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Sacramento Home Buyers Who Demand Same Day Showings
Sacramento home buyers should choose a buyer’s agent, followed by a preapproval.
My team members tell me that when a Sacramento home buyer calls out the blue and demands to see a home immediately, that it’s a bad sign. Turns out a caller I vetted yesterday about an REO home in West Sacramento was not really a buyer. She seemed very excited and motivated, but when my team member called her to schedule a time to view the home, she informed us that she has several agents she prefers to work with, she is not preapproved, nor is she ready to buy a home for at least 3 months. She just wanted her curiosity satisfied about this particular home.
She thought the Elizabeth Weintraub Team should show it to her, without any reservations. Where do they get these ideas? It’s not even my listing. It’s some other agent’s listing who has fixed his phone in such a manner that nobody can leave a voice mail message, and he doesn’t answer his phone. It’s an REO owned by Wells Fargo. We explained that when we show another agent’s listing, we don’t get paid unless we represent the buyer. We expect to write an offer for the buyer on that property if we show it.
Perhaps they think real estate agents provide a public service, maybe we work for the state of California because most people do in Sacramento and, what the hey, we have a California license number issued to us by, guess who? The State. I don’t believe that Sacramento home buyers are that ignorant. The problem seems to be disrespect stemming from the expectation that some unsuspecting agent will drop everything and run to to show a home without qualifying the buyer and wasting time.
Agents learn this business by trial and error. They initially believe all buyers are good and honest and trustworthy.
Then, when agents run into a bad apple, they start saying horrible things about buyers that are not true for the majority of buyers. Buyers are liars is a common mantra you hear repeated over and over. Most Sacramento home buyers, I’ve discovered, are above board and they are sincere in their endeavors. You can’t paint every home buyer with such a broad brush. It’s not fair, and it’s not a true picture.
When an agent asks a buyer to commit to that agent, it’s because the agent wants to represent the buyer. Some agent will end up doing it, no matter how you look at it. Why shouldn’t it be an agent on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team, an agent with experience, superior knowledge and a stellar reputation? We’ll work our fingers to the bone on behalf of a dedicated home buyer.
Writing an FHA Offer for Homes Listed with Conventional Terms
Writing an FHA offer for a home listed with cash or conventional terms is sorta like trying to stuff a square peg into a round hole, yet buyer’s agents in Sacramento do it all the time. It’s not like we listing agents can play the listing police and stop the offers at the door. We have to present all offers to the seller, regardless of whether they fit criteria. It’s not the job of the Sacramento listing agent to determine whether an FHA offer should be presented; it’s just not our call to make, yet it can be a waste of time for everybody involved when buyer’s agents don’t do their homework.
It’s a lot of work for a buyer’s agent to write an FHA offer for a buyer. Not to mention, the emotional toll it takes on the buyer. Because after all, the buyer’s agent has shown Suzy Creamcheese the home of her dreams. Ms. Creamcheese has already figured out on which wall she’ll hang her flat-screen TV. She’s stuck photographs of this home on her refrigerator. She’s fallen in love with a home that a) she cannot buy and b) should not have been shown to her, and whose fault is that? Between the two agents, it’s not the listing agent.
The listing agent has most likely entered this particular home into MLS with cash / conventional terms. Was it an oversight or can the home be approved by an FHA appraiser, will it fit FHA repair requirements? Every so often in this business, you’ll find some listing agents who might automatically assume a home won’t pass an FHA inspection when it will, or their office staff might have forgotten to check a box and made a mistake when inputting the listing. The way to find out is to call the listing agent and ask.
Even so, the listing agent might not know the answer without asking the seller. Some sellers, quite frankly, do not want to sell to a buyer who is obtaining an FHA loan or a VA loan. There are a variety of reasons for that stance, which I won’t go into at this point, but one of which is often the fact the home might be tenant occupied with long-term tenants, and month-to-month long-term tenants require a 60-day notice in California. Not every seller wants to give their tenants a notice to vacate, for obvious reasons. Too much risk. Some prefer to let the buyer do it.
FHA guidelines require occupancy within 60 days. Notice from the date rent is due might exceed 60 days. Tenants might refuse to move. There could be problems. Yet, even if a buyer was willing to deal with the tenants, given a seller’s choice between a 15-day close with a cash buyer or a 35- to 40-day close with an FHA buyer — moreover, subject to all sorts of ways the transaction could blow up with that FHA buyer — which do you think a seller will choose? It’s a business transaction to many sellers, especially investors. They are not required to care about the buyer. It doesn’t make them heartless.
Buyers, before falling in love with a home in Sacramento, you might ask your buyer’s agent to find out whether the home you want to buy is a) listed to allow an FHA offer and b) likely to qualify for an FHA loan. Be aware that you’ll probably struggle with a CHDAP loan as well. Sacramento agents don’t create the markets; we just report on them, so don’t shoot the messenger.
Some Sacramento Home Buyers Should Not Buy a Home
A good reason not to buy a home in Sacramento is a buyer might not be able to afford it. Looking at the situation purely from a financial point of view, it should not be that difficult for some Sacramento home buyers to understand why a seller would refuse to make a home “affordable” for them by discounting the sales price below market value. Especially an investor who looks at his investment the same way one might consider shares of stock: it’s impersonal, and the only thing that matters is whether the price has gone up or down.
Non-affordability is not an argument nor a negotiation tactic. If you’re standing by the entrance to a freeway with a sign that says Will Work for Food, it’s possible a passerby might offer you a job or a good-hearted driver might flip you a twenty, but asking for charity when you’re buying a home is not quite the same thing. Yet, that doesn’t stop buyers from requesting it. Further, a refusal does not mean the seller is a meanie and big ol’ grouch, either.
An agent asked my seller yesterday to “have mercy” for his buyers, because they are young, with a small family, struggling and pregnant. These stories have a time and a place, we encounter them every day, but do they pertain to housing, to Sacramento real estate? Are sellers heartless, cruel and without compassion if they don’t reduce a sales price so cash-strapped buyers can purchase a home that is outside the boundaries of their financial reach?
I wonder if buyer’s agents should push a product that people can’t afford to buy? Not every buyer needs to own a home. Not every buyer should own a home. Maybe, just maybe, the buyers should not buy a home. There is no shame in renting a home, and millions of people are tenants. If people did not want to rent a home, there would be little reason for investors to buy single-family homes or condos as a long-term hold investment.
Yes, I realize just about every Sacramento real estate agent you run into will say you should buy a home. But maybe you should not.
The Personality and Kind of Home Buyers Fits into 7 Different Types
Here is how to figure out what kind of home buyer are you?
If you have ever wondered how real estate agents generalize about you and what kind of home buyer are you in their eyes, this article is certain to entertain. Why, you might believe that you cannot be categorized and that there is nobody else on the face of the earth just like you, but, you might be surprised by that assumption.
Before I venture further, let me confess that yes, I have been frequently accused of anthropomorphism, but it’s sometimes the best way to define a stereotype as it is easy to understand. We harbor certain types of characterizations about other people and ourselves that often relate to the animal kingdom. One can tiptoe about as quiet as a mouse or plod on clumsy as an ox, although our cats, if you notice, prefer ballet, the little acrobats that they are. Even they must wonder what kind of home buyer are you.
I might be drawn to categorizations lately because I’ve watched a handful of movies recently about the order of future societies: The Giver, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Divergent and yes, even The Lego Movie. It’s also not unusual for me to apply thoughts about other situations to real estate because I am engaged so heavily in the practice of real estate. I spend most of my waking hours thinking about selling or buying homes. It’s a passion.
However, if you asked me which category I fit into when describing the different types of home buyers, I would readily admit that I am a rebel and therefore do not fit neatly into any category. Although, I could be the fox. I am a square peg in a round hole. I can be obstreperous if pushed, which is probably why I excel at negotiations and do so well with short sales. I’ve got spunk.
Enough spunk to write an article called What Kind Home Buyer Are You, in which just about every kind of home buyer is defined and aligned with the characteristics of our favorite creatures, and not necessarily narrowed to the four-legged. But please, let me know what kind of home buyer you are, OK?
Will a Sacramento Seller Sell for Less than List Price?
Buyer’s agents in Sacramento continually hear the question from buyers which, they in turn, pass along to the Sacramento listing agent: Will the seller sell for less? It’s not always phrased in those exact terms, but that’s what everybody wants to know. And that’s the one thing they cannot know and will never know unless they write an offer. For starters, no listing agent worth her salt is about to disclose to anybody for any reason how much her sellers will take to sell that home.
You might wonder why not. Because the listing agent has a legal fiduciary duty to the seller of confidentiality. The list price is the sales price. Period. If the seller prefers a range of value, then the sales price will be listed as a range of value indicated by a big ol’ V that nobody understands so nobody does it. Second, the listing agent doesn’t know what her seller will do because the listing agent is not the seller. She doesn’t own the home, and she can’t make decisions for the seller.
Every so often, I receive an email from a buyer’s agent that lays out all of the reasons why that agent’s buyers are such spectacular human beings and why they deserve to get an incredible break on the sales price — primarily because they are looking at a home the buyers cannot afford to buy. In my mind, of course, I wonder how that is my problem and what that has to do with me, Al Franken? I mean, why doesn’t the agent show her buyers the types of homes that her buyers can afford to buy? Why is she showing her buyers homes that are too expensive for her buyers?
You know why she’s performing such an unproductive service maneuver? Because she doesn’t want to take a chance that her buyers will dump her and run off to some other real estate agent in Sacramento. She wants to make her buyers happy. She wants to do what her buyers ask of her, like any agent. But somewhere along the line, an agent needs to educate her buyers. Explain the market, how pending sales are moving, supply comparable sales and provide education. Buyers are not real estate agents. That’s why they hire an experienced real estate agent: to guide, assist and help them to buy a home.
When an agent sets aside her professional self-worth in a feeble attempt to keep unreasonable clients happy, she loses credibility with those clients, which in turn makes clients miserable. It’s not a win-win.
Further, when a buyer is pre-approved to buy a maximum amount, buyers should look at homes priced below that maximum amount. At homes they have a chance in hell of buying. Buyers should not ask their agents to show them homes that are listed higher than that price point unless those homes have lingered on the market and are stale, overpriced. You don’t ask to see a brand new listing and expect to a seller to accept a lowball and sell for less. It doesn’t work that way. Well, maybe it does on HGTV, but not in the real world of Sacramento real estate.
