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In Fiduciary, When the Music’s Over, Turn off the Lights
If you asked a thousand people whether it’s permissible for the buyer’s agent to contact a Sacramento listing agent after closing, expecting her to further question the seller on the buyer’s behalf, I bet 999 of those people would respond: why not? It seems innocent enough. The buyer forgot to ask about something or discovered some new fact and would like more information, right? I mean, who else would the buyer ask? Buyers don’t always understand fiduciary, and neither do agents.
Buyers and sellers also don’t typically trade phone numbers or email addresses prior to closing in Sacramento. It’s not unusual for a buyer to ask his agent for help under those circumstances. The problem with it, though, is the buyer’s agent is no longer the buyer’s agent. Once the transaction closes, the fiduciary relationship that exists between the buyer and the buyer’s agent is over. When the music’s over, turn off the lights.
Now, of course this doesn’t mean an agent can’t remain friends with her client, but she can no longer work in an agent capacity. Moreover, to do so might be considered to be an unauthorized practice of law, depending on what the former buyer’s agent says and does.
This also means the fiduciary relationship that once existed between the listing agent and her seller is over. The most anybody can really expect is for the listing agent to pass along the buyer’s phone number to the seller. Yet, there are agents for whom that line is often blurred. What they hear is a former client needs help and they want to help. It’s a natural reaction.
When the music’s over, turn off the lights. Fiduciary no longer exists. Let’s say a buyer asks the listing agent to quiz the seller about pest work in the basement that was completed years ago. Escrow is already closed. That’s a can o’ worms that should have been answered during escrow. Jumping into the middle of that situation is like asking for trouble.
That’s like asking a seller to sign a disclosure after closing. It’s not a disclosure if escrow is already closed and it can’t be signed.
When the music’s over, turn off the lights.
Listicles, Drones, James Taylor and Rude Home Sellers
Drones are the hottest thing in aerial photography for homes in Sacramento
For some labrador-squirrel-jerk reason, I found myself distracted the other day by 9 Things James Taylor Will Never Understand, and laughing myself silly. Oh, wait, I do recall why I ended up on that website when I have so many other more important tasks at hand: real estate-related stuff to do for my clients and also to research how to become a Known Traveler (from Sacramento, you have to go to San Francisco) to avoid those long lines at U.S. Customs.
I googled the term “listicles” because I have been asked by About.com to write such a thing for a new campaign.
Turns out I’ve been writing listicles all along for years and never realized it. Listicles are helpful content that is short, sweet and easily digested, generally numbered with subheads.
For example, I could write about the top 5 things to love and hate about drones. I love drones because they definitely help to market my listings in Sacramento. I get aerial views not otherwise available unless I were flying overhead myself in a helicopter and clutching a puke bag. The photos show geography surrounding my listing, including whether the roof needs to be replaced. Obviously, I would not include drone photography if the home backed up to a school or a commercial building.
I also have this vision in my brain of the future of drones, when Amazon and Pizza Hut begin employing drones, and how they might fill the airspace over your house, buzzing about like annoying dune buggies on the beach. Bite my shiny metal ass, you’ll probably mutter as you stare up at the skies in amazement. Drones can be irritating.
It would be nice, though, if drones could carry your packages without the packaging. Because we order so much stuff online nowadays, the recycling centers have got to be bulging due to all of this excess cardboard and packaging materials. Right now we have 9 boxes sitting on the floor at our living room entrance, delivered by UPS from a pet food supplier. Trying to find time today to unpack those boxes will prove as difficult as trying to find space in our recycling can for the waste packaging.
Much as I moan, you’ve got to agree, though that a guy who writes I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song; I just can’t remember who to send it to, surely should win the prize for Top 10 Stupid Song Lyrics. Plus, if I had a drone handy, I could have it sent over to south Sacramento yesterday to verify my listing appointment with certain Sacramento home sellers. Instead, I tossed my jeans, dressed up and prepared a listing package for a seller who couldn’t even open the door wide enough, as I stood on her front steps juggling a Supra iBox, my camera equipment and her listing paperwork, to properly explain over the noise of her barking dogs why the appointment was canceled and she forgot to mention it.
I can count with 2 fingers, not the peace sign, mind you, but the poke-in-the-eyes two fingers, how many times that has ever happened in my Sacramento real estate career. Those sellers don’t realize it, but they need me more than I need them. This woman today is on her own.
Highest Sales Price $1,085,000 Closes in Riverlake Sacramento
Pool at 774 Still Breeze in Riverlake Community in the Sacramento Pocket
There are many ways to sell a luxury home in Riverlake, Sacramento, that involve overcoming objections to a low appraisal, which is why I employ different strategies for my escrows depending on the circumstances at hand. It’s a custom-designed strategy, I guess you could say. I won’t sugarcoat the process and say it’s completely stress-free for sellers, but like childbirth, I think they focus more on the end result after it’s over.
I recently closed two waterfront homes in Riverlake, almost directly across the water from each other. The first home was in Cobble Shores and smaller than the second home in Stillwater. The views were different as well as the home in Cobble Shores enjoyed a north facing view of the water and the back yard of the home in Stillwater faced south. Personally, I prefer the south-facing view.
I spent a lot of time working on the sales price before I met with either of the sellers. Most sellers already have an idea of how much they want for their home, but they also appreciate hearing my opinion of value and how I arrived at that number. I’m generally very close to market value, closer than they are. I take into consideration market movement, buyer desires, the emotional portion, and then temper it with reality of the closed comparable sales. Having a good story ready for the appraiser is always important.
Sure enough, the home in Cobble Shores at Riverlake sold at list price of $895,000 within 6 days. That’s a good length of time to be on the market. Enough time to let everybody know the home is for sale and to give all buyers a chance to bid. The home in Stillwater at Riverlake was more expensive, more than $1 million, and we had a decent amount of showings, even without a lockbox. It was an impressive home that captured the waterfront lifestyle in just about every room.
The sellers interviewed a fair number of agents to list their home and settled on Elizabeth Weintraub. I felt a kinship with them, and maybe that’s what pushed them to list with me but it could also be my analytical mind. I constantly think about my listings and don’t run on autopilot; and I focus on selling, no matter what it takes. I scrutinize every single detail. I’m fanatical that way.
Sure enough, we sold the home in Stillwater at Riverlake Sacramento, after 9 days of showings and, sure enough, as I predicted, we received a low appraisal. I sensed that the appraiser used a particular pending sale’s square footage, applied the number to the square footage of my listing and came up with a value that did not really take into consideration its top-of-the-line upgrades. The appraiser also used homes 15 miles away on the Garden Highway. I suggested the sellers hire their own appraiser, because even though the buyer’s lender would not accept the appraisal, it would prove a point.
The new appraiser just happened to be the appraiser who originally appraised those homes on the Garden Highway, so she immediately eliminated them from the appraisal because they did not apply. She came up with an estimate of value much higher than the original appraiser, using homes closer in proximity and employing the principle of substitution. After much negotiation, we settled on a higher price with the buyer bridging the gap in cash. The difference in cash paid for my full-service commission and then some. It sold at $1,085,000, the highest price we have seen in Riverlake.
If you are looking for a Sacramento Realtor who is willing to do what it takes to sell your home, give Elizabeth Weintraub a ring. Selling your home is not just a job to me; it’s a passion, and I do it well. 916.233.6759.
Maybe You Should Hang On to That Sacramento Duplex in the Pocket
The beauty of selling hundreds and hundreds of homes in Sacramento is I have direct experience in so many different neighborhoods that I can often picture the home in my mind just by hearing the address. That’s what happened yesterday when a prospective seller called to talk about the real estate market in Sacramento and selling his Sacramento duplex in the Pocket neighborhood. I pay attention to what people say to me, and I heard this guy say he was not in a hurry to sell and he wanted to maximize his profit. He asked for my opinion and I told him it was probably best not to sell right now.
I can hear my company’s managers having a conniption fit at the moment. Other readers are probably spitting coffee at their monitor wondering WTH? Did she go off the deep end? Why would a Sacramento Realtor tell a prospective seller that now is the not the best time to sell when it’s a freakin’ seller’s market with no inventory, low interest rates and high demand?
Because of the seller’s goals and motivation, that’s why. It’s not about me.
There are basically 3 types of people who will buy a small Sacramento duplex in the Pocket: local investors, first-time home buyers or Bay area investors. Of the 3 types, the buyer most likely to pay the most money for a small duplex in our present market is the first-time home buyer. We are witnessing screaming crazy demand for multiple-family homes, whether it’s two houses on a lot or a duplex, for buyers with expanded families.
Local investors watched the market fall and hit rock bottom in 2011. At that time, they were willing to pay more than list price to grab a home. Today, not so much. Today, with rising property values, they want a discount. They want a hedge against falling values as well. Bay area investors will often pay a little bit more, simply because they don’t know the neighborhoods where they buy or they hire an agent from out of area as well. They also tend to compare values to the Bay area, which are absolutely insane, so by comparison Sacramento looks like more reasonable, but they, too, are often too stubborn and reluctant to pay list price. Many investors today try to demand a deal in exchange for a cash offer, so much that when we hear an investor is a “cash buyer” those words cause agents to moan.
This seller’s best bet is to clear out at least one side of the duplex. Get it empty, fix it up, and make a few small upgrades. Make it easy to show. Change the other side to month-to-month from a lease. He won’t get top dollar from an investor even with A-rated tenants. He’ll get the most money from an owner occupant.
I could picture this Sacramento duplex before he gave me the address, and I asked if it was a corner unit that wrapped around facing two different streets, a one-story and, sure enough, it was. I knew the value without even looking it up in MLS to run the comps. Sure, he might lose $2,000 in rent, but he’ll probably gain $20,000 in sales price, and that’s enough to warrant moving the tenants out to show the unit as vacant. It will increase showings, too. And he can’t do that until next spring. So, there you go, now is probably not the optimum time for him to sell.
But it’s not a bad time.
How Are These Sacramento Real Estate Things Still a Thing?
My experience of working with agents over the past 40 years shows that you can’t change a narcissistic real estate agent, no matter how much that agent might desire to change, if the agent is clueless. It’s generally cluelessness that causes a self-centered agent to say silly things. After all, agents are not immune to ignorance in any greater numbers than any other person in the world. It’s the bell curve distribution. You’ve got bad doctors, bad politicians, bad school teachers, bad law enforcement officials, and bad real estate agents, along with the good.
Some agent implied recently that she felt the REALTOR Code of Ethics is an over dramatization of the industry and appeared as though she preferred to pick and choose which Articles to adhere to and ignore the rest. Because this agent must operate in a vacuum, dancing alone to tunes in her head that only she can hear. Or, perhaps she is not a REALTOR because only REALTORS must adapt the REALTOR Code of Ethics. You can’t change agents like that. They don’t want education. How is it that some agents are not a REALTOR? How is that still a thing?
Earlier this week another agent said she was not submitting an offer for her buyers on a short sale listing because we would make her promise to stop writing offers for that buyer. Duh. It’s a good thing we avoided getting tangled up with that disaster, but how is this type of ignorance still a thing? After 10 years of Sacramento short sales, how are real estate agents still under the goofy impression that it’s a worthwhile endeavor to write a bunch of offers for a buyer when a buyer can purchase only one home? It’s a waste of time for everybody involved, including the buyer’s agent. And it’s considered against the law.
Let’s see, Ms. Shit for Brains . . . you want to write an offer on an Elk Grove short sale but you don’t want to commit to waiting for short sale approval? You want us to accept your buyer’s offer, remove the home from the market, submit the entire short sale package to the bank, advise you weekly on our activities, negotiate the short sale, resubmit endless financials and, after 8 to 12 weeks, while the foreclosure doomsday clock is still ticking for our sellers, finally produce a short sale approval letter only for your buyer to announce that she has purchased a different home?
You want to waste the time of all of these dedicated people: the Sacramento listing agent, her team members, transaction coordinator, escrow officer, title officer, the buyer’s lender and the sellers’ entire extended family on the off-chance that maybe your buyer will elect to perform at the 11th hour? What are you thinking? Where is your head? How is this still a thing?
Granted, some agents list short sales that they should not be listing because they did not qualify the sellers for the short sale or it’s priced inappropriately or they are using a third-party vendor for negotiation, but that’s not the case with this Sacramento Realtor. I have closed more short sales since 2006 than any other agent in a 7-county area. My short sales close. That’s because we choose to go into escrow with strong buyers who are committed to closing, and because it’s doubtful you will find a more qualified Realtor in Sacramento to negotiate your short sale.
But, seriously, after all these years, how is this attitude toward short sales still a thing?
