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ABC News Good Morning America and a Sacramento REALTOR
A producer from ABC News Good Morning America called yesterday to talk about the hatchet job from Consumer Reports last month: Real Estate Agents Confess Their Dirty Little Secrets. With a headline like that, whose eyeballs would wander elsewhere when those eyeballs can fall upon real estate porn? How stupid does Consumer Reports think its subscribers are? Oh, wait. Consumer Reports just told you.
This producer said she was having difficulty finding real estate agents to appear on the show to back-up the silly-ass headline grabber punched out by Consumer Reports. She said ABC News Good Morning America offered to film real estate agents in the shadows, anonymously, but nobody was jumping at the opportunity. No shit, Sherlock. Agents won’t do it because first of all, the “facts” are not true, second the statements are the results of a tiny sampling of agents, which stated they once witnessed or heard of another agent doing (nothing first hand) and, third, agents crave publicity, for crying out loud. Real estate agents are publicity hounds.
I wouldn’t go so far as to propose that agents might pull that “Jimmy McGill publicity stunt” as in episode 104 on Better Call Saul — faking a guy falling off a billboard so Jimmy could come to the rescue — but agents are not above standing on a street corner dressed like a clown and waving a Sacramento homes for sale sign if they thought it would bring in the business.
The crap that Consumer Reports spewed forth was stuff that probably grew out of a committee meeting with everybody slouched around a conference table, munching on stale doughnuts. What crappy things do you think agents do, one of the suits asked. I think they tell sellers to sell for too little and they make buyers pay too much, answered some minion who, because he overslept, arrived with his shirt on backwards.
That kind of nonsense is idiotic. We live in a fast-paced digital world, and market movement tends to dictate. No agent cares about squeezing a client because clients can’t be squeezed.
I would be remiss if I didn’t note how quickly my husband zeroed in on the story when I shared it with him last night. A large grin crossed his face. He offered up the reason I am willing to help out ABC News Good Morning America. It’s because I live very close to an ABC affiliate, Channel 10, so I could dash over to Broadway in an instant to be filmed for the Good Morning America via satellite — which would give me access to that damn inaccessible and private Ingress portal. Yes, I could claim the portal, deploy all of my resonators, set up my mods and walk out of that Channel 10 studio a satisfied Sacramento Realtor.
FHA Mortgage Insurance Reductions and Arthroscopy Surgery
Unlike some patients recovering from surgery, I will not bore you with the photographs of my procedure; although, if I say so myself, they are quite lovely arthroscopic photos of my rotator cuff surgery. They look like planets in our solar system. Perfectly round and eerily colorful. I suppose they give you photographs like automobile?mechanics hand over the used parts after replacing your engine block, just to prove it was completed.
The last thing I recall was a nurse trying to stick a scopolamine patch behind my ear, and she was about to adhere it on the left side, right where they told me they were going to inject me with a block in my neck. So, at least I was awake enough to suggest it might be better on the right side of my body, and she agreed. Make all the jokes you want about patient involvement, but?the patient has more invested in this transaction than any of her doctors or nurses. I sorta resent having to seize responsibility?for my personal health care, but in this day and age it’s more necessary than ever.
The doctor asked me several times to turn my head to the right and look at the wall. They stuck a needle in the top of my right hand for an IV, and you know what? There is a distinct advantage to growing old because while your hands may shrivel away, your veins, believe it not, get bigger and protrude, making it very easy to insert an IV. ?I heard him say the medicine was administered. Next thing, bam, I am awake. Surgery was over. Not even groggy awake, but pretty clear headed. Where was my left hand? OMG. I seemed to be missing my left hand. Pressing the buzzer by my bed I asked the nurse if perhaps they had misplaced an appendage. I had flashes of being a Koren War?vet and waking up on M.A.S.H. ?My hand was right there, all right, next to my side, but that whole part of my body had no feeling in it whatsoever.
This could only mean that I had been very thorough with my insistence on drugs, and a blocker and more drugs. There was absolutely no pain. I was amazed. Isn’t modern science wonderful? I mean, imagine if I had surgery under the situations facing guys in the early 1900s, the best they could do back then was pour bourbon down your throat and stuff a rag in it.
My husband would tell you, on the other hand, that I was pretty much out of it after my surgery, especially since he was the one to plant me into bed. Egg drop soup, a little fried rice and my cellphone. What’s not to like? Yeah, I know I decided to take the day off to recuperate but I could answer voice mails and emails and text messages. Not like I had anything else to do. So if I used profanity when you called me, I apologize.
Since we are rolling into end-of-the-month closings right now, and I had a transaction close yesterday, some of them are not. The main reason is mortgage lenders are calling their buyers to say, hey, if you delay closing for a couple of weeks, we can lower your mortgage payment. FHA mortgage insurance has just dropped to .85. That’s significant. Right in the middle of closing, they’re doing this. I can understand why but not every seller is willing to extend, especially not a seller who clearly said if we don’t close on January 30th, she’s canceling the transaction.
It’s a seller’s right to expect to close on schedule, and buyers are bound to the purchase contract. I imagine this is happening all over Sacramento right now, as I’ve received a number of requests for a delay in closing. The only thing it means to me is my Sacramento Board of REALTOR Masters Club qualification will roll into February instead of earning that status in January. And what the hey. It doesn’t matter. What matters is if my sellers are happy. Some of my sellers could not believe I was calling them and working after surgery but dangnab it I can’t just lie there in bed.
The other piece of news I have to share, if you’re interested, is the fact that even though both of my MRIs showed a tear, there was no tear to repair in my rotator cuff. So the arthroscopy surgery was not as invasive as expected, and I’m actually able to use my fingers after all. That was my biggest nightmare, and that is not a problem now. Eureka!
Photos of Sacramento Homes for Sale are Tricky in Rain
Shooting photographs in the rain of Sacramento homes for sale can be very tricky. Apart from my camera getting wet, which is never a good thing, I really don’t want raindrops in my photos or, heaven forbid, sheets of rain. There is hardly a week that goes by when I don’t need to take photos for a new listing. When we have rain every single day, I need to find those breaks in the clouds when I can run over and shoot more photographs with the sun out.
I tried to explain my professional standards regarding real estate photographs yesterday to a lawyer who kept insisting that my photographs of an old listing made the house look too appealing. The seller is suing his ex-wife for destroying his property. Although my agent visual inspection disclosed the defects, the photographs didn’t showcase it. No joke, why would any Sacramento REALTOR want to call attention to the drawbacks?
We want to get buyers into the house, not drive them away or give them an excuse to look at some other home. You ordinarily don’t buy a home in Sacramento if you don’t go inside. I’m not trying to sell the house online; I am trying to entice buyers to go see it. That’s the entire point of online photos of Sacramento homes for sale.
Of course, some buyers I hear print them out and hang those pictures on their ‘frig to daily admire the home during escrow. And sometimes sellers, for personal and sentimental reasons, want me to send them a CD of the photos at closing, which I do.
I care about how my photos appear, which is why I got into my car and raced over to Tahoe Park yesterday to shoot sunny photos of the exterior of a home coming on the market. They looked great on my viewing screen but when I uploaded and opened the photos to correct in Photoshop, I noticed the sun’s glare on my lens. I will go back. (Besides, it gives me an excuse to create more control mind fields along the way and blow up a few more Ingress portals. I got back Jamba Juice on Broadway yesterday after Blame Canada swiped it.) It was a good day for taking photos of Sacramento homes for sale, even though some of it was in the rain.
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.
The Worst Ways to Buy a Sacramento Home
Have you ever wondered what are the worst ways to buy a Sacramento home? I swear, there are times when I see flashes of 25 years ago watching buyers in Sacramento hunt for a home to buy. It makes me wonder why they waste the effort. I suppose part of it is due to the low inventory of homes for sale in Sacramento, and those slim pickings can make some buyers feel desperate. The other reason is probably due to the fact that some buyers think they know better than those of us in the industry, which means they probably don’t hold much respect for real estate agents, but some people are like that.
Every so often I will get a phone call from a buyer who starts out by explaining they are not interested in talking to me unless I am the listing agent. That’s code for they hope that by “offering me the opportunity” to work in dual agency (double-end the commission) that I’ll get them a better deal by sacrificing my integrity and ethics. Probably because that’s what they would do, but they don’t realize that I am not them.
Money is not my motivator.
They think that agents will do whatever is necessary to put a deal together because we’re all starving to death or maybe we’re just scumbags, I’m not sure. I refer these callers to my team members to show. But I don’t tell my sellers what I suspect these guys are up to unless I receive an offer, no sense in upsetting them. It does put me on notice, though. And that’s not a very good way to look for a home to buy in Sacramento.
Although maybe the #1 worst way to look for a home to buy is to drive around town calling on For Sale signs. I get a lot of those, and then buyers are ticked off when they find out the home is pending and demand to know why there are no pending signs on the For Sale sign. They don’t realize that all listings are available online these days. Hello, 2014. If they don’t look at an online feed from MLS, they’ll never know whether a listing is pending or not. About half the time the home is pending before the poor sign post company can even pound a post into the ground.
If you’re a buyer in Sacramento trying to buy a home, your best bet is to ask a buyer’s agent to work with you. You’ll get the best representation, the most attention and direct service, and you won’t be driving around calling listing agents to find out the home is already sold. ‘Course, in retrospect, the agents would have to answer their phone.
