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Getting Business as a Sacramento Listing Agent
Anybody who thinks Sacramento real estate is dull and uninteresting is probably not a top listing agent in Sacramento. They probably don’t read this blog, either. There is always something horrific going on, some transaction trying to slip sideways down the hill that I’ve got to attach to a crane and hoist back up, but it’s never boring. I stay on top of my files.
Right now, ever since the vague thought of I really need to take a few more listings crossed my mind over the weekend, suddenly bunches of sellers have been contacting me to get their homes into MLS and sold. Now, I am not a spiritual person much less a religious person but it reminds me of Tom Robbin’s new book (memoir?) I’m reading, Tibetan Peach Pie. Robbins talks about picking tomatoes in the hot sun as a kid growing up in the South. His kid buddy he called Gumboot cried out in desperation one day as he was sweating to death in the tomato fields, “Good Lord, if it’s in Thy power, send me that knocking-off shower.” And lo and behold the heavens opened up and it poured down rain.
Those thoughts didn’t pass through my brain with much conviction. It was a passing minor panic attack of sorts, probably lasted all of 2 seconds, but it did cross my mind that I’ve been closing so many escrows lately that I need to pop a few more into the hopper on the front end. Where was that business gonna come from? Selling real estate is a balancing act, if you’re gonna run it like a business, which it is. A good Sacramento listing agent can’t run out of inventory.
The way I see it: I’ve got new listings to take, existing listings to sell and listings to close. Those are my 3 main focuses throughout the day. Everything else is external noise. I am almost impaired that way, my intense concentration is on those 3 areas. Some agents have to go out looking for business but business finds me, so that’s one aspect of being a Sacramento listing agent that I am fortunate I don’t have to spend a lot of time on.
Somewhere I read that agents spend 1/3 of their time canvassing for business. I suppose when I started in the business, I spent more time looking for clients but that was so long ago I don’t recall. Or, maybe it’s ingrained in me to such an extent that I don’t even notice it any longer. Perhaps I solicit in my sleep? I meet a person, doesn’t matter who or where, and that person knows I sell real estate in Sacramento. You can count on it. It’s a lifestyle.
My team held quite a few open houses yesterday. Oh, people like to pooh-pooh open houses and say they don’t sell real estate and some do not. Although buyers might not decide to buy a house through an open house; however, it’s how they often see the house they are planning to buy. Agents swarmed one such open house Sunday in Elk Grove. We ran out of flyers, which is highly unusual. One agent went into the back yard and started handing out business cards to visitors before she was slapped by my team member.
There’s a time and place for that kind of thing, and at another agent’s open house is not the time nor the place.
This Agent is Accepting New Home Listings in Sacramento
It’s been a stressful couple of months in Sacramento real estate lately as this listing agent has been focused on winning challenge after challenge. It can take a slight toll. In the middle of all of this action, it’s important to pause and assess the housing market to best advise my clients. This is when I often head for a massage. It’s nice to feel a human touch on my skin. To unwind and relax. I visited Images Salon on Riverside next to Vic’s Ice Cream in Land Park yesterday and was delighted. Ten times better than the place not to have a massage in Land Park.
I’ve got 12 escrows pending to close before my birthday this month, and once I realized how many were already sold, it’s made me more excited to work even harder to sell the remaining few I have and to gather more listings. I have a small number of homes in various stages of prep and, after a manicure, pedicure and haircut, these will be available for sale, but I am also accepting new home listings in Sacramento to sell over the summer. Moreover, believe it or not, I am working on the Sacramento fall real estate market.
It’s always a cycle in real estate, and it’s a balancing act to make sure my home listing inventory is not more than I can personally handle. For example, a few years ago, I had 70 listings and that was about the maximum this agent can comfortably handle, but today that number of home listings is small enough to count on two hands. That’s because inventory has been dramatically reduced in Sacramento. Plus, it’s rare to tackle a short sale anymore; those days are gone. Compared to a few years ago, I feel almost like I am on vacation, if it were not for the constant challenges of pending escrows. Any agent can flip a home into escrow but getting it closed is where the true professionals shine. To better explain cycles, let’s look at the housing market numbers in Sacramento:
Studying the Trendgraphix chart above and searching MLS, one can really notice the cyclic trends. For example, at the moment, the number of residential home listings for sale in Sacramento per the MLS are 3,253. The number of pending sales, which include a handful of pending short sales, are 2,908. That means we’re still running out of homes to sell. It’s a drought, although not as severe as our water drought.
The first thing I notice in the May Trendgraphix report above is the column for May looks very similar to the column for October of 2013. But what is different about it is two-fold. First, the pending sales in October were quickly moving down as fewer homes were selling. However, the pending sales in May are continuing to move up, a trend that began in January and shows no signs of slowing! Closed sales fell off slightly in May, probably due to the flakes and unqualified buyers, but I predict that June closed sales will correct. Second, our pending sales exceed those closed. It’s been that way all year.
You don’t see the smaller details, but as a busy Sacramento real estate agent, I can tell you that our inventory over the past year and half has doubled. We moved from 1 month of homes for sale to a little over 2 months, but that it still not enough home listings to sell. Our days on market has increased to 31, meaning buyers are taking longer to make the right choice. Home buyers are also hitting prices harder as homes are selling on average at 98% of list price. A buyer might say that sellers are 2% overly optimistic, but as a listing agent I know it’s the other way around.
If you’re looking to hire the best Sacramento real estate agent you can find, your best bet is to call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I’m presently accepting new listings. Will your home be sold by Elizabeth Weintraub next month? There’s one way to find out.
Chart: Trendgraphix
Buying and Selling in a Normal Sacramento Housing Market
You might wonder why about 50% of the homes are selling in Sacramento this spring and the other 50% of homes are not selling — especially when you read that we are experiencing a seller’s market for 2014 — and, as usual, this real estate agent has an explanation for our Sacramento housing market phenomena. For starters, this is not really a seller’s market for all Sacramento housing, because it doesn’t fit all of the criteria for a seller’s market. To have a seller’s market, you’ve got to have buyers, and we don’t have as many as buyers as we probably should for the amount of inventory available.
This means if a tree falls in the forest does it make it a sound?
Yes, our inventory is very low as compared to previous years but I don’t see as many buyers out and about our town. I’m not receiving as many multiple offers as I used to a few years ago, it takes longer to get an offer, and the days on market seem a bit longer as well. So, that would make for a pretty balanced market, wouldn’t you agree? Plus, let’s not forget, prices are up! You can probably get $100,000 more for that home than you could have a few years ago. It’s a great time to sell. Rates are low, so it’s still a good time to buy.
If you need to sell and buy a home, the good news is contingent offers are back! Little signals a normal Sacramento real estate market than contingent offers.
It’s also a Sacramento housing market in which some homes in Sacramento will sell very quickly because there is a high demand for that particular type of home, location, price range — or a combination of those factors. Other homes will take longer to sell. Especially those homes that are overpriced. I realize some sellers are exuberantly enthusiastic, let’s say, and optimistic to the point that they’ve priced themselves out of the market, but by golly, they sure do have that sign in the front yard.
I closed a home in Roseville earlier this week in the West Park neighborhood for sellers who are moving to the Midwest. If they had waited another month, they probably would have received the price they wanted, but since it didn’t sell within 2 weeks, they elected to reduce the price a bit to entice an offer. Bam. Flew into escrow with that price reduction. Of course, then they worried that they sold too low — that’s human nature — but they didn’t. They sold at market value, and we negotiated with the buyers to let them stay for a few weeks free of charge.
So, it all boils to if you’re planning to sell, you need to think about which side of the fence you want to be on. Do you want to be on the side of the fence that is receiving offers, going into escrow and closing? Or do you want to sit on the other side that, well, sits. Because only about half of our inventory is selling right now. But low inventory with low numbers of buyers is still a somewhat balanced market. Could this be the new normal for Sacramento real estate?
How Not to Flip Your Sacramento Home
Can you make $100,000 profit on a Sacramento home you bought last summer and flip it? To clarify the answer further, let’s say the home was purchased at market value, the price at which most homes in Sacramento sell. Forget about the fact that the home abuts a gated community, and it’s not actually located in the gated community but instead is situated on a busy street with traffic. The caller wanted to know if she could make $100,000 profit, darn it, she wants to flip. Flipping the home is her goal because she and her husband no longer want to own this house.
Why don’t they want to own the house they bought only last summer? Because the work commute to San Francisco is too long. The sellers underestimated how gruesome it would be to drive 2 hours each way every day to go to work. So, now it is imperative that they make $100,000 profit and dump what they view as a bad decision. They’ll just flip it. They watch cable TV.
I tried to explain to the seller — without looking up the sale of her home or anything about it — that our market experienced its big appreciation in 2012. The first half of 2013 brought more appreciation and we saw another leap. But we’re pretty much done jumping around at the moment, and the market has been fairly stable since last July. I wondered what she thought would make her home worth $100,000 more than she paid for it, plus the costs of sale to flip it.
To get the answer, I go where I usually go when I’m looking for horribly bad property information that is widely available to the unsuspecting public — which is Zillow and its Zestimate. Believe it or not, this time Zillow wasn’t that far off on value, maybe by only $20,000, so it wasn’t Zillow’s fault. I pulled up listings in MLS to see what else was for sale in her neighborhood because sometimes it’s another home for sale in Sacramento that makes sellers think they can get more for their home. Hey, it’s down the street and on the market . . .
They don’t always realize that people can ask whatever they want. They stick any old price tag on it and find a real estate agent who is willing to list that home for sale. Sometimes, believe it or not, that Sacramento real estate agent could even be me as I don’t always turn down overpriced listings with potential — because those homes could sell someday for less, and I’d like to be that agent when they sell. It’s not my home. I do inform my sellers if I believe the price is too high, but it’s always their call because it’s their property.
Sure enough, I found a home for sale that is listed at about $100,000 more within a half-mile radius. It has a ton of upgrades. Quiet street. Nicer location. Bigger property, single level, and in fact wasn’t really a comparable sale at all in the world of Sacramento real estate. The potential seller who contacted me had a solution for this though, she could put in $50,000 to remodel her home and then she could make $100,000. Is she a professional flipper? Don’t think so.
And this is what HGTV has done to the minds of otherwise normal people.
The difference between me and the other two real estate agents she called? I talked to her. But my name would be mud if I encouraged her, and that’s just not the right thing to do. It means I won’t get the listing, but that’s how it goes.
Where Do Buyers Come From for Homes in Sacramento?
When greed and the need for shelter love each other very much, buyers for homes in Sacramento pop outta nowhere. Well, that’s the answer my husband came up with when I posed the question to him — where do buyers come from for homes in Sacramento — but he enjoys making me laugh. On the other hand, sometimes sellers think we real estate agents hide buyers under our beds. I’ve heard sellers say that they did not want to list their home, per se, they just want me to bring them a buyer. Buyers come from listings, they aren’t under my bed.
It’s true that we have some buyers who will wait forever to find that special deal, but typically what these buyers want is a home under market value. They often don’t want to pay list price for homes in Sacramento, and they don’t want to pay what the home is actually worth. They often want to steal the home. And every so often, I run across a seller who wants a buyer to steal her home, and I put the two of them together, but that is not the norm. It’s not really how homes in Sacramento are sold. It’s not how Sacramento real estate works.
Our listing agreements contain a big ol’ paragraph about why pocket listings are not in the seller’s favor. Sellers ask me when they see that paragraph if they should be a pocket listing because they don’t understand the verbiage. I realize C.A.R. thinks they are doing a service for sellers but instead it’s complicated and convoluted, like anything becomes when a committee is involved in the decision. When I explain pocket listings to sellers, which I shouldn’t have to do because I don’t take them or believe in them under ordinary circumstances, sellers then ask me why anybody would ever do it. Mostly because they’re bamboozled, I guess.
And then they want to know whether I have a buyer for the home.
We Sacramento listing agents get buyers for a home after an agent lists the home for sale. The agent looks for a buyer when the homes goes on the market. Often, the buyers might find another agent to represent them, but we are actively looking for buyers every single day. That’s what listing agents in Sacramento do. We dangle that beautiful listing in front of the eyes of every single buyer we can find. It’s like fishing. When we get a bite, we reel ’em in and toss ’em into the escrow boat.
