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Fixer Rosemont Home Pending in Four Days With 10 Offers
People see how fast an agent can put a home pending (into escrow) in Sacramento and they often make the mistake of thinking that selling Sacramento real estate must be a piece of cake, when little is further from the truth. I’ve been working on this listing for the past 6 1/2 weeks. There were a lot of moving parts, many circumstances and unforeseen situations, some out-of-state, some in the city, and it all had to come together. On top of this, I revised my comparative market analysis almost daily to arrive at the perfect listing price.
The listing price is not the selling price. The listing price is the value at which it would make sense to buy quickly and would attract buyers to tour the home. It has to be “just right” like Goldilocks. In our present Sacramento real estate market, it means to put a home pending quickly, the price can be overtly aggressive and it’s OK. Not out of whack.
To keep the peace among many people living in one house and to offer maximum exposure to potential buyers, we elected to set up showings on Friday night from 6 PM to 7 PM and during an open house on Sunday from 2 to 4 PM. The home went on the market Friday morning. I heard there were almost 100 buyers though the home Friday evening. Another 50 or so came by on Sunday. That’s how high our demand. We asked every potential buyer to please submit an offer by 6 PM on Sunday.
The results of showings and efforts to put this home pending
Some agents called to ask if they could show the home next week.
Although the listing expressly stated no FHA or VA, agents still called to ask if their buyer could get an FHA loan.
Another agent begged for a fast reply on Friday, threatening to buy something else on Saturday if his offer was not accepted. Hey, go buy that other nonexistent house. Be our guest.
An agent submitted a contingent offer at list price, as if either wasn’t bad enough.
Quite a few agents submitted at list price, even when informed we had multiple offers.
One guy texted me over and over to ask if he had to submit an offer by 6 PM, to explain to him precisely what I meant by that. Did I mean to say 6 PM? Or was it really 6 PM?
An agent who wanted to send a lowball but I told him not to then whined that we were not allowing him to meet his 40% profit margin. I suggested perhaps his inherent difficulty was his not being able to hire cheap labor and buy wholesale materials, but he was hellbent on complaining that his inability to meet my seller’s terms was somehow our fault.
One agent showed the property on Friday and got around to submitting her lowball offer after we put the home pending in MLS on Monday.
But interestingly enough, some agents were right on the money. They removed all contingencies upfront and provided proof of funds for cash offers. They offered to close quickly, giving the occupants a free rent-back to the end of May. I worked through dinner last night to put this together. And let me tell you, my efforts earned every penny.
If you want to sell a home in Sacramento, please call Elizabeth Weintraub and put 43 years of experience to work for you at 916.233.6759. I maximize profit potential.
Do Sacramento Agents Discount Real Estate Commissions?
Just because a real estate commission is negotiable doesn’t mean I am willing to cut a deal for a stranger. Heck, I don’t even make deals for friends because I don’t have any friends selling real estate in Sacramento. But even if I did, they would still pay me for my services. Real estate commissions must be negotiable in order to comply with the Sherman Act, but it doesn’t mean a real estate agent needs to offer a discounted commission. Yes, you can negotiate with this Sacramento real estate agent, and I’ll cut right to the chase here, my answer is no.
Not only do I charge the same percentage that I have charged since I started in this business way back in the days of bellbottoms and Beatles, but I am doing a bazillion times the work since then. I have two rules that I work by that are completely inflexible:
No discounts and
No assholes.
See, I can’t always choose the agents on the other side with whom I work nor their clients, and some of those people might be assholes, but I can choose my own clients, which is why I don’t work with the assholes. If you’re an asshole, you can go work with some other agent.
I have to save my asshole interrogating energy to work with the other side.
Would you want an agent who eagerly said Sure, I’ll give you a big fat discount? Because that kind of agent might do the same thing when you get an offer. Put pressure on you to accept a lowball offer. When I receive a purchase offer, the first thing I often think is: how is the other side putting the screws to the seller? Is the offer on the level and clean? I’m not eager to jump into escrow unless the seller is excited and the offer warrants it. Because I don’t really care about me. I care solely about what the seller wants.
Sometimes clients ask me if I will reduce my commission when they are faced with a price reduction. Although I can vaguely see how they might come up with that idea — for example, they are reducing the price so I should come down — they are not looking at the fact that by the mere percentage calculation, I am already hit by a reduced compensation. Lower sales price X percentage rate = lower fee. I share the loss with them already. I know they don’t mean to say that they want to penalize me nor do they want me to work less. They want me to work even harder. And I do. That’s my job. To sell their home.
But don’t ask an agent to give you top-notch performance and then work for less because it doesn’t work that way. Most of us earn our commission, one closing at at time. If 1% separates you from the best in the business, you’ll probably lose a lot more than THAT down the road because it means you think we are all the same. We are not all the same. All agents are not created equal.
The Lost Art of Pie in the Face
The movie studios don’t really make slapstick comedies anymore and I miss that kind of humor, unless you count the world of Sacramento real estate — in which one can almost always find a highly amusing moment as there are so many to choose from. I kinda like slapstick because I grew up with it, not to mention, it gave me a good excuse to whack my brother’s face for no reason. I laugh at pie in the face from the old Soupy Sales skits. Don’t get me started on the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges. But today so much is PC you don’t get that kind of humor from Hollywood or media.
Not that I’m against being PC because I’m not. As an enlightened human beings of the 22nd Century (Is that right? Are we in the 22nd Century now? How did that happen?), we don’t need to reinforce stereotypical issues that harm people or encourage discriminatory opinions, but what’s a pie in the face gonna harm?
I wish I could carry whipped cream pies in my briefcase for spur of the moment chuckles. I mean, maybe for health and safety purposes they could be stored frozen in the freezer like Cool Whip and removed to thaw just before I needed them. I could find many uses for this product.
Thank you for this lowball offer, whoosh, pie in the face. Thank you for never intending to close escrow, whoosh, pie in the face. Thank you for that Request for Repair on this AS IS sale, whoosh, pie in the face. Thank you for listing with your husband’s cousin, whoosh pie in the face. Thank you for picking my brain about all the fine nuances to sell and then sticking a FSBO sign in the yard, whoosh, pie in the face. Thank you for failing to deliver loan docs, whoosh pie in the face.
See, just thinking about this makes me laugh. But maybe that’s why I’m a Sacramento real estate agent who has survived and thrived all of these decades. If you gravitate toward goofy stuff, you’ll probably enjoy Anchorman 2.
What it Means to Be a Motivated Seller in Sacramento
It’s not unusual for sellers to ask a Sacramento real estate agent to please tell buyers that they they are motivated sellers. They think that the term “motivated seller” is a code phrase for something important and immensely material to their marketing. I suppose they get this idea because they see the words “motivated seller” in other agent’s listings and think we speak some kind of silent language to each other.
They’re not completely wrong. Agents do engage in conversations with other agents that sound completely foreign to the public. We burn sage and dance naked under full moons, too, but I’m not telling you where. However, the truth is most sellers have no idea what “motivated seller” really means. It doesn’t mean what they think.
First, let’s look at why they think they have to say it. Some sellers believe that even though their home is on the market, some buyers and their agents might wrongly presume that the sellers don’t really want to sell. The reason that buyers and their agents might presume a seller might not want to sell is because the price of that home could be unreasonable or, in some instances, absurd. So, sellers want to assure buyers that they are not unreasonable, they are not absurd, and they really do want to sell even though it might not appear that way because, guess what? They are motivated sellers.
Every seller on the Sacramento real estate market is motivated or they shouldn’t on the market. An agent who slips “motivated seller” into a listing is typically telling other agents in that agent-speak-code that their seller is priced too high and will not reduce the price. It is the agent who is desperate. The agent desperately wants an offer, any offer, even a lowball offer, so they can take that offer to the seller and beat the seller over the head with it until the seller lowers the price.
It could mean the motivated sellers are stubborn, cagey and inflexible. The listing agent might be hoping that other agents will shock the seller into reality.
A motivated seller who is motivated to sell presents his home in the best possible light, and chooses a sales price a buyer is willing to pay. He doesn’t have to advertise that he is motivated because his home listing and sales price will say it for him.
The Seller Always Has the Final Word
Are listing agents prone to sabotaging their own real estate transactions? It’s easy to do. I almost did it. And I certainly know better. I almost forgot the seller always has the final word. Nobody is infallible in this business, you know. I’ve been in real estate in some form or another since the 1970s. Yet, I almost put my big, fat foot directly into my mouth last month and am sharing this story in hopes of preventing this mishap from happening to somebody else.
First, let me say that this listing was not a short sale.
In this particular transaction, the home was owned by the seller free and clear, meaning there was no loan involved. It had been in his family for decades, and the seller was the executor of the trust. There were 5 or 6 other relatives involved. The seller confided in me that he was tired of being responsible for the home and wanted to sell it as quickly as possible. We priced it at market value.
Shortly after the listing hit the market, an agent called me. Said he was interested in acquiring the property for his own portfolio. He also asked if I would represent him, and he shared with me how much he wanted to pay. When I heard his suggested lowball price, I immediately said, “Ah, I don’t think so. The seller will never take that.” I regretted those words 5 minutes later. What the? Why did I say that, I wondered? That was pretty stupid. It was stupid, and it was presumptuous. If the seller were French he’d slap my face twice with a glove. I know the seller always has the final word. What I think of the offer has no bearing on anything.
The fact is I do not know what the seller will do. I never know what anybody will do. Even if they tell me what they will do — swear up and down what they will do — I still don’t know what they will do because I am not them. My fiduciary responsibility is to look out for their best interests, not to dictate the terms of those interests. The seller always has the final word.
I sent the seller an email and told him about the verbal offer. “You can say yay or nay,” I offered. I did not say anything else. I didn’t push him to take the offer, issue a counter offer or to reject the offer. This was his decision. His family’s home, his decision. I simply stepped back.
We’re closing today.
While Elizabeth is on vacation, we are revisiting some of her favorite blogs.
