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Loving Homes in the Hawaii Streets of Bridgeway Lakes, West Sacramento
3124 Wake Island Ct, West Sacramento $299K
Part of where you live is the feeling you get when you come home from work at night. Are you coming home to an oasis now? Does the party start when your car rolls into the drive? Wouldn’t you like to experience the love of Aloha when you walk through your front door? If you’d like to upgrade your lifestyle to this experience, perhaps it is time to take a look at living in the Hawaii Streets of Bridgeway Lakes and to buy this home for sale in West Sacramento.
Nestled near the end of a cul-de-sac without any through traffic is a beautiful one-story Beazer home, ready for a new owner. It features 4 bedrooms, which is often hard to find in a single-level home in West Sacramento, plus you’ll discover two full baths and an indoor laundry room with wall cabinets.
3124 Wake Island Ct, West Sacramento
A beautiful upgrade in this 2001 home are the engineered wood floors. Manufactured by St. James, the floors are a high-gloss smoked oak color, individual planks; perfect for pets and kid traffic. The floor plan is open, with the kitchen sharing space with the dining area and is offset by the family room, with a tile-surround fireplace.
You are guaranteed to love the layout. The master suite is situated near the back yard, and it features that highly desirable walk-in closet we women tend to adore. Its bath has a shower over the tub, a window and dual sinks. Ceiling fans are attached as fixtures throughout the home as well; the windows are dual pane and, of course, you get central heat and air, plus an attached 2-car garage.
3124 Wake Island Ct, West Sacramento, CA
The back yard sports a pergola attached to the home, which provides coverage for the patio. You’ll find plenty of room for dogs and kids to play in the fenced back yard, plus the neighbors behind can’t see over your fence, and you can’t see them. Everybody loves Bridgeway Lakes in West Sacramento!
3124 Wake Island Court, West Sacramento, CA 95691 is offered exclusively by Lyon Real Estate and Elizabeth Weintraub, 916.233.6759, at $299K. Call for a private showing today and who knows, you might just take a Hawaiian vacation at home in the Hawaii Streets of Bridgeway Lakes.
How to Close $2 Million in Sales in Sacramento in One Day
Closing $2 million in sales in one day in Sacramento is remarkable
A milestone day happened yesterday that is very rare in my end of the Sacramento real estate market and, in fact, I wouldn’t have even known that it happened if escrow had not pointed it out to me. Most of the listings that I take and sell, for example, fall within a wide range of price points, but I’m betting the mid-range of prices for homes in Sacramento is around $300K to $500K. Not only was it a surprise, but it was an odd feeling when escrow mentioned I was about to close $2 million in sales in one day. What? $2 million in sales for Sacramento home sales in one day?
All the home sales were very different from each other. One of the homes was one of those custom magnificent homes in Davis, which sold for $1.5m, so that home sale took up a big chunk of my $2 million in sales volume. An agent in Davis called last week to drill me about the buyer for this home. She wanted to know if there was financing, if the home appraised at the sales price, and insinuated it was overpriced. On top of which, she asked if the buyer was from out-of-the-area, i.e. Bay area, implying that a local buyer must not be in escrow. What business is it of hers where the buyer is from? She has no business knowing any of these details. I am generally not authorized to release personal information about pending transactions, so I was forced to deny her request.
Of course, it did close at list price, which might shake up some in Davis. My duty is to my seller. That home probably set a new high for Central Davis. Part of my $2 million in sales.
My second closing was a condo in West Sacramento, a short sale, which I have had the pleasure of selling 3 different times to 3 different buyers. Every time I got the short sale approval letter, the buyers were not in a position, for whatever reason, to close. It also involved years of delinquent HOA dues, and difficult negotiations between two separate HOA companies. The seller had been unable to get either of the HOAs to work with her and thought for certain she was destined for foreclosure. But she kept the faith and continued to work with me until we found a buyer who would stick it through. She got her short sale and did not have to face foreclosure.
I’ll probably get a Christmas card from that seller every year until I die.
The third closing was in my favorite stomping grounds, among homes in Elk Grove. For some unexplained reason, I sell a lot of homes in Elk Grove. When the seller and I examined the comparable sales, the top price we could justify for this particular home was a little bit below our list price. Listing homes is a little bit like going fishing, throw that line out there and bam, got a bite, reeled in the buyer and we went into escrow. The next day, the buyer freaked out and canceled.
We were NOT returning the listing to active status as a “back on market” listing, because perception is often the home is damaged in some way. We pulled a new MLS number and started over. This time, we got a bigger fish, and we pushed that price up another 2%. The buyer’s agent thought I was pretty mean because I shot down his idea of negotiating a request for repair, but we were clear at inception the home was sold AS IS. As a result, we don’t care what sort of defects they found on the home inspection — they were closing on a home in a limited inventory market when many other prospective home buyers in Elk Grove cannot buy a home at all.
When I look over transactions like these and the work that I have done for my clients, I feel gratified. I feel as though I have justified once again that sellers are better off hiring a full-service Sacramento Realtor who produces results. I earn my commissions. If you ask my sellers, they will agree. It’s also entirely possible that I never again will close $2 million in sales for Sacramento home sales in one day.
Why Buyers Waited 6 Months for a West Sacramento Short Sale
Here is an example of a short sale in West Sacramento that sold at the end of October and could not close until the middle of April. It certainly was not the buyer’s fault, even though that is usually the case. It was not the seller’s fault, either, nor either of the agent’s. It was due to the lovely combination of an Ocwen lender combined with Nationstar as the second lender with MI on top of the cake. Those Ocwen / Nationstar combo short sales can be complicated to bring the two sides together, but it is generally much easier when Ocwen is the first and Nationstar is the second than the other way around, let me tell you.
Plus, as some lenders do, and I’ve been gripping about this practice until the cows come home but no legislators seem to do anything about it, and nobody else seems to care, is the second recently attached mortgage insurance. They do it after the fact when they know the home is underwater. There are companies that ensure worthless paper, and they make a profit. Why isn’t this against the law? If for no other reason, notwithstanding the profit on another’s suffering, is that on a combo loan, a borrower is promised there will be no mortgage insurance, as an incentive to buy using a combo loan package. Then, when the borrower is hurting, underwater, and struggling, the second lender slaps on mortgage insurance, which can help to mess up their short sale?
We received approval from Ocwen on this West Sacramento short sale in December, but Nationstar held out for more money. They managed to string out the process until February, at which point I went back to Ocwen and asked them to revise the approval letter because the HAFA now fell under the new HAFA short sale guidelines. It meant that the seller would have received $3,000 as a relocation incentive under the previous guidelines, but as of February 1 is now entitled to receive up to $10,000.
To get the seller the additional $10,000, we had to go through another month or so of waiting for Ocwen to revise its approval letter. The difference of $7,000 might not seem like much in the overall scheme of things, but it makes a HUGE difference to a person trying to start over with her life.
Bottom line, in this West Sacramento short sale, I got the sellers the newly approved $10,000 incentive, Nationstar got its demands met, and we closed. We are very grateful to the buyers for their patience in this ordeal. Not every buyer will wait 6 months to buy a home. But think about the price increases during that period of time! The buyer got an excellent price and a beautiful home in West Sacramento. It can be worth it to wait for that short sale approval.
Closing the Escrows of Two Homes in West Sacramento
Closing the escrows of two homes in West Sacramento on the same day is rewarding to me in one sense that I can pick up both lockboxes in one trip from Land Park, just over the Sacramento River. That’s what happened yesterday. Well, of course, I also get paid for my performance but that pales in comparison to the joy and ecstasy felt by my clients and, while a stranger may find that statement difficult to believe, people who know me know it is true. I make a difference in my client’s lives. Especially when they are selling a short sale, which is probably why I enjoy the challenges of short sales so much. The rewards are right there when I hear the song of relief echoed.
One seller told me that he knew deep down that he probably would not have been successful if he had hired a different West Sacramento REALTOR. Apparently, he had called several agents to discuss selling, and they all presented strategies in opposition to what I suggested, so he chose me instead. That was a smart move. He said he also selected me to be his agent because he felt he probably would not get approved for his short sale yet believed I would find a way to do it. He was right.
He did not get approved the first go-around and I successfully changed the bank’s opinion. Yup, the lender flat out rejected his short sale. I scoffed at that short sale denial. The short sale bank was misinterpreting the situation and overlooking a crucial piece of evidence. Because of my vast experience, I knew what to tweak, how to repackage and present to approve. We provided the revised package and the short sale was approved. Other agents might have given up at that point, but I pride myself on the fact that my short sales close. Despite the repackaging time lag of a few days, the short sale approval arrived within 60 days from our “on market” date and we closed 30 days later. Just like I predicted.
We also had received a bunch of inquiries and several offers at the inception of this listing. The difficulty with this short sale, despite seller qualifications, was the condition of the home. I have a background of fixing up and reselling homes, so I have a pretty good handle on what it costs to make repairs to a home that has been damaged. It’s a delicate balance between what a short sale bank will take (market value) and the profit margin for an astute buyer. We chose a sales price, and it sold for $1,000 more. However, we had also received offers that were lowballs from losers and going nowhere. The investor who bought this home will make a pretty profit when he resells. He was smart.
The bank’s appraiser called me to discuss the condition of this home, and we spent a long time on the phone chatting about what it needed. He saw my point of view and agreed with my assessment of value. Second hurdle passed. Short sales are all about jumping the hurdles and making it around the track to closing. If sellers have patience and trust, I’ll get the job done for them. Tomorrow, I’ll share an interesting thing about the second closing. If you need help selling or buying homes in West Sacramento, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I answer my phone.
Dim Sum, Oscars, and the Ingress Channel 10 Tower Portal in Sacramento
For all you of faction agents of Ingress out there, I can’t imagine there is a single one of you who watched The Oscars last night and did not notice the strong resemblance between the tall twirly things on the Dolby stage and resonators. Well, between that and all of the grumbling (OK, maybe that was just coming from my side of the sofa) about why they changed the name from the Academy Awards, which sounds so much more prestigious, to fit our stupid slang today; it’s beyond me. There was a strong similarity but not enough for copyright infringement with Google, I imagine.
Level 8 Resonator
Or, perhaps it was due to the lingering remains bouncing around in my head of our early morning jaunt after dim sum at New Canton. Gotta mention that it’s really difficult to nab a hot sesame ball after dim sum at that location because there doesn’t seem to be a big demand or by the time they get to us the sesame balls are cold. Instead, we walked over to that joint on the corner of 27th and Broadway, Dim Sum House, and I heard my husband say, One sesame ball, please. I was about to interject: Oh, let’s make it four, when I spotted the ginormous sesame ball. Size of a baseball.
I was still munching on that sesame ball by the time we arrived at Channel 10 studios at the other end of Broadway by 5th Street. You see, every time I come back to Sacramento from listing homes in West Sacramento or in Davis, I drive by the Channel 10 Tower which, believe it or not, is a portal in Ingress. The problem is you can’t get to it. My husband pulled up alongside Broadway in our incognito Prius, and I ran up the steps. I got to the very end of the breezeway entrance on the side, but still could not reach the Channel 10 Tower.
You don’t get very far on private property like this before a security guard pops up, and sure enough, I had my very own security guard questioning me. I suppose I looked a bit disshelved, in my Nitty Gritty Dirt Band t-shirt, boyfriend jeans, Chanel sandals and wild crazy hair flying in the breezeway as I tried to explain what I was doing there while pointing my cellphone as though perhaps I had hoped to connect with aliens. I tried to look as normal as I could under the circumstances: It’s a game that is played all over the world on cellphones in real time at real locations, and Channel 10 is one of them.
The portal for the Channel 10 Tower is technically not supposed to be a portal because a) it is private property (not art) and b) it is located on private property, and c) it is inaccessible to the public. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop us from blowing it up, but we weren’t close enough to deploy any resonators. The guard hollered at me: Are you the creator of this game?
On the way home, we discussed possible ways to get into Channel 10. We could go there to interview somebody. Nah. I suggested we dress as repairmen, maybe to repair the A/C. My husband launched into how he would address the attendant at the visitor booth. We have Zee App, he explained with a French accent, which is the portal photo of the Channel 10 Tower in Ingress that I showed the guard earlier as proof of my purpose. We are official because we have Zee App. See? We are here to fix that App. Yeah, I don’t think we’re getting into Channel 10. Now, maybe if I request a tour or say I want to shoot a photograph of the Channel 10 Tower? Repairmen, that’s still a possibility.
