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If You Don’t Write a Purchase Offer You’ll Never Know
While some Sacramento real estate agents view other agent inquiries about their listings as annoying, perhaps irritating, I actually welcome a chat with a buyer’s agent who is working with a qualified and eager home buyer — because it could lead to a purchase offer. My focus is selling my listings, so the next best thing to talking to an actual buyer is talking to the buyer’s agent. See, I don’t mind talking on the phone, as I have a lot of practice talking on the phone.
I’ve been yakking on the phone since I was old enough to drag around a Northwestern Bell dial telephone by its cord in one hand while sucking my thumb on the other. We didn’t have any pacifiers when I was growing up in the 1950s, and we had to substitute our own body parts.
Which brings me to a phone conversation I had several days ago when I made an emergency stop at a gas station somewhere in Citrus Heights. Apart from making a beeline to Nordstrom in Rocklin from my home in Land Park, about the only other place I drive is to seller’s homes to put them on the market. This means I fill up my car maybe once or twice a month. But I’ve been doing a lot more driving this week and noticed my gas gauge was dangerously low. My car tells me when I’m about to run out of fuel with a cute in-dash message about being mindful of how far I have left to drive. It’s so polite. Those Italians.
As I was climbing out of my car and grabbing my VISA card, my bluetooth began to jangle slightly with the sound of faraway chimes, like I’m standing on a hillside in Ireland listening to the wind blow across the burren. No ringy-dingy for me. I answer and it’s an agent calling about one of my listings. She wanted to know if my seller would entertain a lowball offer. Now, see, that’s being polite. That’s encouraging cooperation between agents. That’s not just emailing an insulting purchase offer out of the blue, it’s calling to discuss first. Professional.
I’m staring at the gas pump while I’m listening to the agent talk. This is why I don’t fill up my car at foreign gas stations away from Land Park. I prefer the familiar, like I imagine most people do. I saw three paragraphs of white text printed on the pump, explaining how to pump gas. WTH? My eyes frantically scanned the pump for something simple such as:
- insert card
- select grade
- pump gas
But it wasn’t there. I realized I could not comprehend the text nor attempt to read it while I was in the midst of an engrossing conversation about my listing. How can a Shell gas station make pumping gas so danged difficult? Well, perhaps it’s the same as any other gas station, and it wants my ZIP code. I inserted the card, pressed my 5-digit code into the keypad and selected the button for gas. Everything seemed OK, stuck the hose pump into my car and nothing happened when I pressed the lever. What?
Around the other side of the pump I spotted a younger guy sporting a 10-gallon hat filling up his pickup. I asked if there was some kind of trick, no, not the agent, I assured her. Now I was having 2 conversations and neither were productive. I grabbed my bag, locked the car and marched into the tiny Shell station office stuffed to the gills with bags of potato chips, beef jerky and Pepsi. What am I doing wrong at the pump? I asked the clerk, waving my VISA card at her.
Then I glanced at the card in my hand. It was my Health Saving Account VISA, which is a debit card. The buyer’s agent is still talking to me about her clients. We’re discussing the comparable sales. You know, I don’t really know what my sellers will do with that kind of purchase offer, I explain, but there is certainly one way to find out, and that’s to write the purchase offer. I don’t make decisions for my clients, and we need a place to start negotiations, and this spot might very well be it. It’s a sure rejection if you never write the purchase offer, what do you have to lose?
This story ends with the sellers and the agent’s buyers coming to an agreement a few days later and going into escrow. This is what happens when agents get out of the way and don’t let their own personal opinions shade a transaction but instead facilitate and represent their clients’ best interests.
And I’m sticking my Health Savings Account card into a different slot in my wallet, not to be confused with my regular VISA. Because you can’t buy gas with a Health Savings Account VISA. I also suspect that clerks who have to deal with the public really dislike customers yakking on their cell, but when you’re a Sacramento real estate agent, you never know when a buyer will call.
Why is Land Park a Great Neighborhood?
What makes a good neighborhood a great neighborhood in Land Park? That question crossed my mind for two reasons. First, I was reading a blog written by an agent friend from Benicia about the topic of great neighborhoods. I read through her blog and into the responses. Somebody remarked that a good neighborhood is a place where people don’t mow lawns at 7 AM or sing along top volume to G-L-O-R-I-A at midnight and don’t run over your cat, and then it dawned on me, right at the point where I was thinking: hey, I completely agree with this poster, yeah, right on, that the person who wrote the comment was me. And that particular blog was written last year.
Which just made me laugh out loud. This Sacramento real estate agent gets around online, I guess.
Second, I think about when I retire, even though that’s a ways off and I don’t know where to retire, and I wonder about giving up the benefits we enjoy from living in Land Park. We all should appreciate the here and now while the here and now is here. I noticed that while watching Californication, the episode at Hank’s house when Becca tells him she’s getting married, which looks like that balcony scene was filmed in a beach community, maybe Venice or Malibu, in southern California. What I couldn’t help but notice was how close the houses are, tumbled on top of each other (which I had forgotten) and that most people left their windows open.
Being that close to the water means tourists, too. Traffic and noise. I used to live at 1234 Balboa Boulevard in Newport Beach in the 1970s, the decade in which I was first licensed to sell real estate. This was smack dab on the beach peninsula, extreme noise, traffic all day past my humble abode, but I never noticed it. Young people screaming, hootering and hollering, drinking and smoking pot and what-have-you, running amuck, carrying on, playing records too loudly, and this was just the noise from inside my apartment.
While I yearn to return to the beach life, I also realize that I will never afford a $10 million retreat on the water, which means anything less equates to putting up with a bit of noise. We don’t have noise in Land Park. It’s really quiet. No cars hardly drive down my street. There are no children squealing or shrieking around my house. My neighbors in Land Park are respectful and keep to themselves. Friendly enough when they need to be but mostly private. I like it this way.
Sometimes, when we leave the windows open at night, we can hear slight traffic way off in the distance or the fireworks from Raley’s field. With the windows closed, though, I don’t even notice the morning sprinklers which, due to the drought, is only twice a week now. I appreciate the silence. I especially love the fruit from my next door neighbor’s cherry tree as much as he enjoys the tomatoes from our garden. If you’re looking for a friendly but quiet neighborhood, you won’t find much better than Land Park.
You can view existing vintage homes in Land Park here or active listings of homes for sale in Land Park here.
Buying a New Home in Land Park Sacramento
When I talk with people I haven’t talked with for years, they often ask if I am living in the same home in Land Park, as though the first thing they would do if they were selling 100 homes in Sacramento year after year would be to buy a new home. Not because I need a new home, mind you, but because I could. They ask I suppose because my existing home is not a mansion nor an estate, and that’s what they would buy. It’s just a plain ol’ single level home, around 2,000 square feet in Land Park.
It’s not located on a premiere winding street in Land Park and there is no view of William Land Park. There is no second or third floor. No marble floors with floor-to-ceiling columns. No four-car garage. No pool in the back yard. There is nothing all that remarkable about our home in Land Park. It suits our needs, and we’re happy with it.
But people are still astonished that we haven’t traded up or built our own mini-mansion because it’s something that most other people would do, I guess. I think buying a larger home is one of those items on a list when people play what one would do if one won the lottery. A larger home means more to clean, higher taxes and more crap that could go wrong. But that’s me. I’m also over 60 and less inclined to move again. My husband echoes that sentiment.
Fortunately, my clients often think differently and they might move every 5 to 7 years. I met with clients a few days ago who buy homes dirt cheap, remodel them and move up. It’s called buy, fix up and sell. There’s nothing wrong with that approach and, in fact, it’s a method I used myself over the years. We all have our different dreams and things we reach for. And that’s OK.
I dream of travel. I love to see new places, encounter different cultures, meet new people who can’t understand anything I say and vice versa (and I’m not just talking about the South). This morning I received a digital version of the Four Seasons magazine and was sidetracked for a while, reading about gourmet street food in Singapore, Budapest theatres and how to get a free night in Langkawi.
But a new place among Land Park homes for sale is not on the horizon for us. Our present home is just fine, even though we’ve lived here forever. If you’re looking to buy or sell a home in Land Park, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I know just about every inch of my leafy neighborhood.
The Difference Between a Challenge and a PITA for a Sacramento REALTOR
There is a big difference between a challenge and a pain-in-the-ass (PITA) when it comes to Sacramento real estate for a REALTOR. A challenge presents obstacles that beg to be overcome and resolved, whereas a PITA just gets worse and nothing will fix those problems. It’s sometimes difficult to figure out which is which when they first appear in front of me. I like to try to help every buyer and seller who contact this Sacramento REALTOR. But when I start to question why-oh-why am I working on a house, that’s a definite clue that I should not.
I am not afraid of hard work. I don’t care how complicated a situation presents, I am confident that I will find a way to make it work out. It’s why I am successful. In fact, it’s how I sell hundreds of homes. It’s how, for example, that since 2006 I’ve sold more short sales than any other agent in town. So many agents would not touch those houses with a 10-feet pole. But not this agent. I welcome challenges. It’s how I turned into an exceptional Sacramento REALTOR.
If you have a difficult to home to sell, I’m your agent. I’ll do it. I gain deep satisfaction by successfully closing the seemingly impossible. By the same token, I welcome the easy-to-sell homes and I do a bang-up job selling homes in Land Park, East Sacramento and Elk Grove, all the way in some cases to Lincoln. The really nice homes in Sacramento owned by trouble-free sellers balances out the problematic sales. I take the good with the bad.
So, when a seller called, wiping away tears through our discussion about selling a certain home in Elk Grove, I decided to help her. Yes, I can be a sucker for a sob story. I sometimes feel as though if I don’t do it, who will? Many agents don’t like problems and they won’t work on situations fraught with difficulties. She faces an extremely complicated situation, made ten-fold by a super hard-to-sell property. Whatever pushed her to the edge meant she had to take action, pronto. I stopped what I was doing and jumped on this for her. Took copious notes. Shot photos. Inspected. Qualified. Put together a game plan, gathered required documents.
This went on for a two-week period. Finally, we were ready to go on the market. No more frantic text messages. No more interpreters. We were set. This seller’s 3-year battle was about to come to an end. Then, the seller emailed to say the timing wasn’t quite right. Maybe some other time? I guess there is a reason this has been going on for three years. It has nothing to do with me. It will never get resolved through a real estate agent. That nagging thought about why was I doing this vanished, because I’m not doing it. Not now, not ever.
It’s not a challenge. It’s a PITA. In those situations, a Sacramento REALTOR has to say no.
Even Land Park Agents Need Access to the Interiors
Why can’t you send me an electronic estimate of the value of my home in Land Park, asked a seller via email. He seemed rather irritated that I would a) correspond with him and expect a discussion when he preferred anonymous interaction, and b) why I wasn’t doing what he wanted me to do. After all, I’m a Land Park agent who lives and works in Land Park, and I have a ton of experience selling hundreds of homes all over Sacramento. Why, Zillow promised I would send him an estimate, and that’s what he expected. Why was I asking if I could see his home in Land Park? That just didn’t sound right.
Why wasn’t I a robot? Isn’t that what the internet is for? You ask a question and get free information? What the hey . . .
It took me a while to explain that Zillow is a private website with which I have little interaction except that it maintains my profile and manages reviews for me, and I pay to have my photo plastered around Land Park. On top of which, the homes in Land Park are special and unique. They are different from each other. They are not tract homes like you’d find in Natomas or Elk Grove. An interior inspection could make the price swing by $50,000 to $100,000 to $150,000 or more. It’s only one of the reasons why Zillow is so completely inaccurate when it comes to pricing of homes in Land Park.
Many online property value websites use a computer algorithm and do not take into consideration upgrades, orientation on the lot, nuisances next door that could affect value nor the emotional pull of architectural details. That’s why a Land Park agent needs to see the interior of the home before rendering an opinion of value.
I mean, I could send a CMA, which is a comparative market analysis, but it involve throwing numbers into the air. It wouldn’t carry any weight. It would have no meaning. It would not be an appraisal or even a very good estimate of market value. It’s not like I belong to a secret cult that allows me access to information on behalf of the seller. I need to look at the home with my own two eyeballs, the old fashioned way.
Do I need to personally inspect every home in Sacramento to determine value? Surprisingly, no. Sometimes I am right on the money just knowing the neighborhood and amenities, but homes in Land Park, regardless of my familiarity, need the personal touch. Just like homes in East Sacramento and Curtis Park and Midtown. You can’t look at numbers and determine value without interior access. No professional REALTOR would attempt it.
After I explained all of this and was successful at getting him to understand, turns out the seller isn’t yet ready to sell. Not until the fall, after his tenants move. So a value submitted today would change by this September anyway. And the September market in Sacramento is different from the spring market. We’ll meet up after the summer is over.
