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Where You Will Find Your Dream Home in Sacramento
Thinking about a dream home in Sacramento?
Buyers who are looking for a home in Sacramento tend to end up on my Sacramento real estate website because they find the link for homes in the area where they want to live leading to my site. I am not sure why my website tends to rank higher in Google than others but it’s a site I’ve worked very hard to support, and I’ve protected my domain name from inception.
I also create a lot of content for my readers that they find useful. I blog about what happens to me from day to day as a Sacramento real estate agent and woman over 60 who can’t believe that nobody has yet written the book: Shit That Happens to You When You Get Old. This drives readers to see what I’ve been up to. Recently, I’ve added a “subscribe to” link directly to the right of my blogs so my readers can enter an email address and voila! My blog will appear in their email every morning, no more clicking around. But they know that they can always visit my website to find a home in Sacramento.
I love to connect online, reach out to clients and showcase my sellers’ homes to a local as well as nationwide market. Every so often I’ll get an email from an agent who works at any of the smaller competing brokerages around town. They write to say that when they type the address of their listing into Google, some random home in Sacramento, my website pops up. This upsets them to no end, and they accuse me of theft, as though I had anything to do with their non-ability to maintain and promote an online presence.
Every home that is for sale in MLS throughout the Sacramento Valley is on my website, just like you’ll find on any other agent’s website through an IDX. The fact that an address entry into a search engine also directs buyers to my website is a credit to the fact that I am a top producer in Sacramento who sells a ton of homes. I’ve also been writing online for years. I am tough competition for other agents.
Yet, that’s a great benefit to my sellers. If they list with another agent, though, that home in Sacramento could very well be showcased in Google with a link to my website, so they may as well list with this Sacramento real estate agent to start with.
The Trouble With YOU, Sighs Trulia . . .
“The trouble with YOU,” sighed my Trulia rep Charis, “is you want to make our website work according to Elizabeth Weintraub.” That accusation, which is certainly true enough and made me laugh, came about because I made mention of the fact that Trulia “was broken.” It’s broken because the website won’t do what I expect it to do, and no matter how much this poor woman (who doesn’t even work at Trulia anymore) had to say in its defense, it just doesn’t change that fact.
As a result, I have had to figure out how to manipulate the data in Trulia and make it work the way that I need it to work. It means that some of it needs to be tweaked on a weekly basis. If I sob and plead enough I can get my homes in Sacramento featured. The reps have been very kind to apply patches to my listings. My point is if Trulia wasn’t broken, though, they wouldn’t need to apply a patch.
Also, if Trulia wants to grab our listings and put our information on its website to generate content and assist to monetize Trulia, the listings should work and appear correctly. In my mind, Trulia probably ought to conform to its content generator’s needs and to assist real estate agents, not the other way around, because we are mavericks, an unruly bunch. But I suspect we are all willing to give an inch if Trulia will. Of course, if I were Trulia brass, I might be tempted to view agents as that buzzing sound we used to hear generated by honeybees, before they were all dying off due to climate change. I know how agents are viewed. Let’s not go down that rabbit hole.
Instead, you know what I really love about Trulia? I like the fact that when I’m searching for oceanfront property in California, I can go to the map and navigate all along the coast, for as far as I can drag and still retain the strength in my right finger to click the darn mouse, from the Oregon border all the way to Baja. This way I can click on every listing I can find on the ocean and drool. Other people might surf porn or shift through pages of Jimmy Choo shoes, but someday I will move to the ocean and I like to dream about oceanfront homes.
The thing with this type of searching is I am not serious at this point. If I was serious about buying a home on the ocean, I would not look on Trulia. Because Trulia doesn’t have every listing, it takes too long to upload new listings so I could miss an opportunity, and many of the available listings are actually sold. I would search in the MLS that only agents can access (our mothership) and hire agents in other cities. But I might start my search on Trulia to determine trends and find top agents.
See, Trulia, I have developed patience; after all, for 8 long years I negotiated and sold hundreds of short sales — which sprang up outta nowhere and hung around way too long. If that doesn’t teach patience, I’m not sure what does. So, I waited 2 days for my listing to show up in Trulia in order to claim it. Two days. It never appeared. We have an open house scheduled tomorrow, so I had no choice but to input that listing manually if I want buyers to see it. I realize that’s a rebel’s way to do it, and I’m messing with your system, but like any top Sacramento real estate agent, I do what it takes to give my sellers an edge.
Image:Trulia
When Will New Homes for Sale in Sacramento Be Listed?
Near the end of August every year, this Sacramento real estate agent begins gearing up for the fall real estate market by listing more homes for sale in Sacramento. Normal people, on the other hand, are winding up family vacations, buying school gear and getting ready for Labor Day celebrations. Not busy real estate agents because we are not necessarily normal. We are loaded with listing appointments on our calendars to meet with sellers getting ready to list their homes for sale in Sacramento.
This is the second swing and revived housing interest period in town. The Sacramento real estate market is different from other parts of the country in that even with four seasons, the weather is so mild that we don’t deal with snow or much of a down market as the year winds down. Our fall real estate market generally starts off with a bang and then fizzles around Thanksgiving. If there is any time of the year that is a good time for vacation, and that’s questionable, December is generally the best time to escape for a Sacramento listing agent.
That’s because we work our tails off from January through November. But the second biggest months past the spring market are typically September and October. If you haven’t been able to sell your home all year, maybe it’s time to take a fresh approach? Re-list as a new listing at an improved price? Make a few repairs? Some homes take longer to sell than others, especially if they are unique and appeal to a smaller pool of home buyers.
I have new homes for sale in Sacramento coming on the market around Labor Day. A duplex in Fair Oaks, an affordable ranch home in Parkway Estates, a single-level in Natomas, a gorgeous waterfront home in the Pocket, among others. If you’re looking for a home to buy in Sacramento, why not use that first week in September to find the perfect home? This is typically when new inventory opens, not to mention, we desperately need more homes for sale in Sacramento to meet demand.
When Home Sellers Hire the Second Listing Agent
In my real estate business, which covers the Sacramento Valley over four counties, it seems more and more sellers are calling me to ask why their real estate agent can’t sell their home and asking me to be the second listing agent. In fairness to my fellow real estate agents in Sacramento, some of those situations are not always the first agent’s fault. Or, it could be simply a personality clash between the parties. Whatever the reason, the fact remains I pick up a good number of listings and sell them when other agents cannot. It goes in cycles but this year that number seems to be much greater.
Fortunately, as the second listing agent, I do sell those listings. And I sell those homes at top dollar; it’s not like I list them for less than the previous sales price, because usually the price stays the same. What I look for is what are the challenges to selling the listing. All listings contain some kind of challenge and there are no slam dunks in this business. It’s easy to pick out the attractive selling points but it’s much more difficult to address the challenges, isolate the drawbacks and make those bad things appear insignificant. But that’s a specialty developed through decades of experience, I guess. It’s why my homes for sale in Sacramento tend to sell for more money –well, that, and I tend to play well with others.
I just closed a home on Friday that had previously been listed by another real estate agent for 5 months without selling. The first thing I do is scrutinize what the other agent has done and then, as the second listing agent, I don’t do those things. That’s an oversimplification but my goal is not to duplicate failure. Looking up the first agent’s listings, it was clear that most of that agent’s inventory is languishing on the market for an extremely long period of time. You’d expect to see long days on market for a short sale but not in a bunch of equity listings.
I studied what I did not like about the photographs and marketing comments and eliminated those negatives from my marketing strategy. Further, the previous agent did not hold open houses. Some mega real estate companies do not support agent open houses. Lyon Real Estate, where I work, is a big proponent of open houses. It’s true that most buyers don’t buy directly from an open house but the publicity does help to sell that home. Lyon Real Estate is the market leader in the Sacramento Valley.
My charming group of dedicated real estate agents on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team worked diligently with me to sell that home. I kept in constant communication with the seller, advising her of our efforts. I’m happy to report that the home sold. For all cash. There was no appraisal to contend with, so the seller got exactly the price she wanted — which was excellent because the comparable sales were few. The home is situated on a busy street but I worked around it. It was also overbuilt in comparison to other homes in the neighborhood, but I worked around it.
Most of my clients call me first, thank goodness. But it’s OK if I am the second listing agent. It’s not that difficult to cancel a listing contract. If your home hasn’t sold and you’re shopping around for a new Sacramento real estate agent, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I don’t mind being the second listing agent. I will get the job done for you.
Buying and Selling in a Normal Sacramento Housing Market
You might wonder why about 50% of the homes are selling in Sacramento this spring and the other 50% of homes are not selling — especially when you read that we are experiencing a seller’s market for 2014 — and, as usual, this real estate agent has an explanation for our Sacramento housing market phenomena. For starters, this is not really a seller’s market for all Sacramento housing, because it doesn’t fit all of the criteria for a seller’s market. To have a seller’s market, you’ve got to have buyers, and we don’t have as many as buyers as we probably should for the amount of inventory available.
This means if a tree falls in the forest does it make it a sound?
Yes, our inventory is very low as compared to previous years but I don’t see as many buyers out and about our town. I’m not receiving as many multiple offers as I used to a few years ago, it takes longer to get an offer, and the days on market seem a bit longer as well. So, that would make for a pretty balanced market, wouldn’t you agree? Plus, let’s not forget, prices are up! You can probably get $100,000 more for that home than you could have a few years ago. It’s a great time to sell. Rates are low, so it’s still a good time to buy.
If you need to sell and buy a home, the good news is contingent offers are back! Little signals a normal Sacramento real estate market than contingent offers.
It’s also a Sacramento housing market in which some homes in Sacramento will sell very quickly because there is a high demand for that particular type of home, location, price range — or a combination of those factors. Other homes will take longer to sell. Especially those homes that are overpriced. I realize some sellers are exuberantly enthusiastic, let’s say, and optimistic to the point that they’ve priced themselves out of the market, but by golly, they sure do have that sign in the front yard.
I closed a home in Roseville earlier this week in the West Park neighborhood for sellers who are moving to the Midwest. If they had waited another month, they probably would have received the price they wanted, but since it didn’t sell within 2 weeks, they elected to reduce the price a bit to entice an offer. Bam. Flew into escrow with that price reduction. Of course, then they worried that they sold too low — that’s human nature — but they didn’t. They sold at market value, and we negotiated with the buyers to let them stay for a few weeks free of charge.
So, it all boils to if you’re planning to sell, you need to think about which side of the fence you want to be on. Do you want to be on the side of the fence that is receiving offers, going into escrow and closing? Or do you want to sit on the other side that, well, sits. Because only about half of our inventory is selling right now. But low inventory with low numbers of buyers is still a somewhat balanced market. Could this be the new normal for Sacramento real estate?
