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Sacramento Home Sellers’ Warning
You might be tempted to believe that all real estate transactions are win-win, even the phrase win-win makes me cringe, but a win-win real estate transaction is not necessarily always the case. The win-win misperception was misappropriated many years ago by long-dead real estate gurus. Much of the time, it’s just not true. In real estate, one party typically makes out better than the other party, not much different than some divorce cases. Although you might say, hey, in the end they are both divorced now, one party is often a little bit better divorced than the other.
I know there are buyers and sellers who want to be good friends with each other. After all, they have something in common — the house! I’m all for enjoying friendships with the people who are buying or selling your home, just don’t try to cultivate that relationship during the transaction. Bad, bad idea. Sellers belong on one side of the fence and buyers on the other. You can kick the fence over after escrow closes.
Let’s say your home was built, for example, during the geological time known as the Asbestos Era, which is sometime during the Cenozoic period, in the Quarternary. Perhaps the buyer suddenly became worried that your home might contain asbestos, but the buyer’s inspection period had expired. On top of that, say the buyers had removed all of their contingencies. As a seller, you might feel it is OK to let the buyer complete an asbestos test, even though you’ve already paid for such a test and the results were negative.
You might believe that since the home is sold AS IS, the buyer has no claims against you. You might also believe that if the buyer finds asbestos, the buyer will have to give you the earnest money deposit if they were to cancel because that’s what the contract says. But you haven’t met the buyer’s lawyer who might argue the contingency period is reopened after the discovery of new information. The lawyer might further argue that somehow the seller possessed knowledge of this defect but failed to disclose it. Little is black-and-white in the law.
The fact is once a buyer’s investigations are completed, the inspections are over. If you are a seller, don’t be a buddy and let the buyers continue investigating. The friendship a seller may have forged with the buyer (or vice versa) could come back to haunt. For maximum protection, expect your Sacramento real estate agent to handle such discussions and arrangements.
The Hobbit and Sacramento Real Estate
One of the requirements to be a writer — what they call an “expert”– at About.com, is to be passionate about your topic. You have to be able to write, of course, and have something to say, naturally, but that passion (expressed through dedication, intense commitment) is completely necessary. Passion is also the necessary ingredient to being immensely happy and content in your job. If you find yourself consumed, driven, and almost half nuts about a particular topic, that might qualify you to write for About.com.
My topic is home buying and home selling. I can’t help it, I love real estate. I love everything about real estate. The people, the homes, the financing, the excitement, the challenges, the battles, the history, the future. It’s given me independence and extreme satisfaction in my chosen career. I started in real estate when I was in my 22, and I’ve been happily married to it in some form or fashion ever since. This year, I will sell over $30 million as a Sacramento real estate agent.
Real estate has become my Hobbit, the foundation for some of the other stories in my life. We saw the movie The Hobbit yesterday, and my husband shot a photo of me with Gandalf. The Hobbit is being shown in theaters all over Sacramento, but if you want to see it in 3D and high-speed (48 frames per sec), you need to see it at Century Stadium. It’s been more than 45 years since the nuns at The Home of the Good Shepherd in St. Paul first read that book to me, but I do not recall much of that movie in the book. Oh, how us poor souls who read expect screenplays to faithfully follow the book, and film entertainment often crushes those silly expectations.
Here are a few highlights without spoilers: I had to laugh when Thorin knocked on the door. It was why, hello, yes, here I am, the hunk of the movie. And he swaggered into Bilbo Baggin’s home. I thought Cate Blanchard was going to throw Gandalf to the ground with her mind and molest him right then and there. I kept waiting for it, but it didn’t happen. There were many battles. One after the other. We were in the theater for days. Some people went to sleep and snored. Oh, wait, that was on the screen. And then, at the end, there was no end. Because we have 2 more movies. And there you have it. The complete description of The Hobbit.
Don’t get me wrong, I was entertained. But last night while I was thinking about The Hobbit, I suddenly realized I have two more reasons to buy a home to add to my article of 8 reasons to buy a home. I finally have 10 reasons. I had tried to come up with 10 reasons when I originally wrote the piece in 2006, but 8 was all that popped into my brain, so that’s what I ran with. But now I have 10. And it’s because of The Hobbit that I thought of them.
Reason #9 is Security. Because nobody can kick you out of your home, as long as you make your payments. Your landlady can’t come along one day and tell you she’s decided to rent to her son. Or remodel. Or sell the home. Because it’s your home.
Reason #10 is Stability. With today’s widely used amortized loans, your mortgage payments, the principal and interest, stay the same over the term of your loan. They don’t go up when interest rates go up, and they don’t fluctuate. The state of the economy has no affect on your mortgage payments. Nobody will raise your rent.
Maybe Your Roseville Home is Worth More?
Of my four closings yesterday, two of those homes were regular transactions and not short sales. I hope this is a trend that continues. Fewer short sales, more equity sales. Because for the past 7 years, most of my business in the Sacramento four-county area has been short sales. That’s why they call me a Sacramento short sale agent. But before short sales, I enjoyed a long career selling regular homes. People tend to forget about that. But I don’t because my job is to help sellers sell their home, regardless of what it is.
One of those closings was a home in Roseville. It was owned by a spunky 82-year-old woman whom everybody adored. I mean everybody: the title company, the escrow officer, the buyer, the buyer’s agent, and especially me. This woman is incredible. Funny, sweet and smart. I could not believe that her family dumped her at the last minute. The home was hers alone, but a while ago her family members decided to join her in title. I’m not sure exactly why but I’m betting they felt she had equity, and they wanted a piece of it. When she told them she was interested in selling, they convinced her that she would have to do a short sale. If she was to short sale, they wanted to bail because they did not want to participate in a short sale. No money to them and nothing but a hassle.
See, the thing is a short sale lender will want everybody to participate in the short sale process, even if the parties are not on the mortgage. If they are on title, they need to fill out all of the paperwork, just like the mortgagors, and apply for the short sale. This seller’s family members were so sure she had to sell as a short sale that they deeded the home back to her and recorded that deed! I always check out title before I take a listing. Three decades ago I used to work at First American Title. This seller definitely had clear title to the home. A home with equity!
She was also very shocked when I told her she did not have to do a short sale. She had plenty of equity. This Roseville seller had enough equity to sell her home for top dollar, pay a commission, all of her closing costs and back taxes, and still have a lot of money leftover. Do you know how good that feels as a real estate agent to share with a seller that kind of good news? Or, as a seller to hear it? To find out that instead of a short sale, you can protect your credit and stash, say, $20,000 in the bank. When you’re on a fixed income, $20,000 could be a year’s income or more.
It beats the alternative. I had to inform a Land Park seller last year that her Land Park home had slipped into short sale territory and that she needed to sell as a short sale. We tried to sell as an equity sale but it hadn’t been working. She exploded to the point that I had to cancel the listing. Just blew up at me. I always try to tell people the hard truth but not everybody can handle an agent who is direct. Some prefer agents who sugar-coat, beat around the bush, and that’s not me. Eventually, that Land Park seller put her home back on the market as a short sale with another agent. That was too bad. Because I would have done a good job for her. You can trust that I will always try to do what is best for the seller.
But before jumping to the conclusion that your home is underwater, you should ask a real estate agent for her opinion of value. You might be pleasantly surprised. Some of us do a bang-up job at pricing a home and figuring out market value.
Clear Out the Clutter Before Home Selling in Sacramento
Most people have too much personal stuff, and this Sacramento real estate agent is no exception. I tell my clients to clear out rooms to make them look more spacious while I continue to shove furniture into mine. Of course, my home is not for sale. And we don’t invite any friends over because we don’t have any friends. Yet, our motto is if something comes into the house, something must go out.
OK, I admit that’s my motto and not that of my husband. Getting him to part with any personal belonging is tragic. Once a treasure touches his hands, it somehow transforms from an inanimate object into a living, breathing artifact worthy of preservation until the end of time.
But for the rest of us, into the trash. Or, to the Salvation Army or some other charity. Or, my favorite, the curb in front of our house, because it’s so immediate. I hardly ever see anybody remove the stuff — it’s magical elves who come in the night. Except for this guy who knocked on the door yesterday to ask me if there were any parasites living in the Oriental rug I had placed on a chair at the curb. Excuse me, parasites? Is that what you expect when an owner decides to clear out the clutter?
We had cleaned out the garage. The garage is a place where things go to prepare to die. It’s like the stopping ground before a final death. The weigh station before the graveyard. The hospice, like Denver International Airport. It’s for things we aren’t quite ready to part with, things that we might have some use for down the road and would be devastated, I imagine, if we could not find it in the garage when this immediate and urgent need arose. Of course, I can’t ever recall going out to the garage to find a stored item that I really, really needed to use at that very moment but if I needed it, it would be there.
Like a kitchen chair that came with a table and 5 other chairs but doesn’t fit in our kitchen space. It’s been living in the garage for 7 years. My husband pleaded with me, as I ferociously marched this kitchen chair to the curb, to return the chair to its rightful spot in the garage. His rationale was someday in the future we might want to give away our kitchen table, along with its 5 remaining chairs, and our lucky recipient would be horrified to discover the set did not come with 6 chairs. Oh, contraire, sugar bear. Our lucky recipient would be thrilled with the set of 4 chairs and one bonus chair that she can store in the garage. It’s one way to clear out the clutter.
Which brings me to a point about selling homes in Sacramento. See, it doesn’t matter if your home is a short sale or it’s a regular traditional sale, almost every home on the planet will show better with fewer pieces of furniture. Every seller should prepare a home for sale. Take down those photos on the walls — those grinning pictures of Aunt Mildred and Uncle Henry toking up in 1969 at Woodstock — and clear out the clutter. Your Sacramento real estate agent will thank you. And you’ll most likely sell faster and at a higher price. Not to mention, if you’re driving around homes in Land Park, please, feel free to take that kitchen chair sitting at the curb. I’m no stranger either to having to clear out the clutter.
