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Is This a Good Time for Home Selling in Sacramento?
My days seem to be pretty balanced in Sacramento in that I talk to about the same number of home buyers as I do to home sellers. Yes, I am an oddball Sacramento real estate agent who answers her phone. I also respond to email very quickly. So fast that I tend to astonish potential clients. I get the phone calls and emails because I have a ton of listings in Sacramento. Once that activity gets ramped up, it doesn’t stop, it only continues to build more business and more client contacts. As a result, the question I get asked more often than not is whether this is a good time to sell in Sacramento.
I suspect you think that any Sacramento real estate agent worth her salt is going to respond YES. Except in this case, it would be absolutely true. It’s no secret that I am not a big fan of home selling during the holidays. Sometimes, though, you have to sell over the holidays, and if you do, I’m there for you. But right now, October, is an excellent time to have your home on the market. For example, I just put a home in Roseville on the market last Friday. Within 24 hours, we have 5 offers. Five excellent offers, no lowballs. If your home is priced right, marketed right, it will quickly sell and for a lot of money!
The question other people ask is whether this is a good time to buy. If you’re working with the Elizabeth Weintraub Team, it’s a fabulous time to buy. Interest rates are low. Prices are low. But competition is stiff. We beat the competition every single day. It’s why we are successful Sacramento real estate agents.
It seems that right now many of my Sacramento home sellers are getting geared up for the spring market. Yeah, the spring market in October. Who’d a thunk it? But preplanning is important. If you want to come out with a bang in January, now is the time to plan for it. Why would you want to appeal to a tiny pool of home buyers in November or December when your home can explode on the scene in January, splashed in front of thousands? I’ll give it to you straight.
Think about it. Call me. 916-233-6759. Sacramento real estate broker, Elizabeth Weintraub at Lyon Real Estate. Now taking appointments for selling homes in the four-county area of Sacramento.
The Three Prices for a Home in Sacramento
I hear all sorts of phrases from sellers when it comes time to price a home. I think they all went to the same school of ways to sell your home in Sacramento. Often, they want to price it too high, and they justify this by saying, “I don’t want to give it away.” Come on. Have you ever seen anybody give away their home? Hey, I found this sitting out back by the dumpster; will you take this deed off my hands? OK, maybe if it’s a short sale. Or, they will say, “Let’s test the market.” OK, but what if you fail the test? You only get one chance at being a brand new spankin’ listing. It’s like Goldilocks, you don’t want to be priced too high or too low. You want to be priced just right.
Pricing a home to sell is an art. It’s also a science. I listen to sellers because, believe it or not, I don’t always know everything. I realize that’s a difficult concept to wrap your head around, a Sacramento real estate agent who might admit she still has stuff to learn and is not the master puppeteer of the Sacramento world of real estate. Because stuff constantly changes. But I believe I have a pretty good handle on figuring out the best price for a home in Sacramento. Moreover, at the moment, I am selling homes at astronomical prices. That’s because it’s a seller’s market in Sacramento. A wild and crazy seller’s market. This nutty market doesn’t mean one can throw logic and reason out the window, though.
There are always 3 prices for a home:
- The price the seller would like to receive.
- The price the buyer wants to pay.
- The price the buyer’s appraises it at — and who ultimately has the last word.
If you get an appraiser from some other town — which isn’t hard to do these days — the appraisal can be too low. Sometimes, it’s because the comparable homes used by the appraiser to justify value sit in a different neighborhood, even though they are within a half mile of the subject property, and those homes in an adjoining neighborhood could be worth much less. An appraiser who is unfamiliar with the neighborhood wouldn’t know that fact.
The way pricing works is unless you receive a cash offer, your home will be assessed by the buyer’s appraiser. If there are no comparable sales for your home, the appraiser will use the sales that are available. This is why you need to examine the comparable sales — particularly the pending sales that will become your comparable sales — before you put your home on the market. If there are no comparable sales to justify your desired sales price, perhaps this is not the time to put your home up for sale. Perhaps you should wait and watch.
Of course, you will then miss the best real estate market in Sacramento since 2005. I don’t think you want to do that.
The Problems With Carbon Monoxide Detectors
This Sacramento real estate agent is not out to solve the world-wide problems of death, destruction and mayhem, but it would be nice to figure out how to ensure a carbon monoxide detector is installed in a home at the time of sale. The small things. I like to focus on the smaller picture because those things I should be able to do something about. Making sure carbon monoxide detectors are installed is not really a newsworthy or noble cause. Not like the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, electing to personally kill, clean and consume his own food for a year.
I can barely cut off a fish head and clean out its guts. If I had to shoot my own cow or strangle a chicken, I’d give up meat. Then I’d starve to death because I don’t much care for hard, raw vegetables like eggplant or zucchini, for example, veggies that multiply and are easy to grow. I’m no Sarah Palin. Nope, nobody would ever confuse us, thank goodness.
Neither was my mother. My mother as a teenager took a job in a chicken plant. It involved plucking the feathers off of a chicken — after wringing its neck. This was in the 1940s. I would never eat chicken again if I had that kind of hands-on experience. I like my food not to resemble the animal from which it came. Let’s face it, some foods are better off being disguised, like bacon. It would be so much easier for me if I were a committed vegetarian but the truth is I like being carnivorous. I just don’t want to get all up-close and personal about it.
I have to get up-close and personal about carbon monoxide detectors, however. My job requires it. Whenever I list a home in Sacramento, I have that “talk” with my sellers. I explain what happens when the buyer’s appraiser comes out. The first thing the appraiser looks for is a reason not to be in the home, and that reason to leave is no carbon monoxide detector. If the carbon monoxide detector is missing, the appraiser can’t finish the appraisal. This means he gets to charge another $125 to come back.
When that happens, the buyer yells at her buyer’s agent. You know the direction crap rolls. This means the buyer’s agent calls me to yell. Although, I will not yell at my own client. Sometimes, I suggest that sellers put a sign on the wall with an arrow pointing down to the receptacle where the carbon monoxide is plugged in, especially if it’s a spot that is not easy to see.
When the California law requiring carbon monoxide detectors in a home went into effect a year ago in July, this forward-thinking Sacramento real estate agent bought 50 carbon monoxide detectors and stuffed them in my front trunk. If I ever rammed into the rear end of some SUV, the road would be littered with dozens of carbon monoxide detectors, but at least I’d never be without a carbon monoxide detector when I needed one. So, I used to just give them to my sellers when I listed their home. But that didn’t necessarily solve the problem.
I have almost poked out my eye on more than one occasion trying to open that theft-proof packaging. Once, I stabbed myself in the chin and drew blood, and then ran around the vacant house trying to find toilet paper. Why do people take partially empty rolls of toilet paper with them when they move? How expensive is toilet paper? The other problem with that solution is when the sellers moved out, they take the carbon monoxide detectors with them as well. By accident.
This is a huge problem for home buyers because they are the people who get stuck paying for a second trip by the appraiser. Short of handing a buyer $125 when they write a purchase offer, I think instead I’ll try to be more diligent. That seems the easier path.
Selling a Home and Buying at the Same Time in Sacramento
I stopped by yesterday to visit with a nice couple who are thinking about selling and buying at the same time. They want to sell their pool home in Citrus Heights and buy another home. Their challenge is similar to other sellers in Sacramento. Because it’s a seller market, undoubtedly their home will immediately sell. The problem is buying a new home. There are more home buyers in Sacramento than homes for sale right now. So while you can easily sell, it might be a bit of struggle to buy. For some, selling a home and buying at the same time isn’t gonna happen.
To give you an example, just 5 short years ago, we had more than 10,000 homes for sale in the entire county of Sacramento. Today, we have fewer than 1,800 homes for sale. The numbers work out to about an 82% percent drop in inventory. That’s an astounding number. Not only that, but with interest rates below 4%, buying a home means a buyer will most likely pay less than it would cost to rent a home. Since investors can now receive positive cash flow, those guys have thrown their hats in the ring, too, and it’s like a war zone out there.
I tell you this, if you’re in escrow right now, stay there. Don’t get fancy schmancy ideas about asking a seller to fix a leaky sink or think about trying to renegotiate a sales price. If you’re lucky enough to have a home to buy, count your lucky stars. Kiss the ground you’re walking on. And thank your Sacramento REALTOR, who probably had something to do with it.
One of my Sacramento home sellers found a home to buy over the weekend. She was in an excellent position because her buyer had removed contingencies. So, it was a contingent offer without much of a contingency. Sometimes, agents get a little testy when we ask for a Contingency Release but it’s extremely important. It means the buyer is committed. We ask for a Contingency Release for every transaction, whether the seller has equity or it is a short sale, it makes no difference. The buyer must release contingencies or the seller just might cancel the buyer.
This seller had no trouble selling a home and buying at the same time. She was able to sell her home in Sacramento and buy another home in the Pocket. Plus, she was up against multiple offers. Her offer won because she was represented by the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. I sold her home, and my team helped her to buy a new home. Was it easy? For her family, it was. But that must be why we make the big bucks.
The Length of Time for a Sacramento Short Sale Listing
Home sellers don’t always read everything they sign, especially a real estate listing agreement. But I think it’s important for people to know what they are signing, so when I meet with sellers in Sacramento, I explain the purpose of each document. Sometimes, I can sense that they wish I would simply shut my trap and let them sign. They often don’t care. They just want to put that Sacramento home on the market and get it sold. They want to know where to initial and where to sign. Beyond that, it doesn’t much matter.
If I am meeting with a let’s-hurry-up-and-sign-these-stupid-documents-seller, I do point out a couple of things, nonetheless. That’s because I am sensitive to the mistrust issue. They don’t know this Sacramento real estate agent, but they have had friends tell them not to trust real estate agents. They’ve heard the stories. It’s unfortunate that I am in an industry that generates mistrust like this, but it exists, and I’d be foolish to ignore it. I don’t ever want to give any client any reason, regardless of how minute, to mistrust me because, believe it or not, I am actually on my client’s side. I want what is best for them.
So, I take a moment to point out when signing in person the length of my listing agreements. I don’t want a seller to discover it later and freak out. The term of a listing agreement is negotiable between the seller and the Sacramento listing agent. Having said that, I have my own practice of how I do things. I know what works and what doesn’t for me. I don’t vary my standard of practice. If a seller wants me to do something differently than the standard way I do things, then they can hire a monkey. There are monkeys for hire in this business. They can hire a monkey who will leap from tree to tree and do somersaults in the air for them. Maybe their home will sell and maybe it won’t. If they want performance and a guarantee on that performance, then they will let me explain how I do business and list with me on my terms. Over 30-some years, I’ve earned that right.
Especially when it comes to a short sale. I consider myself to be an experienced short sale agent. People know my name in Sacramento. I’ve closed hundreds of short sales in Sacramento. But I can’t guarantee that a short sale will close in 90 days. There are too many variances. Things beyond my control. I do my best to reign them in and prevent crap from happening, but I can’t guarantee that it won’t. This means I take my short sale listings for a year. Yup, 12 months minimum. Not because I think it will take a year but because I don’t know. Every short sale is different. That’s actually insurance for the sellers that I won’t bail on them. I won’t jump ship and leave them stranded. If a buyer cancels, I’ll find another buyer. If that buyer cancels, I’ll keep on finding buyers until we close.
But if a seller doesn’t want that kind of dedication and level of service, then by all means, list with some other Sacramento short sale agent.
