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Are There Valid Reasons to Dump a Real Estate Agent?
I am rarely in the shoes of a first agent who listed a home that did not sell in Sacramento. Unless, of course, the seller was unreasonable on pricing or refused home staging. I’ve seen a handful of those sorry situations in which the seller dumps the agent, reduces the price, stages the home and then bingo, it sells with agent #2, with agent #1 left standing there wondering what am I, chopped liver? Why did nobody listen to me? But bottom line is nobody can really make another person do what that person doesn’t want to do without brute force, and few agents want to clobber a seller over the head, making him stare down the barrel of a gun with a foot up his neck.
More often than not I’m on the other side of this scenario. After a seller fired his agent — or took the path of least resistance and let the listing expire before hiring the next agent — namely in order to hire this top producing Sacramento real estate agent. That’s the position I love to be in because now I’ll get paid for another agent’s hard work, plus I am most likely working for a far more reasonable and seasoned seller.
I made an interesting point to a seller a few months ago when he was thinking about hiring another agent because he had not yet received an offer. Sellers can be impatient, I understand. I told the seller that he could certainly hire another agent but he’d be throwing away his money. He did not strike me as the kind of guy who wants to lose money, but that’s exactly what he would be doing by hiring somebody else. Another agent would simply capitalize on all of my efforts, duplicate my strategy and pocket my fee. He should reward the agent who has earned the commission and let her sell his home. Put that way, he agreed, and I sold that home for him.
Having said that, sometimes there are valid reasons to fire an agent. No iffs, ands, or butts about it, in this crazy profession, most agents are not on the ball. Read more on About.com today in an article I wrote about Top 10 Reasons Sellers Fire a Real Estate Agent.
Just Stage That Home
Hotels could use a little help from the home staging industry. When we were first escorted into our villa at the St. Regis by our butler — I still can’t get used to Konstantin as our personal butler, it seems so unnecessary and pompous — as he opened the door he beamed, “Welcome home.” And he had both TVs blaring, in the living room and the bedroom. This did not feel like my home. It felt like I was intruding into somebody else’s home.
Staging a home is crucial to setting the mood for a sale. The easier buyers can view themselves as living in the home, the faster that home will sell. Buyers generally don’t spend as much time inside the home as people think. You’ve generally got about 2 or 3 seconds in each room to make an impression. A buyer pokes in her head and goes down the hall.
This morning a reader from my About.com homebuying site asked if he should stage his 8,500 square-foot home. He thought the home showed better vacant. Well, I haven’t seen the condition of his furniture, but I doubt that is true. He went on to say that most TV shows seem to favor vacant homes. At first blush, I want to scream: Stop watching those shows. They are TV, for goodness sake. I’ve appeared on some of those shows, and they are television, not real, created for entertainment, fabricated. If you want to learn something, go to school. Read a book. But don’t watch TV.
But I’d be talking to a door. And an unadorned door at that. I wanted to say hey, just stage that home.
I explained to him that the guys from TV shows have a hard time talking people into letting them intrude into their personal space. Nobody wants a film crew in their bath or bedroom. They worry about being judged or criticized, not that they have anything all that personal to protect in privacy. It’s much easier to get permission to film a vacant home.
And, having sold my own 8,600 square-foot home, once upon a time, I can tell you that almost every home, large or small, will sell faster and for more money if it is staged. It’s not a question of whether you should stage a home. Just stage that home.
Can a Sacramento Short Sale Agent Give Legal Advice?
Not only am a top producer who sells Sacramento real estate, but I also have a second job. I just returned from an About.com conference in San Francisco over the weekend. Some of you may not know that I write for About.com as its Guide to Home Buying, and I’ve been building and maintaining that website for 6 1/2 years. Whenever About.com hosts a conference west of the Mississippi, I try to attend. I always learn something new. One of the new things I learned at the About.com conference is Google no longer rewards SEO efforts in the same manner that it used to. Now, rankings are based more closely on authority. Which is excellent news for me. I’m not a big keyword stuffer.
But I am consistent. I write every day no matter what. I write about real estate in Sacramento and mostly about short sale transactions because short sales are what’s selling in Sacramento. I rank in the top 1% of agents at Lyon Real Estate, which is the largest independently owned real estate company in Sacramento. If I lose a ranking spot in Google to, say, HUD, it’s not that important to me. I am still found in the top 10 results on page 1 for hundreds and hundreds of real estate searches and real estate questions. To my readers, that makes me a real estate authority.
The problem with this is I am easily locatable. Thousands of people across the United States annually write to me and ask questions about short sales and real estate. I am a Sacramento real estate broker, so my phone number and email is in plain view. However, I am not a lawyer. I don’t practice law. I don’t give legal advice. Even if I know the answer, I can’t tell anybody. I sell real estate. I am paid a commission to sell houses, one by one. If I am selling a short sale, I am still paid a commission from the proceeds of sale. The law is very clear about what a real estate agent can and cannot do, and we can’t talk about legal matters with authority.
When I explain this to clients, they nod, say they understand, and then they ask me a legal question. Hypothetically speaking, you understand. Nope, still can’t answer it. If you need legal advice about a real estate matter, you absolutely, positively, without question, need to obtain that advice from an entity capable of giving it to you. That entity is not a Sacramento REALTOR. That entity is a real estate lawyer.
Will the bank release me from liability? Legal question. Does this short sale approval letter contain verbiage that protects me from a deficiency judgment? Legal question. Will doing a short sale stop the foreclosure process; how does SB 458 apply to me? Legal questions. If you don’t know the answers, you need a lawyer, not a REALTOR.
When I go to a client’s house, it’s to put that home on the market. I shoot professional photographs. I prepare my agent visual inspection. If there are ways to improve the showing condition, I share those thoughts with the sellers. Perhaps we want to do a bit of home staging or prepping. I generally find a good spot for the lockbox. We sign listing paperwork. We don’t discuss the legal aspects of the real estate transaction because I am not a lawyer. I suggest to all clients that they obtain legal and tax advice. Do they need it? I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. That’s for each client to determine.
If they need a terrific Sacramento real estate agent, they’ve come to the right place. I’ll get that home sold, and I guarantee my performance. Have over 30 years in the business. But I do not give legal advice. No reputable real estate agent would ever try to perform a service that she is not licensed to perform.
