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Dealing With Negatives in a Sacramento Listing
Some Sacramento real estate agents don’t want to say anything to a home seller that sounds negative about a home. I suspect they are afraid of offending the seller. Besides, lots of sellers don’t notice the negative aspects of their home, especially after a number of years go by. They get used to it, whatever the problems are — deferred maintenance, dated condition, undesirable location or bad layout, to name a few.
I’ll tell you who will immediately spot those problems, though, and that person is the buyer. Those problems will become drawbacks, obstacles to overcome in order to sell. If a seller and her agent do not address the negative aspects, the home won’t sell.
Of course, you know me, as a Sacramento real estate agent, I have no problem being straight with a seller. Nobody ever accuses me of skirting around the bush. I lay it on the line. It’s not always a comfortable thing to do, to be realistic and share bad news with a seller. But it’s necessary to properly do my job. I’ve got to tell sellers the bad stuff and then devise a plan to overcome a buyer’s objection.
Don’t ever bring up a problem without offering a solution — that’s my M.O.
I do that partly by figuring out who the buyer will be and appealing to what is important to that buyer. If an agent or the seller don’t know who the buyer is, how can the agent create a home marketing plan to target those specific buyers? The other thing I do is find out why the seller bought the home. Because the reason that seller bought is the same reason a new buyer will. The last thing is to address the negative. Quickly. And offer a solution for overcoming that drawback.
What Neutral Carpeting Means to a Sacramento Seller
I receive a lot of interesting emails from readers all over the country. I do my best to answer questions. Many of those questions center on short sales, probably because I write a lot about short sales and have personally sold hundreds of short sales. But since selling short sales takes up a small portion in retrospect of my annual real estate sales, I also field questions on other activities such as selling homes in Land Park and home listings throughout Sacramento that are not short sales.
I’ve been in this business almost 40 years. Not many agents can say that. But some things that were true 40 years ago are still true today. Take neutral carpeting, for example.
A reader from my About.com homebuying site wrote to me in quite a huff. She was a bit perplexed that I had not yet answered her inquiry, which I had not received because so much of these types of inquires go to spam. She had a “very important question.” She and her husband had been engaged in “repeated discussions” regarding the color of the carpeting for their mother’s home. They were preparing the home for sale and could not agree on which colors constitute neutral coloring. She did not understand the word “neutral.”
At first blush, one might wonder how a person could be confused. But the more I thought about it, it’s not so unusual for some individuals, especially those from other cultures, to be perplexed. Some of us live in a white-bread world. No color at all. But other cultures are awash in color and relish color. Color is treated as a daily substance. It’s water for the thirsty, spiritual for the soul and serenity for sleep. Color brings the world alive.
However, when you are selling a home, neutral is the recommended choice of color, especially for carpeting. It evokes no emotion and does not detract from the home’s features. It presents a clean slate, a home you can move in to immediately and decorate to your preference. It’s a light beige, a sheer coffee-cream, sandy fair-skinned brown, boring pale tan, much like the photo above. Above all, it is not white.
While Elizabeth is on vacation, we are revisiting her favorite blogs from previous years.
Clear Out the Clutter Before Home Selling in Sacramento
Most people have too much personal stuff, and this Sacramento real estate agent is no exception. I tell my clients to clear out rooms to make them look more spacious while I continue to shove furniture into mine. Of course, my home is not for sale. And we don’t invite any friends over because we don’t have any friends. Yet, our motto is if something comes into the house, something must go out.
OK, I admit that’s my motto and not that of my husband. Getting him to part with any personal belonging is tragic. Once a treasure touches his hands, it somehow transforms from an inanimate object into a living, breathing artifact worthy of preservation until the end of time.
But for the rest of us, into the trash. Or, to the Salvation Army or some other charity. Or, my favorite, the curb in front of our house, because it’s so immediate. I hardly ever see anybody remove the stuff — it’s magical elves who come in the night. Except for this guy who knocked on the door yesterday to ask me if there were any parasites living in the Oriental rug I had placed on a chair at the curb. Excuse me, parasites? Is that what you expect when an owner decides to clear out the clutter?
We had cleaned out the garage. The garage is a place where things go to prepare to die. It’s like the stopping ground before a final death. The weigh station before the graveyard. The hospice, like Denver International Airport. It’s for things we aren’t quite ready to part with, things that we might have some use for down the road and would be devastated, I imagine, if we could not find it in the garage when this immediate and urgent need arose. Of course, I can’t ever recall going out to the garage to find a stored item that I really, really needed to use at that very moment but if I needed it, it would be there.
Like a kitchen chair that came with a table and 5 other chairs but doesn’t fit in our kitchen space. It’s been living in the garage for 7 years. My husband pleaded with me, as I ferociously marched this kitchen chair to the curb, to return the chair to its rightful spot in the garage. His rationale was someday in the future we might want to give away our kitchen table, along with its 5 remaining chairs, and our lucky recipient would be horrified to discover the set did not come with 6 chairs. Oh, contraire, sugar bear. Our lucky recipient would be thrilled with the set of 4 chairs and one bonus chair that she can store in the garage. It’s one way to clear out the clutter.
Which brings me to a point about selling homes in Sacramento. See, it doesn’t matter if your home is a short sale or it’s a regular traditional sale, almost every home on the planet will show better with fewer pieces of furniture. Every seller should prepare a home for sale. Take down those photos on the walls — those grinning pictures of Aunt Mildred and Uncle Henry toking up in 1969 at Woodstock — and clear out the clutter. Your Sacramento real estate agent will thank you. And you’ll most likely sell faster and at a higher price. Not to mention, if you’re driving around homes in Land Park, please, feel free to take that kitchen chair sitting at the curb. I’m no stranger either to having to clear out the clutter.
