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Pay Attention to Noise When Buying a Home in Sacramento
Don’t buy a home near an airport.
When buying a home in Sacramento, you need to pay attention to the noise factor, even if you’re half deaf, which I partly am. When I was in third grade, I stuffed a soda straw into my right ear canal. Why? I don’t know. Why do little kids ram crayons up their noses? I don’t even recall doing such a stupid thing but the pain afterwards was particularly memorable. My mother did not believe I had an ailment and sent me to school anyway, and I spent most of the morning with my head on my desk, quietly sobbing. Next thing I knew I had a large vacuum hose attached to my ear, which caused a great deal of pain as it sucked out the straw at the doctor’s office.
That soda straw pierced my eardrum. As a result I have a slight hearing loss in my right ear, which means when I sleep, if I want to block out sound, I simply sleep on my left ear. There is somewhat of an upside to this mishap, especially since I once lived in shared quarters with 17 other guys in Nederland, Colorado. When you throw loud rock-and-roll from my younger decades into the mix, it’s a wonder I’m not deaf, but I suppose there is still time.
I do find that the older I get, the more sensitive to sound I become. Because the older I get, the more I appreciate silence. (Silence is golden but my eyes still see . . . with the help contact lenses for old people.) I treasure the sound of nothing. Absolute quiet. Peaceful. Tranquil. Silent. No sounds of the freeway, children screaming, dogs barking, no helicopters overhead or planes, no logs crackling in a fireplace, no water running through a sprinkler system, no birds singing or crickets cricketing or frogs croaking, not even a sound of wind blowing through treetops.
Home buyers don’t want a lot of noise, either. A friend of my husband, a former editor at the Sacramento Bee, once said the thing she disliked about Sacramento was the sound of the freeway no matter where you were. She is right, it is hard when buying a home in Sacramento to stay away from neighborhoods where noise does not exist on some level. Even though my home in Land Park is at least a mile from Old Sacramento, I can still hear the train on the weekends, but dual pane windows blocks out all other sound.
My sister lives under a flight path in Minneapolis. You can practically identify what the first-class passengers are drinking, the belly of the plane flies so low. My husband lived 2 blocks from the El in Chicago. Home prices in those types of neighborhoods are much lower than in areas where noise is reduced.
If you’re in the market to buy a home in Sacramento, stand in the yard for a while and listen. Go there at different times of the day and different days of the week and listen. Ask yourself if you can adapt to the noises you hear. Because when it comes time to sell — and there will be a time you will want to sell — that noise factor will influence the price a buyer will pay. You just don’t realize it now because you’re surrounded by sound and noise every day, and you’re probably much younger than me. Not to mention, that noise-polluted home is probably very affordable. I always say the best time to think about selling a home is when you’re buying a home in Sacramento.
When You Think the Location in Sacramento Doesn’t Matter
The seller who made an appointment with me to assess her home and its value canceled last week. She called to say another agent had persuaded her son to list with that agent so she did not need to speak to me. She further elaborated that the agent had greater exposure. Hmm . . . what was the comparison? After all, in 2012, I ranked as the #2 agent at the #1 company in Sacramento. It’s difficult to put a real estate phrase into Google without finding my name. But then I dropped the matter. I did not want to list a house that was slammed up against the freeway all that badly. Not as badly, apparently, as the agent who pushed for the listing and came up with whatever was said.
Nope, I will give it to my sellers straight. I don’t need to fabricate numbers or paint a rosier picture of myself than what exists. You get what you see with this Sacramento real estate agent.
As real estate agents, we can’t always choose which properties we sign on to sell. Well, sure, we sign the listing agreement, and we don’t have to do that. We could turn down the listing, and some agents will turn down certain types of listings. Sometimes, agents won’t take listings under a certain dollar value or in a certain neighborhood, but I don’t discriminate. I will list and sell just about anything that is located anywhere. It’s all real estate. Some sales are just more challenging than others. Sure, I love that beautifully staged home in Granite Bay, but I’ll also list that water-logged, varmint-infested roach motel. I’m flexible — like a round peg in a square hole.
Just this morning, I explained to a seller that he shouldn’t get upset with me because I was not the agent who sold him the house, which is located in about the worst location possible in Sacramento. The only worst kind of location, would be next to garbage dump. Location is everything in real estate.
People forget. They get caught up in the excitement of buying a home and they don’t stop to think about location. The next time location pops into their head is when they are trying to sell. That’s when they realize the home they bought is not in a desirable location. Homes in desirable locations quickly sell. Homes in not so desirable locations take longer to sell and sell for much less than others around them.
The time to think about location is when you buy that home.
