ve got the services of one of the best Sacramento Realtors. You only got part of the story and not the entire package.
A former client relayed to me this morning that she did not realize some real estate agents will work for dirt cheap, and that the job to sell a home is so incredibly easy that she doesn’t really need to hire the best Sacramento Realtor. Although, she did add that when she’s ready to sell her more expensive home in East Sacramento, she will definitely hire me. Because she wants the best.
But for right now, to sell her rental property at the Parkway in Folsom, any old discount agent will do. She doesn’t need the best, she said, after promising last month to list with me. Especially after this more experienced and full-service Sacramento Realtor has already met with her at the rental in Folsom, completed an inspection and provided her with a list of fixes and repairs to undertake. In addition to giving her a list of vendors to purchase materials from, advising on color and choice of materials, providing contractors to complete the work and finding other ways to save her money.
This is on top of responding to every email from the seller within minutes, even while on vacation in Oregon. Advising on the perfect sales price and sales strategy.
So, yes, I guess I can see that after a seller has her home all fixed up, knows how much to price it at that she might feel it is a slam dunk. Especially since she didn’t pay the full-service Realtor a dime for all of this. However, all of that upfront work is part of the fee a full-service agent earns.
This is like jumping into my car at a stoplight, grabbing my bag and running off. I’m supposed to be OK with the theft, including the lack of respect. But I’m not and, when the time comes, I will not choose to represent her to sell a home in East Sacramento.
The other portions of my full-service fee, which I work hard to earn and the seller will most likely come to understand down the road are the following:
* Positioning the home to go on the market on a day that will make it the most attractive as possible
* Personal and immediate attention to my client
* Anticipating problems in advance and preventing difficulties
* Shooting high quality professional photography designed to drive up the price
* Hosting unique open houses through extravaganza blitz marketing
* Capitalizing on my 24 years of online internet experience — unparalleled by most other Realtors
* Utilizing my 40+ years of real estate experience to negotiate the purchase offer to ensure the highest price among possible multiple buyers, which I strategically manipulate to occur.
* Once in escrow, I negotiate the list of repairs the buyer often returns with after a home inspection to keep those costs to a minimum, if at all
* Meeting contingencies of the contract with precision
* Staying on top of the buyer’s financing to make sure there are no loopholes that will hold up closing or more likely cause the transaction to blow up
That’s a bare bones bullet-point list of things I do to make sellers more money above and beyond any difference in fee they might pay a discount agent. When escrows close, sellers always say I more than earned my fee, and they are very ecstatic with the extra money they received — which a discount agent could never provide. They understand this. All of my sellers pay for full service. Happily. Especially the million-dollar home sellers.
In other words, a seller tends to lose money with a discount agent, even if she wrongly believes her home is a slam dunk to sell. There are no slam dunks in Sacramento real estate. Saving a few pennies on the commission means eating it on the big picture. But then that kind of seller doesn’t really care if she has not hired one of the best Sacramento Realtors.
