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How Sacramento MetroList iBox Exchange Affects Home Sellers
The reason Sacramento real estate agents are getting hosed by MetroList is because . . . well, I’m not really sure of the explanation that MetroList gave me when it called to discuss my “hatchet job of MetroList.” There was much blabber about blubber: how large our MetroList is and how many lockboxes we have in our system, and how none of us will really know exactly what went on behind the scenes and never will know because it’s confidential and not for public knowledge.
It’s a secret organization we Sacramento real estate agents are required to belong to if we want to conduct business, and we’re not entitled to know what goes on. MetroList would like you to know, though, that the deal it got “beats all other deals in the long run.” Even though many other MLS systems in the country negotiated a 1-for-1 exchange. We are instead offered a 2-for-1 exchange and we should be grateful, sighs MetroList.
In case you don’t know, when an agent exchanges her 2 lockboxes for one lockbox, that lockbox is considered a leased asset. The way this information was initially presented was confusing, and it made it sound like the agent might be responsible for the lease payment, but actually it is MetroList that will pay on the lease. Through 2020. It claims that all other MLS’s are in the same boat on the SUPRA lockbox exchange program in that they are all leased lockboxes. The agents don’t own them when exchanged. The difference between those MLS’s and our MetroList, claims MetroList, is our MetroList told us we don’t own the lockboxes.
Was that disclosure by mistake or on purpose? It doesn’t matter. We can complain all we want, and march up and down in front of MetroList offices at 1164 National Drive carting picket signs that read: MetroList Lockbox Ripoff! 2-for-1 Unfair to Agents! Highway Robbery MetroList! and it won’t do anything except get you on television. And people say that Elizabeth is a bad influence.
The situation is we real estate agents are unhappy about it, we’re losing half of our lockbox inventory, and according to MetroList it’s better than it could have been, and when you think about it, it’s probably all SUPRA’s fault.
On the other hand, here are some tips for exchanging your lockboxes at the MetroList iBox exchange:
For starters, they are heavy. I own roughly 70 lockboxes. With a torn rotator cuff, I can’t carry them. But my team member Josh Amolsch is kind enough to offer his assistance and transportation. At first, I considered using my red Radio Flyer wagon, but then I came up with a better idea. Rolling luggage! Pack those suckers as tightly as possible and I might be able to fit them into several Victorinox dual caster rollers. Those things are built like steel. I have a feeling Building C is a long ways from the parking lot at Cal Expo.
Second, MetroList printed material says we should expect to wait 90 minutes to exchange 10 lockboxes. I suspect that’s because there is a separate lease agreement for each lockbox, but they don’t really say. But it does make me suspect that it could take all day to exchange my lockboxes, so I have swapped my appointment time with another agent, which means I can be at CalExpo early in the morning on another day. I guess I should pack lunches and drinks. I wonder, can you bring in bourbon into Cal Expo or do you have to buy it there?
Third, there will be two days my home sellers might have no lockboxes. Because I will need to divvy up the south part of the Sacramento Valley from the north to efficiently collect all of my lockboxes; but don’t fret, I will note MLS showing instructions. I probably own enough contractor’s boxes to install those on my active listings for showing in the interim. The best idea I’ve come up with so far is to label envelopes with each address, insert keys and seal the envelope for replacement storage until I get my new Supra iBoxes.
There is always the option during the MetroList iBox exchange to leave keys for pending listings in my office for pick up at closing, and I imagine many agents will select that alternative, which will be an inconvenience for many of us. But the way I look at it is we probably won’t have to go through this again until at least 2020 when the lease is paid off by MetroList. Then again, that didn’t stop me from upgrading to the iPhone 6. Just sayin’.
Update: In a surprising turn of events, MetroList just announced agents will not be required to exchange their lockboxes, and we can continue to use our existing lockboxes until the boxes, themselves, no longer work.
You can read more about the actual lockbox exchange itself at Cal Expo in this next blog, the Upside and Downside to the MetroList iBox Exchange at Cal Expo.
Problems with MetroList Status of Sacramento Homes for Sale
The discussion erupted over the way MetroList allows agents to report the status of homes for sale in Sacramento, and the options available to real estate agents. The buyer’s agent huffed and puffed about the X number of real estate offices he has managed, the X number of corporations he has headed, the X number of agents he has supervised, and the X number of years he has been in the real estate business. I listened to him because that’s what I do. He finished by stating his objection:
In all of this, he has never, EVER run into a Sacramento listing agent and seller who, in collaboration, refused to change the status in MLS from ACTIVE to PENDING upon offer acceptance by stipulating such in the counter offer.
Welcome to the wonderful wacky world of Sacramento real estate in the fall of 2014.
To give myself credit, I did not point out that the buyer had written multiple offers when the buyer could afford to only buy one home, nor how that kind of nefarious thing could be justification why a seller may possibly elect to wait for the buyer to lift contingencies before changing the status to pending in MLS.
Nope, instead, I relied on history from the past few months in which the scenario goes like this:
- Buyer writes offer.
- Seller counters offer.
- Buyer accepts counter offer.
- Escrow is opened.
- Buyer cancels offer.
The problem with this is the agent changes the listing in MLS to pending, and when the buyer flakes out, the listing then is changed back to the awful status, that dreaded garlic-waving status, that kiss of death walking zombie status: back on market. It’s like tearing off your clothes in public to reveal you have herpes and asking who would like to have sex with you.
See, in California, our purchase contracts give a buyer 17 days by default to cancel the contract for just about any reason: It’s too hot today. I don’t like the garage. There’s a plane overhead. The next-door neighbor is grumpy. I just don’t feel like buying this house. It would make more sense if MetroList would give us the option for status by allowing us to leave the “pending” listing active through a modifier, so if it fell out, the active status would remain intact. Like a virgin listing. Yeah.
Because pending ain’t pending if it ain’t closing. Pending happens after the contingencies are released. Until then, just about anything can occur. Oh, I realize changing the status in MetroList would mean pointing out clearly to buyers that they can cancel, and not everybody wants to be that direct with a buyer (holy cow, I can cancel?), but it just makes sense, doesn’t it? I’d like to rid of that back-on-market stigma, but I don’t run MLS. I just gripe about crap.
The best we can do at the moment is put a pending rescission modifier on that listing so if the buyer cancels, it can just be removed and the listing stays active. But you’ve got to have written permission from all parties to do that.
MetroList in Sacramento Could Use Updated Technology
I wish MetroList would be more like me but if wishes were fishes most of us wouldn’t eat. When it’s 9:30 AM and you’re still on the computer typing away in your nightgown and you haven’t had breakfast and you’re starving to death, I would say that is most likely the sign of a dedicated real estate agent. If you ask my husband, he would say something different. He would use other adjectives and nouns, which I won’t mention.
If said husband walked into a certain home office and said his doctor ordered him to go immediately to the E.R., that same pertinacious real estate agent might have to download stuff to a flash drive or upload documents to the cloud before she could confidently grab her laptop computer and hightail it to Mercy Hospital before said husband croaks right there under the ceiling fan.
If it’s 3 PM and a lunch salad sits lonely and forlorn, half-made on the kitchen counter, because every time said real estate agent stops what she is doing to chop veggies her email dings with an urgent matter, that’s an agent who just can’t get off her computer. Some days are like that. Some days are not.
If every single day delivered 7 AM to 7 PM constant high pressure, I’d go insane. But fortunately, they do not. And that’s what makes being a Sacramento real estate agent interesting. There is variety. Intense situations, followed by a calmness. Who needs to be bipolar? (No offense to bipolar people.)
This morning MetroList totally messed up on-market listings. I heard it was a coding that caused the problem. Why-oh-why is a major software conglomerate like MetroList, on which millions of people depend, relying on a wonky plugin? No idea. But it prevented two new listings from going live last night so my photos did not download nor did the listings. You can’t always depend on MLS and technology. It seems real estate tool providers are always the last to adopt new systems. Yet, this is where much of the money is, in real estate, and the worker bees get crap.
But you can depend on this Sacramento real estate agent to be glued to her computer and responsive to callers, even if MetroList is down.
What the History From the Sacramento MLS Will Disclose
As a real estate agent in Sacramento, I am fortunate to have access to a vast network of private subscriber information that is unavailable to the public. Oh, the public is clamoring for listings, meaning homes for sale and, if they peck around on enough websites they can piece together a string of homes that may or may not be available. Not to mention, a real estate agent can give a buyer access to MLS information directly through MetroList Prospector, with a portal and all kinds of goodies. But an agent can’t give a buyer or a seller access to behind-the-scenes information, and that’s where the all of the crucial data lies. The “meat” is not in the square footage or sales price.
Maybe it’s my title and escrow background that makes me naturally inquisitive. I used to search title and liens for First American Title in the early 1970s. Uh, oh, I almost typed that date as 1907. Transposing the digits would probably no difference to most people; whereas to me the 1970s seems like it wasn’t all that long ago, but further down the path than, say, 1990s. Although the 1990s was yesterday, you know, and I still haven’t adjusted to the 2000s. What, what, new millennium?
My how time flies when we are researching the history of property through the Sacramento MLS. The MLS provides access to other links containing essential data ripe for exploring through other companies as well.
One can learn so much by looking at history. For example, when I take a new listing, I will study how many times it has been listed before and by whom and when. I pay particular attention to the Days on Market. Those days on market could become mine. I might not differentiate much between the 1970s and today but I do recall — without question and with superior clarity — what the real estate market was like in any given time period since then, let’s say, 2004. If I spot a home that sold in 2004, and it was on the market for longer than a few weeks, there was most likely something wrong with the listing.
Then I have to figure out the defect. Was it price? Location? Condition? Agent expertise? I blow the dust off the comps from back then, flip through the photos, pull up the agent’s license and background. If I see that the home has been withdrawn from the market repeatedly during all sorts of real estate markets — including hot and cold real estate markets — then it might be a seller problem. I have to ask myself if I want to take on that kind of problem. I love challenges. I thrive on challenges, actually, but I try to draw the line at working with assholes and crazy nut jobs.
I recently skirted one such situation. A seller called, seemingly desperate to sell a couple of homes in South Sacramento. The prices she wanted were out of the realm of reality but I sometimes agree to take overpriced listings if other factors are compelling. Let’s just say during my discovery phase, not one of the other elements was compelling. Nada. So, those potential listings were not listings. It was an exercise in futility and, while the 1970s might not seem like that long ago, one would hope that I have learned a thing or two along the way. Experience is invaluable.
Can You Rely on Zillow for an Estimate of Market Value?
Part of my job is to explain market value and how an appraiser will substantiate market value to a seller, none of which are remotely connected to the website Zillow. Most of the time I’m able to make sellers understand, but as a Sacramento real estate agent, I also get those who don’t care how long a home sits on the market (and loses its desirability with each passing day), and there’s not much I can do about those attitudes but go with the flow. After all, it’s not my home. It’s not my job to make that listing my home, even though I may care deeply about whether it sells.
One of my clients shared with me recently that his accountant told him Zillow is 10% underpriced with its Zestimates. I didn’t think anything of that statement — because it’s ridiculous — until I realized that there are people who actually believe it. Not anybody in my circle of real estate agents or appraisers or other real estate professionals, but the public thinks because Zillow notes an estimate on a website, it must be true. After all, they found it on the Internet.
The basis for that statement were two homes his accountant saw that had sold for 10% more. Therefore, my seller’s accountant must have automatically leaped to that conclusion, which doesn’t say much about his accounting skills now, does it? My own home is priced $150,000 more than its worth in Zillow. That’s certainly not 10% of its value. It’s widely known that Zillow estimates are all over the map and often there is no set correlation to value. That’s because it’s a computer-generated algorithm that isn’t even as reliable as something like Realist or Metrolist comparables, which still require a human touch because square footage isn’t enough. You can’t price a home on square footage alone just like you can’t live on cans of tuna fish.
Zillow is getting better but it’s just not there yet. It’s great for looking at maps and playing around but it doesn’t have all of the homes for sale much less an accurate value.
Zillow doesn’t know if that home sits on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean or if it’s nestled next door to a mobile home park. It doesn’t know if the floors are marble or dirt. It doesn’t know if planes fly overhead ten times a day. It doesn’t know if the guy next door fixes motorcycles in his front yard. It doesn’t know if the plumbing has been updated or if water trickles into the sink at the rate of two drops a minute. It doesn’t know if the home is close to a desirable school or a military base. It doesn’t know if the buyer will walk in the front door and fall in love or turn around and run. Quite frankly, Zillow doesn’t know crap.
Which is why a seller will always need a professional and experienced Sacramento real estate agent, and we’ll never go out of style.
