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Highest Sales Price $1,085,000 Closes in Riverlake Sacramento
Pool at 774 Still Breeze in Riverlake Community in the Sacramento Pocket
There are many ways to sell a luxury home in Riverlake, Sacramento, that involve overcoming objections to a low appraisal, which is why I employ different strategies for my escrows depending on the circumstances at hand. It’s a custom-designed strategy, I guess you could say. I won’t sugarcoat the process and say it’s completely stress-free for sellers, but like childbirth, I think they focus more on the end result after it’s over.
I recently closed two waterfront homes in Riverlake, almost directly across the water from each other. The first home was in Cobble Shores and smaller than the second home in Stillwater. The views were different as well as the home in Cobble Shores enjoyed a north facing view of the water and the back yard of the home in Stillwater faced south. Personally, I prefer the south-facing view.
I spent a lot of time working on the sales price before I met with either of the sellers. Most sellers already have an idea of how much they want for their home, but they also appreciate hearing my opinion of value and how I arrived at that number. I’m generally very close to market value, closer than they are. I take into consideration market movement, buyer desires, the emotional portion, and then temper it with reality of the closed comparable sales. Having a good story ready for the appraiser is always important.
Sure enough, the home in Cobble Shores at Riverlake sold at list price of $895,000 within 6 days. That’s a good length of time to be on the market. Enough time to let everybody know the home is for sale and to give all buyers a chance to bid. The home in Stillwater at Riverlake was more expensive, more than $1 million, and we had a decent amount of showings, even without a lockbox. It was an impressive home that captured the waterfront lifestyle in just about every room.
The sellers interviewed a fair number of agents to list their home and settled on Elizabeth Weintraub. I felt a kinship with them, and maybe that’s what pushed them to list with me but it could also be my analytical mind. I constantly think about my listings and don’t run on autopilot; and I focus on selling, no matter what it takes. I scrutinize every single detail. I’m fanatical that way.
Sure enough, we sold the home in Stillwater at Riverlake Sacramento, after 9 days of showings and, sure enough, as I predicted, we received a low appraisal. I sensed that the appraiser used a particular pending sale’s square footage, applied the number to the square footage of my listing and came up with a value that did not really take into consideration its top-of-the-line upgrades. The appraiser also used homes 15 miles away on the Garden Highway. I suggested the sellers hire their own appraiser, because even though the buyer’s lender would not accept the appraisal, it would prove a point.
The new appraiser just happened to be the appraiser who originally appraised those homes on the Garden Highway, so she immediately eliminated them from the appraisal because they did not apply. She came up with an estimate of value much higher than the original appraiser, using homes closer in proximity and employing the principle of substitution. After much negotiation, we settled on a higher price with the buyer bridging the gap in cash. The difference in cash paid for my full-service commission and then some. It sold at $1,085,000, the highest price we have seen in Riverlake.
If you are looking for a Sacramento Realtor who is willing to do what it takes to sell your home, give Elizabeth Weintraub a ring. Selling your home is not just a job to me; it’s a passion, and I do it well. 916.233.6759.
Why There is No Such Thing as a Favorite Color
During a chat with my manicurist Rosa at Galaxy Nails in Land Park yesterday, Rosa asked me to name my favorite color. Perhaps it’s because I tend to pick a wild assortment of colors for my nails, depending on my present mood, and it rarely includes any association to my previous manicure color. Which means my toe color doesn’t always match my fingertips but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore in 2015. We no longer are forced to be matchy-matchy. We can wear plaids with stripes if we like. Dots with squares. Shave half of our heads and paint green-like-a-lawn the mowed half. Who cares?
I stared at Rosa, hard. I have no favorite color. There is no such thing as a favorite color. It does not exist. There might be colors I favor, which is just about all of them, but there is no favorite color because it’s impossible and a ridiculous thing to ask. It’s like somebody made up that question so now everybody asks it, and we’re expected to have an answer. Some people, I imagine, feel badly if they don’t have an answer so they create a mythical color and attach themselves to it, never giving the selection a second thought.
Like Rosa.
She responded that purple was her favorite color. No, it’s not, I laughed. Oh yes, says, Rosa: I like a purple dress, and I love purple flowers! There, evidence.
I could see she had fallen into that trap many years ago when somebody asked her for a favorite color and she probably felt forced to choose. There’s a certain amount of chutzpah to choose purple because purple is a regal color, a color of power, and a color of mystical insight. If you asked Oprah, she’d probably say purple is her favorite color, too. But Oprah, I hate to say, is wrapped up in her own reality. She is not a goddess, people. Purple is a shy-away-from color for most people. It’s also a secondary color, not primary, and most people tend to select primary colors for favorite colors, or shades of a primary like pink.
To say you love a certain color above any other color is to reduce all of the other colors in the world to a devalued state. All colors are beautiful. Even cat-puke green.
Would you buy a purple car? I asked. Well, no, she admitted. OK, would you paint your house purple? No. Definitely not.
I think the light was beginning to dawn.
Then we had a long discussion about sellers who refuse to paint the interior of their homes to get rid of bright colors and make their homes more saleable. They say things like, oh, the buyer can paint the room whatever color the buyer wants. That’s an excuse for laziness on the seller’s part. Own it. It’s also ignorant, because the buyer might not buy the home. If the buyer does make an offer, that paint job will turn into thousands of dollars of a discount.
It’s like saying a seller will give a buyer a carpet allowance. They don’t think through this idiotic statement. They don’t think about the buyer moving in and then moving all of the furniture into the garage when the carpeting arrives. We live in Sacramento, it’s not like you can waltz into a carpet store and have new carpet installed that afternoon. On top of that, the buyer will need to make choices in color, texture, pattern, material, not to mention padding. Measure the rooms, too. Fork out extra cash or run up a credit card. It’s a huge hassle.
And after the carpeting is installed, the seams will be visible, the house will smell, the workmanship sloppy, and then the buyer’s tempers will flare. It’s all way too much work. Home sellers should install new carpeting, if the home needs it. Problem solved.
But don’t tell me you have a favorite color because you don’t. Let’s reverse this trend. Put a stop to this nonsense.
Beyond the Marketing of Homes in Sacramento Real Estate
Many successful listing agents in Sacramento maintain an unusual love affair with real estate, coupled with a magnetic attraction to the psychology of marketing homes in Sacramento. We want to understand the techniques that trigger a person’s home buying button. Our brains are turned on by this. It’s often a matter of: W + X + Z = $, ding, ding, ding. We latch on to proven techniques.
We don’t let our emotions rule or get out of hand when dealing with people because it might not deliver the desired result if we go off half-cocked. It’s tempting to be snarky but if that snark irritates or annoys the person we’re trying to attract and receive an offer from, well, that’s a defeatist attitude and not in our seller’s best interest, much less anybody else’s. My advice to agents struggling with snarky syndrome is to suppress the snark. Save it for your friends who appreciate it. Or for your own blog. Like this one.
As a listing agent, I want buyers to feel comfortable and happy and their agents to be thrilled. That’s the goal. When all is said and done and the escrow has closed, is the buyer’s agent a hero / heroine to the buyer or a person to avoid by walking on the other side of the street?
Part of marketing homes in Sacramento successfully is achieved by making the buyer ecstatic over the home purchase. Home staging is a proven strategy and tends to generate a lot more money for the seller than homes that are vacant, and it generates happiness. It’s different than decorating or furnishing a home. Home staging highlights features of the home without making it apparent, and it’s an art. A decorator or designer can’t do it. Staging, when done properly, creates an emotion the buyer can’t get out of her mind, no matter how she tries to shake it.
Another aspect is responding quickly to the buyer’s requests for paperwork and being available if the situation warrants. Little is worse than trying to call the listing agent who has vanished for the weekend. Cooperation is key. Meeting reasonable expectations. Finding solutions. When you put all of these elements together, it’s a recipe for a successful closing and happy parties. It’s not just the marketing of homes. But that’s where one begins.
How Much Will Your Sacramento Home Seller Take?
A common question asked by Sacramento real estate agents and directed toward the listing agent is how much will the seller take for that home? Now, you see, I could swear that there is a listing price attached to that home, but maybe the print is too small to read. I know, we could outfit buyer’s agents with those big honkin’ magnifying glasses like you see in photos of Sherlock Holmes. Or, maybe we should attach spectacles to a chain they can keep in their pockets or wear around their necks to whip out for such an occasion?
When an agent asked me that question yesterday, I immediately suggested he look in Zillow. I was being facetious, of course, but he didn’t realize it because I made that suggestion by projecting a lot of excitement and enthusiasm in my voice. I can’t help it. I have fun at work; and I like to make people laugh. Except the agent didn’t laugh because he didn’t know I was joking. I mean, let’s face it, Zillow is the last place for any reasonable much less professional real estate person to look for a market value, but that doesn’t mean the public doesn’t go there because they do. The professionals, on the other hand, use MLS for comparable sales to determine market value.
But it’s such an innocent question, an outsider might presume. How much will the seller take? It is . . . for a person who is not a real estate agent. And I suppose that question is OK for an agent to ask as well if they can get an answer. As my husband is fond of saying: a guy can ask 10 women to go home with him at the bar and the first 9 might slap his face. But that 10th . . .
I asked the buyer’s agent why he would ask me, the listing agent, because I am not the seller. I don’t make decisions for the seller and all that I really know for certain is the seller will accept list price. Not to mention, it’s a breach of fiduciary to utter any kind of different answer.
Well, he didn’t want to “waste time” writing an offer the seller would reject. What? Isn’t that the name of the real estate game? An agent writes an offer on behalf of a buyer and a seller either accepts, counters or rejects? And there is one way to find out what a seller will do, too. If you want to know how much the seller will take for that home, there is one sure-fired, tried-and-true-method to get that answer. You write a purchase offer and send it to the listing agent.
There is a Buyer for Every Sacramento Home
In the mind of this Sacramento real estate agent, there are no bad homes to sell in Sacramento because there is a buyer for every Sacramento home. I have learned this the hard way over decades, and I’m sharing you the pain of wondering if your home will sell because it will. You just need the right buyer for it. There is a buyer for every home. Even homes that are in the wrong location or have some other sort of defect.
Now, an experienced real estate agent will figure out from the get-go who that buyer is and target that buyer. You don’t need 20 buyers for your home, and you don’t need 15 multiple offers. A seller needs that one buyer who wants the home and will close escrow at terms agreeable to both parties. It really is that simple. There is no need to complicate the situation.
For example, last week I listed a couple of homes that are very different from each other. One home is close to the Foothill Farms neighborhood, near Madison. The sellers were concerned that they needed to rip out the carpeting and replace it. They also were thinking about pulling off the wall the entire tub and shower combination and installing new. A cabinet drawer was not seated properly in the kitchen. That drawer was a concern for the sellers. I made my suggestions, which were minimal and probably not what I imagine the sellers were expecting to hear. I helped them to locate a couple contractors.
I also correctly identified who the buyer would be and, sure enough, that’s exactly who we are in escrow with today. I described that person to a T. That’s who bought it, too. And this is not a person I personally know, in case you’re wondering. This is what experience brings to my sellers. They can pay the same for a new agent as for an experienced agent, and experience tends to provide better results.
The other home was an astonishing disaster. Not at all what I had been expecting or what the sellers had imagined. They hadn’t seen the home in 25 years. It was, for lack of a better phrase, a shambles. But have no fear, there is a buyer for this kind of home, too. That buyer is a flipper, a person who will try to negotiate the lowest price possible to maximize future potential profit. I know the kind of buyer we’re dealing with, and we have a few of those buyers right now vying for this home. The right one will buy it. Because there is a buyer for every home.
