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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.
Should You Stay in Your Home or Sell the Home Vacant?
Home Selling: Should you Stay or Go?
If you interviewed a hundred real estate agents in Sacramento and asked whether it was better to sell the home vacant or sell it with the seller living there, I’m betting agents would say the opposite of what I believe. Why do I think that? Because from a buyer’s agent’s point of view, it’s often easier to sell the home vacant. No fuss, no muss to show. Easy in and out. But from a Sacramento listing agent’s point of view, it’s generally better to leave the home occupied with the seller in residence.
Now, I know some agents start to feel like they own the home when they take a listing. It’s a common feeling, believe me. Sort of depends on how long the home is on the market and how many open houses the agent has held. I recall the summer of 2003 when I was the Queen of Vallejo Way in Land Park, and I held open houses every single Sunday for an overpriced listing that no other agent was willing to take. I knew every inch, nook and cranny of that home because I spent so much time in it. I filmed a segment for Good Day, Sacramento! in that house. But I never took a nap on the bed or helped myself to a pop in the ‘frig, in case you’re wondering. That home eventually sold, too, and I still have fond memories when I drive by, many years later.
But no listings are my home, regardless of how I might feel about them. My job is to put the seller’s interests first and foremost. I believe it’s better for the seller to stay in the home, even if it might make my job easier if they moved out. Only if the home is a total mess and unsuitable for showing would I suggest a seller move. It’s not always better to sell the home vacant.
If you’re asking yourself should a home be occupied or vacant when home selling, consider these points:
- Homes show better with furniture
- Vacant homes are often vandalized and not all insurance policies cover vacant homes
- Sellers are present to deal with emergencies
- Sellers can possibly meet the potential buyers
- Don’t have to pay for maintaining two homes
Yes, it’s a little bit more of a hassle to clean up the house every day and leave it spotless for showings, and it’s not always convenient to jump in the car and drive around when a buyer shows up, but you’ll probably make more money and sell the home faster if you’re living there. Unless, like I said, you live in a pigsty. Then, yes, you should move out and sell the home vacant.
W X Downtown Freeway Closing Coming to Land Park
Highways and roads in Sacramento like the W X freeway, for the most part, are in far better shape than say those in Minnesota. There is a standing joke in Minnesota that there are two seasons in that state: winter and road construction. But we don’t have to deal with huge potholes and overpasses collapsing in Sacramento, just the impatient jerk-offs who tailgate.
A jerk almost hit me while my husband and I were at PetSmart in Natomas this week. Apparently, this guy in a white pickup truck thought my husband was driving too slowly, so he sped around us. My husband honked at him because he should not have passed us doing 55 in the parking lot entrance. Then, as we were walking in the crosswalk up to the sidewalk of the shopping center, the pickup truck circled back around and missed hitting my huge butt within inches as it zoomed by again. Looked like it was on purpose to me.
I realize that the Natomas Marketplace can drive just about any sane person crazy but this was a bit nutty. Hey buddy, it’s not our fault your wife left you, your dog hates you and you’re out of Budweiser.
Just wait until the construction begins, though, on the W X freeway closing in Sacramento in a few months. They call it the W X freeway because it parallels W and X Streets. During May and June, we’ll have lane closures, from 14th Street to 26th Street, which stretches through downtown / Midtown / Land Park and Curtis Park. Caltrans is spending $46 million to fix the crosstown highway. Plans are to alternate lane closures in one direction at a time, so some hours eastbound traffic will have more lanes than westbound, and vice versa.
I wish the WX freeway closing would fix that horrible onramp problem at Riverside. My neighbor’s husband in Land Park was killed in a terrible traffic accident while merging at that spot. He crashed into a telephone company cable truck and died instantly. When merging from the Riverside onramp, you’re fighting traffic in the right lane, which is trying to get off on Highway 99; the middle lanes are heading for Interstate 80 and the far left lanes to Highway 50. This interchange is a nightmare.
It’s not much better merging to get off heading westbound to Land Park from Business 80, either, and trying to exit on 16th Street or 10th Street. My husband won’t even drive in that direction because he doesn’t want to merge and take a chance on death. He exists on 26th. I’m more of a risk taker, and my Porsche has more horsepower than his Prius, so I’ll do it, but I don’t much like it either. You’ve got to speed up to cross, and sometimes the traffic in front of you is at a dead stop. But that’s the beauty of living in Sacramento, more people = more problems.
I usually drive from my home in Land Park to my real estate office at Lyon in Midtown Sacramento in 8 minutes by taking the W X Freeway and cutting over to Business 80, but now I guess I’ll use the surface streets. Another minute or two on my travel time is not gonna kill me, but getting on the W X freeway closing might.
New Helvetia Brewing in Land Park is a Hit
After a Saturday of hard work selling real estate in our fair city of Sacramento, this Land Park resident and her husband elected to trot on over to the new Land Park beer joint on Broadway and 18th Street, New Helvetia Brewing Co. It’s a craft beer spot, been open for a couple of months, and it even had a BBQ food truck parked on the side of 18th street, encouraging customers to bring in food. It was packed when we first arrived with kids participating in a Geography Bee, so we had dinner at Queen Shebas instead. You can never enjoy too much Ethiopian food.
With all sorts of wats jostling about in our stomachs and jokes about what happens when you drink beer on top of injera, we waddled back to New Helvetia. What do we do? we asked the bartender. I pour; you drink, he says. Sounded like a plan. We chose the sampler of 32 ounces for $12 to share.
Craft beers have different alcohol contents. Who knew? OK, having been raised in Minneapolis, I am familiar with the 3.2 beer that was sold on Sundays at 7-11s, and there were entire 3.2 joints that served nothing else but 3.2 content beer. You can still pass out from 3.2 beer, ask any teenager. But the average alcohol content of beer is about 6%.
We started with a lager, clean, fresh and 4.5% alcohol, called a Buffalo Craft Lager. I liked it. Two thumbs up. Moved on to a Saison Salon. Lemony and creamy. Another 2 thumbs up. The Red Wheat was delicious as well. Maybe they should serve caviar on crackers in between samples or cheese curds, I dunno, but by the time we got to the two India pale ales, well, they tasted like grapefruit. Which is OK if you’re going for citrusy.
But see, this is why it’s a sampler. You don’t have to like every beer you drink. Then, we came to the Homeland Stout. My husband recalled a scene in Parks and Recreation, in which the droll character Ron Swanson went to a Scotch Whiskey distillery in Scotland, where they made his favorite smokey Scotch, Lagavulin, and how we had discussed after the show what a smokey flavor would do to an adult beverage. Now was our chance to find out what it was like in a beer.
Two words: A-1 Sauce.
We didn’t finish that beer. Takes a special taste palate, I presume. Would go well with a steak, though.
However, the best was saved for last. I believe the alcohol content is 9.5%. Less than wine but a lot more than your average Joe beer. It was spectacular. Stupendous. Complex. If I drank a few more glasses of it, I’d be crawling under the table to go to sleep. And when I woke up, I’d want another glass. It was that good. It’s called Indomitable City Double IPA, and it looks like prune juice but believe me, it’s out of this world.
Disclosing Material Facts to a Sacramento Home Buyer
Buyers don’t care what you tell them as long as you tell them. That’s my opening statement when I hand home sellers a package of disclosures to complete. It’s the things you don’t tell a buyer that can come back to haunt you, not what you do say. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you Google: Snake Infested House in Idaho.
You take a neighborhood where I live and work as a Sacramento real estate agent like Land Park. Because I live in Land Park, I have intimate knowledge about the neighborhood, which agents who live outside of Land Park probably don’t know. If they don’t know, they can’t disclose those facts to a buyer. Although, it could probably be argued that they should know or should at least have asked questions of the seller.
On the front end of my marketing, I sell the delights of living in Land Park — the friendly neighbors, tree-canopied streets, fabulous restaurants, bike trails and our special attractions such as William Land Park, the Sacramento Zoo, Fairy Tale Town, the WPA Rock Garden, and Vic’s Ice Cream.
But there is also a downside — as there is with any neighborhood, I don’t care where you live. For example, I know which areas in Land Park routinely flood during a hard rain. I know where the feral cats, skunks, opossums and raccoons roam. Which streets get foot traffic and the origination of that traffic. When noise factors such as trains or freeways can be present. Parking ordinances. Which trees are protected. Selling homes in Land Park means more than what we used to call selling real estate in the old days: selling carpets and drapes. That used to be the definition of residential real estate sales in the 1970s. Except nowadays it’s more like selling hardwood flooring and plantation shutters.
The thing is after escrow closes, odds are something in that buyer’s new home will probably malfunction. And the minute it does, the buyer is likely to immediately jump to the conclusion that the seller knew about it and purposely withheld that information or concealed that defect. It’s human nature. We’re a suspicious bunch of people.
So, how do you bump up the odds that you won’t get sued after escrow closes? You hire an agent who can explain the inherent problems with some types of seller disclosures and can give you the right documents. You find a Land Park agent who knows the nuances of your neighborhood. I tell my sellers to disclose all material facts. If I know a material fact, I disclose it. I go into great detail about what a material fact is and why it’s important. I help sellers to recollect and disclose. We talk about the Transfer Disclosure Statement.
The other day a seller objected to a point I made in a disclosure. She wanted me to remove a sentence about the possibility that a neighbor’s dog might bark. No can do. The tenant told me the dog next door barked. I don’t know if the dog barks. The dog wasn’t barking in my presence. I noted that I did not hear the dog barking but the tenant said the dog barks. This disclosure doesn’t appear in my marketing materials. It appears on the agent visual inspection, on which I obtain the buyer’s signature, along with a pile of other documents after offer acceptance. I’m always thinking one step ahead of ways to protect my sellers yet conform to the law. That’s my job, and I take my job seriously.
The point is it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. I don’t want my sellers ever ending up in court. Not if I can help it. And I can. If you’re looking for an agent in Sacramento to help you to buy or sell a home, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233.6759.
While Elizabeth is on vacation, we are revisiting some of her favorite blogs.
