How to Avoid Mistakes in Sacramento Escrows

My goal for clients is to avoid mistakes in Sacramento escrows.

When you hire a Realtor like me with 43 years in this business, you would hope to avoid mistakes in Sacramento escrows. Because experience matters. I could go crazy naming all of the ways I help my clients by heading off problems at the pass before they get down the hill. Regardless, as much as I want to predict what horrible thing can occur and stop it, sometimes, despite all caution, crap still sneaks through.

It’s like trying to keep those baby geckos out of my house in Hawaii. I can make sure the door is always closed securely, and then I come home to find my housekeeper with her head in the toilet and the front screen door wide open. No wonder I later found an adult Gold Dust Day gecko upside down on my window blind.

Gold Dust Day gecko

You would be surprised at how good I’ve gotten at using a broom like a hockey stick and sailing these guys out the front door. First I sweep the gecko off the window to the floor, and before it knows what’s happening, I swing at it with just a slight twist of my wrist to send ’em flying.

So it’s not always preventing problems as much as it is swift action to resolve the issues when, despite an agent’s best intentions and effort, they happen anyway. For example, one of my clients is in the UK. I prepped her on how to get an appointment at the Embassy to sign and notarize a deed. A seller doesn’t have to be in Sacramento to sell a house. Just like your Sacramento Realtor doesn’t need to physically be in Sacramento, either.

I asked the escrow company to please write on the FedX package a description of the legal documents to avoid a delay. The authorities in the UK can retain packages for x-ray if there is no description noted on the airbill. Escrow promised. Then the escrow officer went home sick and her assistant took over. I asked the assistant to please make sure she writes a description.

Even though I was very hopeful my client would receive the FedX package, she didn’t. I verified with the assistant that she indeed had provided a description. Yes, she had written on the package with a sharpie . . . but she did not put the description on the airbill. So you know what happened. The package is delayed and in x-ray.

No biggie. The larger issue is the appointment at the Embassy. My client wants to avoid mistakes in Sacramento escrows as much as the next person.

We are also replacing a half dozen windows in this house that failed. The windows are under warranty, and my seller is probably one of the few homeowners who has been proactive enough to get her windows replaced. None of her neighbors has been able to. But her windows were ordered and arrived at the glass company yesterday. However, one of them is the wrong size, so the installation will be delayed into mid-January while they reorder.

Our initial hope was to start the process early enough so the windows would be replaced before we closed escrow. Although we did not count on the shipper messing up and sending the wrong window, it’s a fact of life that somebody along the line will screw up. The silver lining in this situation is the buyer is getting new windows and his neighbors are not.

Despite our focus to avoid mistakes in Sacramento escrows, we cannot control third party actions. We can just clean up the debris as best we can and move forward to closing. Because there were so many other things that could have gone wrong but did not.