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Sacramento Home Selling: When is Escrow Over and Closed?
Knowing when is escrow over and closed, well, it’s one of the highlights of selling a home. It’s that time when you realize a heavy load has been lifted off your shoulders. Often a burden you didn’t even know you had carried until it’s gone. In the case of my sellers in south Sacramento who lived in a hard-to-sell neighborhood, it took us more than 6 months to close that house. Then, last month, we had 2 strong offers, hours apart. Multiple offers for that house.
Right before signing the paperwork, I asked the sellers to leave all the remotes / keys / manuals in a kitchen drawer. As long as they left that stuff before closing, we are good. Because after the deadline for possession at closing — which by contract default is 6 PM — the seller is supposed to be gone. It doesn’t mean the seller can go over to the house that night or the following day to leave keys. That would be considered trespassing.
But people don’t know that. Even agents don’t know when is escrow over and closed. I’m not kidding. The buyer’s agent emailed me the day after closing to ask if it was OK if he gave the key from the lockbox to the buyer. I let him know he could have given the key to the buyer on the day it closed. He should know that. Don’t know why he did not.
However, I was not prepared for my elderly seller to ask when is escrow over and closed. Three days after it closed. Because I called her on the day it closed. I let her know it had closed and recorded and it was over. Reminded her again to make sure the keys are in the house. Suggested she cancel the utilities and her homeowner’s insurance. Thanked her for choosing me to be her Sacramento Realtor.
Yet, three days later she called to ask: when is escrow over and closed? When I asked why she did not realize it is over, she said, “It still shows online as pending.” I’ve had a relationship with this seller for 6 months. Did she think I was making it up when I informed her last Thursday that escrow is over and closed? Or, more accurately, is the public so addicted to the internet that they believe every single website that displays homes for sale in Sacramento publishes real time information?
Even our company doesn’t put a sold home into closed status until it receives all of the paperwork from escrow and sends it to the branch office. First, escrow sends the closing docs to corporate, and not necessarily on the same day it closes. Then, corporate sends the paperwork to the branch office. It can be 3 or 4 days later before MLS gets changed.
Closing escrow is confusing. There is the day you sign, which we call closing, but it’s not closing. On the East Coast, signing documents is closing. On the West Coast it is not. We’re more particular. In California, closing is the day the grant deed records at the County Recorder’s office and your agent calls you upon receipt of confirmation from the title company.
What this has made me realize is to be even more sensitive to the needs of elderly clients. Sometimes, an agent might have to explain a situation in a few different ways for it to sink in. Realtors can never forget that although we might sell a couple of homes a week, our sellers sell very few houses in a lifetime.
Fix Door Lock Problems Before Going on the Market
Yes, I know it sounds elementary that sellers need to fix door lock problems before going on the market, but you would be amazed at how many people get used to non-functioning doors. They will say, Oh, we always go out through the garage. Or, we just pull the key out slightly, jiggle it, spin around three times, howl at the moon and it works. But a professional Sacramento Realtor will find it very frustrating when showing your home if the lock doesn’t work.
This past winter, I had a seller give me a key that required a bit of finesse to work. I always check out the keys when I take a listing. When the seller hands me the key, even if I just watched her open the lock, I do it myself. The reason I use the key is to figure out whether we need to fix door lock problems before going on the market. Besides, it is added ammunition when an agent calls to say the key doesn’t work. I know it works because I used it.
In the case of the seller who had to finesse the lock, I asked her to fix the lock. But she insisted it worked fine. OK, after the first agent who showed complained about it, I just took matters into my own hands. The seller was at her vacation house at Lake Tahoe and in no rush to drive down the hill. So I just went over, met the locksmith, paid for it, and changed the locks.
If an agent can’t open the door, she can’t show the house. It’s that simple. If she can’t show the house, we won’t get any offers.
But now it seems I am facing another situation. In retrospect, we should have fixed the door lock problems before going on the market but I did not realize there was a problem. The lock had worked fine. Lately, over the past 24 hours, half a dozen agents accessed the lockbox. All of the male agents could open the door, but the 3 female agents could not. What the hey? We are not the weaker sex here.
The seller’s solution is she won’t lock all of the doors, but that is not a good idea. Do not compromise security. We just need to fix the locks. I feel that if just one agent cannot get inside to show, that could be the one buyer we needed. Fixing the door locks is a huge priority for me. And for any seller, really.
Do Not Sit on a Seller’s Counter Offer in This Sacramento Market
Buyers who deliberate too long over a seller’s counter offer could lose the house.
Many people selling homes in Sacramento do not want to issue a seller’s counter offer to a buyer. Some of these people think that buyers should instinctively know what they want. I will draw a counter offer over some of the tiniest things that need clarification or correction in a purchase contract, and you know why? Because the tiniest things can mushroom into big honkin’ headaches. Headaches happen due to ambiguity. Want to hear another reason for a seller’s counter offer? It lets me tell the next buyer’s agent who calls that we have a counter offer out but they have a small window to take this home away from that the buyer.
How can they do that when the buyers have a seller’s counter offer? It’s easy, because until the buyers sign the counter offer, the sellers are free to sell to anybody else they choose. The minute the Sacramento listing agent receives the signed seller’s counter offer, all parties are in contract. You know who wants a house so badly it hurts? The buyer who hears there is a counter offer out. Especially when that buyer is a position to swoop in to steal it. Everybody wants what somebody else wants. Law of human nature.
My typical method of operation involves sending out a counter offer to a buyer and giving that buyer 3 days to respond. If the buyer takes the full 3 days, maybe we’ll sell the property to a higher bidder on day #2. Not to mention, buyers don’t like to be pushed. They like to have the appearance of time on their side. No pressure. Their own agent should tell them time is of the essence and urge them to quickly act. Do they? I don’t know.
Often, when we employ this strategy, the buyer’s agent is a bit dismayed when suddenly the seller withdraws the counter offer. They say, what? Hey! My buyers were thinking about signing! Not my problem. The way to withdraw a seller’s counter offer is basically two-fold. First, the listing agent informs the buyer’s agent that the seller has revoked the seller’s counter offer, immediately. I do this via text and email. The next step? Get the Withdrawal of Offer (or the weirdly named WOO) signed by the sellers, followed by delivery to the buyer’s agent.
For example, a buyer’s agent insisted this week that we cooperate with her buyers and make the transaction work, damnit. In her mind, I guess. In my mind I don’t have to cooperate with anybody. If my sellers want to make the transaction work with that buyer, we’ll do it. If not, I’ll do something else. That something else generally involves selling to another buyer who doesn’t need a lot of time to ponder whether to buy the home at list price or better. I have fiduciary to my seller. I’m very clear on that aspect.
Why Sacramento Seller Inspections Are Unnecessary Today
Very little reason for Sacramento home sellers to provide seller inspections.
There are plenty of old school agents wandering about Sacramento whose practice is to always order home seller inspections upon listing a home. That’s not my practice. I find it completely unnecessary. I am an old-school agent myself, having started in this business in the 1970s. But I really see little reason for the seller to provide seller inspections to the buyer. Let buyers do their own due diligence.
I’ve had buyer’s agents yell at me, very angry that we did not provide them with a pest report. Why should the seller give seller disclosures that are not required to the buyer? Sellers are required to disclose what they know. They are not required to dig up more defects and present them for consideration, like, here, Mr. Buyer, take a look at all of this crap that’s wrong with my house. I’m doing full disclosure.
I would say, no, you’re stabbing yourself in the eye with a sharp object. You’re handing over opinions of defects, which you’re not required to do and paying for that mistake in more ways than one. In case a seller believes these reports do not need to be given to the buyer, think again. There are no reports for seller edification only. Once sellers receive a report, it becomes a document of knowledge you must deliver to the buyer.
Some agents tell their sellers to obtain a home inspection, too. They do this under the guise of then the seller will know what is wrong and can fix or disclose it. On the surface, this sounds almost reasonable until you dig below. For starters, the alleged defect might not be a defect and the home inspector could be wrong. Second, the buyer will still obtain a home inspection and that report could contain even MORE defects. Some of the defects that are noted on your report might not even appear on the buyer’s. Talk about a can o’ worms.
Other agents claim that a bad pest inspection can happen if you leave it up to the buyer to order it, meaning buyers can hire an inept company, and then the seller is stuck with that report. If the seller objects, the seller can then hire a different pest company and argue the results. Also, most buyer’s agents want to hire the best pest company, not the worst.
Home buyers are all over the board about things they would like fixed from inspections. It’s pretty much useless to try to pinpoint everything a buyer would like repaired or updated. Sellers certainly should not go out of their way to find things wrong with their house by obtaining seller inspections. That’s the buyer’s job.
I suppose the rationale of agents who like to order seller inspections on behalf of their sellers is the agents are unlikely to be held responsible for condition. Agents are only responsible to disclose what they see and what they know. Obtaining seller inspections seems overkill risk management to me, and exposes my sellers to a potential loss of profit.
If you’re looking for a strong listing agent who will work solely on your behalf, then call Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub, a top Lyon broker-associate, at 916.233.6759. Weintraub will try to protect you from these disasters.
