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Taking Title as Wife and Husband When Homebuying
Bride and groom at reception discuss the good reasons to hold title as wife and husband when buying a home.
When I mention taking title as wife and husband when you’re buying a home; this is not meant to leave out anybody in the Sacramento LGBT Community. I know married people, for example, who refer to their coupling as husband and wife; yet others say husband and husband or wife and wife. There are few rules about what you can call your partner, unless you’re ticked off and intent upon sleeping on the sofa. But there are strict rules about ways to hold title to Sacramento real estate. Further, some married couples prefer taking title as wife and husband instead of husband and wife, regardless of gender.
Why does it have to be husband and wife? Is there any reason for the name of the male to be first on a grant deed? It’s just custom. Conformity. And it is definitely time to buck tradition a bit.
I am very cognizant of whether couples hold title as wife and husband when I take a listing, for example, because it also means making sure the wife signs first on every document, including the purchase agreement. In fact, my husband and I hold title as wife and husband, a practice put in place for our first home in Minneapolis. We did it for two reasons. One is so the solicitations for a new home mortgage and whatnot don’t bother my husband. They tend to mail to the first person on title. The other is to stir things up. To rebel against the norm. To say why not?
Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, is covered in corn.
When we sold our home in Minneapolis, right after 9/11, in the midst of closing concurrently in California, I was driving my vehicle out to Sacramento with an old friend when we stopped at the Corn Palace in South Dakota. It’s one of those weird things one is required to do by law when one is driving through South Dakota, just so you can say you have viewed the corn-struction in person. I was holding that former friend’s cellphone, trying to position myself “just so” in middle the street, in the exact spot where I could pick up a cell tower, as cars swerved to avoid hitting me right there in front of the God-awful Corn Palace, yakking to my husband about closing escrow.
He mentioned the escrow company mixed up the deed and put his name first. They forgot. Well, it wasn’t recorded yet. That escrow company in Sacramento needs to change the deed, I insisted, yelling into the cellphone and over the honking cars, as we are taking title as wife and husband, not husband and wife. Escrow was able to change it at the last minute and record the deed in accordance with our wishes. It shouldn’t be this difficult.
Let’s not even get to the subject of now I pronounce you . . .
About Being a Sacramento REALTOR First
This Sacramento Realtor receives a lot of unsolicited mail at the office.
Because I write a daily Sacramento real estate blog, which often contains consumer awareness information, exposes criminal wrong doings, real estate scams and the slippery slope of masked intentions behind the ways some companies try to take advantage of Realtors, I seem to have built a fan base across the country as a compassionate Sacramento REALTOR who leads a double life as a consumer advocate. This means people send unsolicited letters and packages through the U.S. mail to my office, sometimes anonymously, like I’m going to take issue with other evil doings and write about it.
First and foremost, my job in Sacramento is that of a Sacramento REALTOR. I list homes and sell those homes, and my Elizabeth Weintraub team member agents show homes. We hold open houses. We network with other California agents, employ extensive marketing, hire at our expense professional photographers, consistently create new techniques to sell Sacramento real estate and, well, the list goes on and on. The point is I am a Sacramento REALTOR first. A writer second. And, although I am paid to write content about homebuying for About.com, that is not my primary occupation and my writing is not pro bono work.
Some of the stuff I receive in the mail is interesting but that’s about as far as it goes. To write about any of it, I would need to be fair, to call the offender to report that side of the situation and, frankly, I’m not about to do it. So please stop mailing me stuff, well, unless it’s Kistler chardonnay. I will accept any free contributions of Kistler Vineyards chardonnay to our wine collection that anybody would like to send for nothing in return.
Besides, I have enough of my own crazy stuff to discuss. Like next month I plan to write about a wild scheme I discovered going on right here in my own back yard, perpetrated by one of those individual brokerages; like if I’m gonna find a problem with an agent, that might be the place to look, at the guys who are unsupervised, versus the larger brokerages, which routinely update agents about real estate law and procedures. If you think I am unfairly pointing to the one or two-person operations as problematic, I can tell you I used to work in those ranks, so I know first hand. Further, full disclosure, not every single mom-and-pop shop is that way.
When I started in real estate in the 1970s — yes, that’s not a typo — I worked for almost 9 years at my own company, which I immediately bought after obtaining my own broker’s license from the broker, an electrician by trade, IIRC. I erroneously believed that holding a real estate broker’s license meant I could do just about anything my mind could conceive. That real estate practice, looking back, often bordered on practicing law. I’m lucky I emerged a better agent from that period, to say nothing of the fashion, egads, those shoulder pads and hairstyles . . .
An Unusual Saturday for This Sacramento Real Estate Agent
It is not usual for me to meet with clients nor attend a listing presentation on a Saturday. I generally use this day for writing my blogs, articles and newsletters for my homebuying website at About.com. In between, I answer calls about listings, book future appointments, so it’s not like I’m totally tuned out to my Sacramento real estate obligations, but it’s mandatory that I set aside a little bit of time in schedule to write.
However, today, I have three appointments. They could not be scheduled at any other time, so I had to squeeze them into my Saturday. If I were a less organized person, this would not be possible, but I am flexible enough to be able to make last-minute changes. In fact, I seriously doubt another agent in Sacramento could survive the fast pace of my real estate business yet still maintain time to focus on each client individually like I do. Not one of my clients ever feel as though I don’t have enough time for them, because I make time for every client.
I’m meeting first with a couple who have a fourplex in downtown Sacramento, and I’ve already received preapproval on their short sale. I wanted to make sure they had no worries nor concerns when we go into the short sale. This meant juggling a few events for them so it better met their personal schedule. We have a preapproved price, so we’re basically meeting to shake hands face-to-face and sign the listing paperwork. This will go on the market on Monday.
Next, I have a seller who needs to sign a purchase contract and has no access to a fax machine nor a printer. She cannot scan documents. She could pop in to any of our 17 offices and I could email the documents to that office, but she prefers to come to my office, and that’s OK. I will bring the purchase offer with me and highlight the places where she needs to sign, just so we don’t miss any of those all-important initials.
Ending my day is a listing presentation for a seller in the Pocket. My team member Barbara Dow was out showing homes yesterday and called this seller to make an appointment to show her home. The seller said there were no showings. Apparently, the seller told her she was so mad at her agent that she had just dumped her agent. I asked Barbara to give me the phone number, and I checked MLS. Sure enough, the listing had been withdrawn. So, I called the seller and said: “Hey, I hear you’re looking for a real estate agent? Well, guess what? I am a Sacramento real estate agent! How lucky is that?”
I can always write tomorrow.
Open House Etiquette for Home Buyers
Because I write for a national homebuying website on About.com, I get emails from people all over the country. This morning I received a note from Helen, a distraught homeowner: “I would appreciate your comments on homebuying clients upon seeing through your house for sale without asking to use the washroom, making a mess and using the clean hand towels. I cannot for the life of me think that a person could be so inconsiderate. My question is how would you handle the situation without being discourteous or rude?”
Dear Helen: I would chase their car down the street and beat on the trunk with an Armenian cucumber.
My advice is if you live in Sacramento and decide to grow Armenian cucumbers, please know they are very prolific. We have a garden bed of these cucumbers behind our garage in Land Park. The vines run the entire length of the garage to the south, turn the corner and are creeping along the west side of the garage. When you see an Armenian cucumber in the grocery store, the cuke is probably about a foot long and maybe an inch and a half in diameter. Some of our cucumbers are four feet long and four inches in diameter. You could play baseball with these cucumbers. Well, actually, you could only bat the ball once. The integrity would not allow a second foul ball.
But baseball season is heading into its final month as our Fall Open House season is almost upon us. Soon as Labor Day is over, we begin our second home selling season in Sacramento. September will be a fast and furious month for home sales. We still have no inventory and yet very low interest rates — although, I am working on a handful of new listings for next week. So, please check my website after Labor Day for new listings.
Until then, here is an article about Open House Etiquette for aspiring home buyers. And look on the bright side, Helen, in case you are reading this blog, at least your visitors thought to use the “washroom” instead of doing their business wherever they were standing. My mother was positive some people were born in a barn because that was one of her favorite questions. Although, why she would ask me never made any sense. I was fairly certain she was present at the time.
