Email Elizabethlisting agent sacramento
Overview of Sacramento Housing Market for January 2018
Sacramento housing market for January 2018.
January has barely left us, and the snapshot of the Sacramento housing market for January 2018 mirrors pretty much what I have been experiencing. Some of you know, of course, that I spent the months of December and January working from my house in Hawaii. Not on Hawaii real estate as some incorrectly assume. I am not licensed to sell real estate in Hawaii. No, no, no, I am a Sacramento Realtor, and I work on Sacramento real estate from our vacation house.
I do such a bang-up job of it that I placed as the #1 Agent at Lyon Real Estate for January, and I wasn’t even in town. To put this into perspective, we have around 1,000 agents at Lyon.
Our Sacramento housing market for January 2018 is still red hot. One of the ways I can tell is buyer’s agents are calling me to ask if I will share details of upcoming listings. Complete strangers out of the blue. Most of these agents I don’t even know, but they know who I am. They also know I answer my phone, and I’m always working. I tend to sell a couple of homes a week. And last week I completed 5 listing appointments. I have others in the pipeline waiting to go live in MLS. Buyers are out there.
I’ll put it to you this way. When I have a pending listing that is a bit difficult to sell and we also hold a back-up offer on that listing, it’s a hot market. It’s a hot market for sellers because, get this, we are still getting showings for that home. Why, you might task? Because that happens to be in the best interest of my sellers.
We had a slight uptick of inventory in the Sacramento housing market for January 2018 as compared to the same time last year. However, that surplus was wiped out almost double that amount by the pending sales. Our inventory for all residential properties in Sacramento County increased 9.4%; yet our pending sales in year-over-year comparisons jumped by 18.1%. The closed sales, which resulted from pending sales over November and December remained at seasonal numbers, about par.
If you’re wondering about the Sacramento housing market for January 2018 and whether this is a good time to sell, it doesn’t get much better than this. Well, it will be more frantic in April, I predict. But if you own a home that you want to sell which has any kind of drawback, put it on the market now! Today! Buyers will overlook bad locations, defects, even high prices . . . if only, if only they could buy a home today.
Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put 44 years of experience to work for you.
Used with permission from Trendgraphix, January 2018 Sacramento Housing Market Trends.
Too Late to Buy This Remodeled Home in Tallac Village
This remodeled home in Tallac Village at 5851 Brandon Way just closed at $405,000.
Sorry, it is now too late to buy this remodeled home in Tallac Village. It just yesterday closed escrow. Funny, when I originally listed this Tallac Village home, I got a lot of pushback from agents telling me they thought the home was overpriced. I’m thinking that might be because they were unfamiliar with the neighborhood. See, when I take a listing, I thoroughly examine the surrounding neighborhood for comparable sales. What I noticed in this area was a big mix of homes, mostly on the lower end. There were a few a streets that reflected enormous pride of ownership, and this was one of those.
So often, I find, agents take the easy way out with comps. They will click that little button on the listing in MLS for comps. It’s called “find comparables.” While that is one way, it doesn’t necessarily show all of the comps. For one thing, not enough room. For another, its radius is not always wide enough to find the other comps. Not to mention, you’re not looking at the listing and photos, just status. Buyer’s agents are always busy, so they quickly glance at the results of the “comp” button. I don’t know if they disregard square footage or acreage and just note the sales price or what. But most of the arguments I engage in with agents over comps seem to stem from a different point of view.
With this remodeled home in Tallac Village, the concern was mostly the cement tile roof and the solar panels. Not every solar panel contract is something a buyer wants to assume. It can be a big drawback in a sale. Solar panels add no value to the home. Turns out there were a few cracked tiles and the solar company had installed the panels incorrectly. We were fortunate they came out and fixed it. However, there were still a few repairs we hired a roofing company to fix.
The rest of the home was sold strictly AS IS. Our first buyer flaked out on us in less than a week. He received the home inspection and canceled right after. I reviewed the inspection and could not find anything disturbing in it, so who knows. The guy was a doctor and what do doctors know about home construction? Well, there is always another buyer for that Sacramento home.
Fortunately, we found that new buyer within days of the first buyer bailing. She turned out to be a great buyer who was very eager to live near UC Davis Medical Center. The sellers let her adopt their chickens. Bawk, bawk. Such a smooth and nice transaction. Day and night difference over the first escrow. Sometimes, I do have to sell an remodeled home in Tallac Village twice and get paid once, but that’s how it goes in Sacramento real estate.
The important thing is my sellers closed at their asking price and are happy.
Selling a House Four Times Means Getting Screamed At
An agent who is selling a house four times is only paid once.
A seller’s partner recently exploded over selling a house four times. It’s not unusual that this can happen in a real estate transaction, especially when the seller’s partner is not involved in the day-to-day particulars of the escrow and, let’s face it, who else is a seller gonna blame? The listing agent is the only other person available. I suppose the seller could blame the escrow officer or title officer, and that would make about as much sense, but no, getting screamed at can come with the territory of being a top producing Sacramento listing agent.
Sooner or later, an agent will encounter a seller who doesn’t realize that when an agent is selling a house four times, it’s not because the listing agent wants to or isn’t doing her job. In fact, many listing agents would bail after the second buyer cancellation. Those agents would figure there is something wrong with the house because having two buyers in a row cancel is pretty peculiar. But it does happen. And sometimes it is the house. Sometimes it is a quirk in the market.
Sellers do not realize that listing agents cannot talk to the buyers in the transaction. The listing agent does not meet the buyer at all. There is no communication between the listing agent and the buyer. Often, the listing agent engages very little with the buyer’s agent as well. Our purchase contracts allow a buyer to cancel for pretty much any reason without penalty within the first couple weeks.
Listing agents cannot predict whether a buyer will cancel. When an agent who wants to write a backup offer asks if I have a solid purchase offer, I have to honestly respond: I do not know. It seems OK, all the correct boxes are checked, the lines are filled in, the preapproval is received, but is the buyer committed? No Realtor alive has the foggiest clue. There is no way to get a clue about it. Buyers often flake out. A buyer’s agent won’t warn anybody.
Although it would be nice if they did. Can you imagine a buyer’s agent submitting an offer and saying: “Hey, my buyer is a squirrel. She has made other offers and canceled. I don’t trust her to close.” No, of course not. They all say “my buyers LOVE your home.” They include dozens of heart emojis with their text. Give me a break.
But when I am selling a house four times and getting paid only once, it means I am committed to the transaction. I am not bailing on the seller. I am loyal. I work on that sale diligently until it closes. When a seller’s partner calls — a person I have never spoken to or had any contact with — to scream that I am the worst real estate agent ever because I sold his house four times and it closed, I don’t know what to say.
Sellers Who Get Presale Home Inspection Slit Own Throats
A presale home inspection is a bad idea for a seller.
An an exclusive seller’s listing agent in Sacramento, I can preach until the cows come home that getting a presale home inspection is lousy idea but I still get resistance from other listing agents who disagree. They are confused about what doing the right thing means. Doing the right thing means protecting our seller’s liability and profit, and paying for a pre-sale home inspection is overkill. Not only that, but it can come back to bite. Such a disclosure can cost sellers tens of thousands and could even destroy their chances of selling a home.
California real estate law says a seller is required to disclose what a seller knows, which includes material facts. It does not say a seller is required to dig up every defect about which the seller has ZERO knowledge and then present those unknown findings on a silver-plated platter to buyers. It makes no sense in any sense of a logical argument to obtain a presale home inspection, except maybe to a home inspector who stands to profit.
Buyers are required to do due diligence. Buyers are required to obtain their own inspections, any and all that they choose to do. If a buyer fails to perform due diligence or fails to uncover a defect (about which the seller had no prior knowledge), that is not the liability of the seller. It falls squarely on the shoulders of the buyer. That’s the beauty of California real estate law and seller disclosures.
Case in point of ignorance. Barry Stone is a certified building inspector who syndicates a column about home inspections. He suggested in a recent article that banks selling REOs (real estate owned), which are foreclosures, should be required to obtain presale home inspections. This is a good example of a person focusing only on one part of real estate without looking at the bigger picture.
Banks are not required to disclose defects in a foreclosure when they have no knowledge, just like ordinary home sellers are not required to disclose defects about which the have no knowledge. Banks are even more off the hook since they never lived in the house. They sell the house AS IS because they don’t want to invite liability, either. Just like regular sellers.
To try to impose a law that requires home sellers, banks or otherwise, to obtain a list of defects to present to a buyer is ludicrous. Sellers are not required to discover factual information to present. Mr. Stone implies banks are dishonest and unfair because they don’t give their innocent home buyers a list of defects and they allow buyers to purchase their foreclosures without insisting buyers get a home inspection either.
If buyers are naive enough not to pay for a home inspection, and their real estate agent is bad enough not to suggest a home inspection, how is this the fault of the seller? Buyers are accountable to themselves. Our purchase contracts requires that buyers perform certain duties, and sellers give them ample time to complete those duties.
It makes no sense for a seller to go looking for trouble. Not to mention, no two home inspections are ever identical. A presale home inspection could show a defect the buyer’s home inspection would not and vice versa. Just don’t do it. Don’t think about it. Don’t act on that impulse, either. Your California purchase agreement states your sale is AS IS. Just leave it alone.
So You Think You Want to Buy and Flip Homes?
Ancient and protected lava site on Big Island where mongooses freely roam.
If you think you want to buy and flip homes, consider this. Directly in front of my working-vacation cabana is an ancient lava site — the free lawn art of Big Island — where I am privileged to observe a Rikki Tikki Tavi dashing about, scurrying across black rock, then resting to catch his breath, protected under clusters of sea grass before scampering to another spot. As a kid, I was enamored by Rudyard Kipling’s, The Jungle Book, foreign places and exotic animals and especially the story of the brave mongoose. The closest critter to a mongoose I’d ever seen at that time in Minnesota was a gopher.
You see invasive mongooses all over Hawaii now except for Kauai, introduced by sugar cane owners in the late 1800s as a means to control rats. The main problem with that premise is rats are active at night and mongoose are not. I wish the analogy were that simple to explain why so many people in Sacramento lose their shirts when they try to buy and flip homes, but maybe it is. Maybe they just don’t know what they are doing and don’t know that they don’t know what they are doing.
Every time I take a fixer listing in Sacramento, I am bombarded by calls from people who want to buy and flip. It’s like they woke up one morning and decided for no known reason that they have the a) experience, b) professional crews, c) real estate knowledge, and d) money to buy and flip, when they usually possess none of those things. They think how hard can it be? Buy, fix up and sell? Damn HGTV crap.
I was reminded of this today when I noticed a new listing on the market in Land Park, and my immediate thought was, hey, that home in Land Park is at least a hundred thousand if not two over market value. The location was all wrong for that price range, the home was too small and the upgrades were not very attractive, not really what buyers want, and the photographs were, let’s just say less than stellar. OK, they were embarrassing. My immediate thought was this was a home purchased as a buy and flip by an out-of-towner. The history and tax rolls confirmed my suspicions. Well, maybe they will snag an unsuspecting buyer from the Bay area. It happens.
I try to be non-judgmental when I receive calls on my pending listings, but the novices who want to buy and flip break my heart. They ask in earnest if I will call them if anything happens to the pending sale. I explain that we had multiple offers, bidding wars, the home did not sell at list price, it sold much higher. I know if I have to explain this part, the would-be guys who want to buy and flip are headed for trouble. Before I can offer empathy though, the callers often launch into an insult — a promise that I could “double end” the transaction and make twice the commissions plus I could later sell the home for them, as though that sort of scenario would motivate any Sacramento listing agent but the crooks. They don’t care if they do business with crooks, apparently, and maybe they’ll find one of those, too; it’s just not me, not how I do business.
