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If You Aren’t Ready to Buy a Home in Sacramento
Don’t be afraid to tell a real estate agent why you are calling.
When a person calls a Sacramento real estate agent about buying a home, there are basically two things that agent wants to hear. Either the person is ready to buy a home in Sacramento or the person is not ready to buy a home. Either one is OK. We are not answering a phone solely to make a sale and push a buyer into making a decision that perhaps a buyer is not yet ready to make. But it’s helpful for us to know what the buyer hopes to accomplish by talking with us.
We are not standing behind a desk at an office, monitoring a candy dish for those who walk in. Most of the time, when a buyer calls a real estate agent, we are busy selling real estate. We are with a client showing homes, writing purchase contracts, shooting photographs, driving out the W X Freeway on our way to a listing appointment. We could also be walking the dog, comparing cold cuts at Taylor’s Market or picking up our car from Midtown Autoworks after an oil change.
We don’t work retail. We work from our cellphones.
I’m one of those agents who tries to answer her phone, which seems to blow away many callers. I have to admit that, yes, they have reached a real live person, which astonishes them. If a buyer wants to buy a home in Sacramento, I am ready to help. But if it’s so surprising that an agent would answer her phone, when buyers do reach voice mail and leave a message, why don’t these same buyers answer their phones or return the calls agents leave for them?
Probably because they are not yet ready to buy. Many are “just looking.” Just looking seems to be a phrase for describing curiosity. Technology makes it easy to contact a Sacramento real estate agent. If a buyer is simply curious about a sales price or some other aspect of a home she has just driven by, it’s OK to say so when calling. Just say: I am not ready to buy a home in Sacramento.
She can also search the web from her Smartphone and get the answer just like she finds out which is the top downloaded song from iTunes and the present weight of Kardashian’s beehive butt.
Because so many callers forget or are afraid to mention that they are not really buyers, this becomes the reason many agents don’t answer their cellphones and send all unknown calls to voicemail. But I can’t help myself, when my phone rings, I tend to answer it.
Does Your Sacramento Agent Want to Buy Your Home?
I’ve heard from a couple of buyer’s agents lately who have been, in one agent’s own words, “hoarding” homes in Sacramento from their buyers. This is such a great real estate market in Sacramento right now that some agents are saying forget buyers, I want that house! Is your agent in competition with you? You might want to ask. Does your agent want to buy your home?
This is not to say anything bad about another Sacramento real estate agent because real estate agents have always had first shot at homes, and some of them go into the business strictly to get an upper hand. They want the best deals. There is nothing wrong necessarily if you find an agent who wants to buy your home, just like any other investor. But a buyer might not want to compete with an agent. Especially a first-time home buyer.
Heck, I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t say sometimes I was tempted to want to buy my own listings, but I don’t do it. It’s a conflict of interest to me. I don’t know how other agents do it. How can you tell a seller that you are trying to get the highest offer and then make it your own offer? We’re not that generous. People believe whatever they repeat to themselves long enough, I suppose.
Do you want your agent’s leftover crumbs? The homes your agent couldn’t buy at an attractive enough price? You might want to ask before hiring a buyer’s agent if you’ll be expected to compete. This is a strange market and strange times.
