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Trade Secrets for Listing Photos of Sacramento Homes
I didn’t believe it myself when I heard it, but a seller recently asked me to list his home yet insisted that I use photos he shot with his cellphone. Stuff like the back of his sofa. A shot of the pool with the garden hose lying tangled in mud on the sidewalk. A half-cocked angle of a dark hallway. They were dreadful photos, but apparently some sellers think a crooked roof-line is an acceptable practice when it is obviously not. The guy wouldn’t listen. I threw a few of those awful photos on MLS, his home in Elk Grove withered on the market for a few months, and then he asked me to cancel because “nobody wants to buy it.”
For crying out loud, nobody wants to go see that mess. That’s the problem. You’re not trying to sell the home online; the object is to entice buyers to view the home in person.
Another seller in Elk Grove first couldn’t sell her home before she came to me. She had it listed with another agent, and after looking at the photos, I could see why. I told her I didn’t want to bad-mouth another agent but those photographs were hideous and why didn’t she see that in Trulia or Zillow? You’ve got to wonder about some sellers and why they don’t complain, or at least I do. Then she hit me with the fact they were HER photos — again, shot with her cellphone. What the? I invested my time to take professional photos with my Nikon, color-correct, brighten, and her home sold.
It’s not just the professional photography that sells homes in Sacramento. It’s the type of photographs, how they are tweaked in Photoshop and the order in which they are uploaded to MLS. Some Sacramento real estate agents get it and some do not.
I ran across an article this morning by an agent in Atlanta who gets it. She mentioned that emotion is a quality she injects into her listing photos, and that is absolutely an essential ingredient. It’s something that can’t be taught. It’s a connection to the property. Now, I know that sounds squirrelly and maybe woo-woo but it’s precisely how I shoot photos of homes. I want to take the internet buyer by the hand and gently lead her through the home, showcasing all of its special features and views.
For example, I listed a lakefront home in Elk Grove, and shot a photo of the lake as viewed from sitting at the dining room table and also while rinsing dishes at the kitchen sink. I walk the buyer through the home, into the entry, the view of the clerestory windows, through the living room and into the kitchen. Photos are interspersed throughout with views of the lake because the entire reason to buy this home is to live on the lake.
I want the first photograph in MLS to entice, and I try to arrange the order so the buyer will feel inclined to click through all of the photographs and be left with a lasting final impression of arousal — which doesn’t mean inserting a photo of the trash cans. It’s just like writing. If you don’t capture the reader in the first sentence, she won’t read the next paragraph or even your entire article. If you’re looking for a Sacramento real estate agent who cares deeply about her photos of Sacramento homes, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Purchase Offers Under False Pretenses Can Backfire
When you list and sell as many homes in Sacramento as I do, you might begin to wonder what’s up when a buyer suddenly offers more than list price when there is no apparent reason to pay more than list price for a particular home. Even a full price offer can raise a red flag in Sacramento’s fall real estate market. It can make an agent a tad suspicious that the buyer might be trying to slip that home into escrow with intentions to later renegotiate. This is a bad practice with purchase offers known as locking out other buyers in an attempt to later force the seller into a price reduction.
I’m no lawyer, but that’s probably not a good faith contract if purchase offers are entered into under false pretenses. There are many buyers who think this way or it’s possible their agent may assure them they will always have the opportunity to renegotiate when they are presenting the purchase offer for signature. In some cases, it might even work. But it doesn’t work in a short sale at all. And it rarely will work when the seller has hired an assertive Sacramento listing agent because that kind of agent will fight hard for the seller’s rights.
The reason this type of underhanded approach does not work on Sacramento short sales is because once the bank has approved the short sale, there is a slim-to none-chance that the bank will renegotiate. Now, I have had short sale banks reduce the price when the buyer’s appraisal came in less than the contract price, which can happen when banks are unreasonable or the BPO agent messed up, yet not always. However, just because the buyer found a defect in the home or suddenly decided he no longer wished to pay the contract price, well, that is insufficient and not grounds to request a price reduction.
Negotiating with a short sale bank is not like shopping at Nordstrom. A collection agency, for example (which is where the bulk of short sales today land) won’t give the buyer a credit nor try to make the customer happy because they don’t give a crap about the buyer. Nordstrom doesn’t really give a crap either but it’s good policy for them. A happy shopper is likely to return to Nordstrom and buy more useless junk that will go out of style in a few months, but the short sale bank / collection agency has no relationship with the buyer.
A buyer asked a few weeks ago if we would ask the bank to reduce the agreed-upon sales price after receipt of short sale approval. The buyer struck me as the sort who would send back a pizza as the poor delivery guy is ringing the doorbell with his nose and juggling several steaming boxes of pepperoni pizza because the buyer suddenly decided he prefers ham with pineapple. He could have been delusional, too. Dunno.
The fact is the buyer probably would have lost more than the price reduction he requested if he canceled. That’s what it came down to, and I pointed out those facts to him. He had already removed all of his contingencies, and when a buyer releases contingencies, it puts the buyer’s earnest money deposit at risk.
A cancellation at that point could mean the seller might ask that the earnest money remain in escrow and file a suit in Small Claims Court to retrieve it. The seller would also lose the relocation incentive under the circumstances because the seller had already vacated the premises. If the home went back on the market, second-time around the bank won’t pay relocation if the seller doesn’t live in the home. The seller might sue the buyer for that loss, too. It’s not expensive to file these types of cases in Small Claims Court.
In this instance, the buyer needed to ponder whether he wanted to give that money to the seller and not own the property — or — if he wanted to own the property instead. Because it could cost him the same amount either way. Fortunately, he chose wisely.
Prevention is Better Than Cure in Sacramento Real Estate
Everybody knows that prevention is better than cure but few do anything about it. For example, one of the horrid side effects of growing older, I have discovered, is the fact you can’t just do any old thing you want to do. I don’t want to scare you younger guys, but did you realize that a simple action such as reaching across the kitchen table to push the cat off can cause a back injury? Bowling on the Wii can pull a muscle in your gut. Dropping to the floor to attempt a push-up can tear a rotator cuff. Whatever you used to do in the way of physical activity from 30 years ago you probably should not suddenly undertake in your 60s.
That’s kind of a hard realization to come to for me. On the one hand, I don’t want to walk around being paranoid that any little new action on my part will cause an injury, but on the other hand, I do want to be cautious. So, that’s why I’m enrolling in a physical therapy program out in Folsom, which is a good 30 minutes from my home in Land Park. I think it’s better to be proactive and take care of your health than be surprised when a random body part goes haywire. I try to live by the motto that prevention is better than cure.
Today’s Sacramento Bee says sitting will kill you. Not only will sitting kill you, but Diet Coke will kill you, too. All those mice can’t be wrong.
There are some things you can fix and prevent and some things you can’t do anything about. I can’t get buyer’s lenders to produce loan documents when they say they will, for example, but I can intervene and help them out when there are delays. We have an escrow that was supposed to close a week ago but the lender had difficulties. The first problem was deposit of funds — he didn’t advise the buyer on how to do it, so there was a check involved, which required clearing. The second problem was the lender could not get a document from the HOA, although he had requested.
The way some people deal with these things is they let them work themselves out. If you wait long enough, eventually most things will find resolution. That’s a lazy-ass solution. That’s not how I operate. I prefer to make things happen and not wait for things to happen. If you tell me that the entire situation is out of your hands because you are waiting for another person to perform, I will stare at you in disbelief. I will think you landed on this planet from Mars. There is almost always a way to get action.
I contacted my preferred mortgage lender to give the HOA a push. Sure enough, an hour later, we had the document. I’m just the Sacramento listing agent, I should not have to be involved in such matters. There is no money in this transaction for my lender but he helps out anyway because he’s a great guy who also gets stuff done. He told me if we didn’t receive the document shortly, he would go over to the guy’s office himself to get it. That’s my method of operation as well. Get it done. But I much prefer to manage the situation so that we don’t need to fix it in the first place.
If you need a referral to an excellent mortgage broker, let me know. And before you begin a new exercise program when you’re heading into senior-hood, obtain professional medical guidance. Remember, prevention is better than cure.
You Can Choose a Sacramento Realtor Before You Are Ready
People often call to ask: is it OK to choose a Sacramento Realtor even if I’m not yet ready to sell a home? The short answer is yes and, in fact, it is strongly advised and encouraged. Choosing a Realtor early on is to a seller’s advantage. This simple act can save a seller a lot of money because sellers don’t really know what they need to do to get ready for the market as much as they think they might know.
I see my neighbors down the street, for example, doing things that make me think they are getting ready to sell, and I heard it buzzed about the neighborhood that they’re trying to sell by owner. People try to do a for sale by owner because they wrongly believe they will make more money, even though it’s a proven fact they won’t*. But they want to save that commission, and while they’re so busy saving that commission on the front end, other money is leaking out the back door.
*The typical FSBO home last year, reports the National Association of Realtors, sold for $183,000 as compared to $230,000 for others. Mind you, that’s just the sales price and not the net profit, which also gets mangled during many transactions.
Nothing beats professional representation.
One of the things I noticed yesterday was a termite company truck parked down the street. Somebody must have told these people that they needed to order and pay for a clear pest report, which is untrue. But they don’t know that because I’m betting they haven’t talked to a Sacramento Realtor who works in the neighborhood. Many of my sellers in today’s real estate market do not pay for pest reports nor pest completions because it is not required in all instances.
I have a number of new listings coming on the market after Labor Day, some of which I’ve been working on for more than a year: an enormous home in Galt, another home in Lincoln Crossing, a duplex in Fair Oaks, a single-story in Natomas. It’s never too early to call a Sacramento Realtor and ask for help. We won’t advise you to throw away money. We’ll tell you where to best invest to prepare your home for sale. We’ll help you to find contractors, if you need them. If you have questions such as whether it’s better to sell your home with a tenant in place or as a vacant home, your Realtor will answer those questions.
You can call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I am an experienced Realtor who works in four counties and a consistent top 1% agent. You may as well hire one of the best. We’re not all the same.
Beyond the Marketing of Homes in Sacramento Real Estate
Many successful listing agents in Sacramento maintain an unusual love affair with real estate, coupled with a magnetic attraction to the psychology of marketing homes in Sacramento. We want to understand the techniques that trigger a person’s home buying button. Our brains are turned on by this. It’s often a matter of: W + X + Z = $, ding, ding, ding. We latch on to proven techniques.
We don’t let our emotions rule or get out of hand when dealing with people because it might not deliver the desired result if we go off half-cocked. It’s tempting to be snarky but if that snark irritates or annoys the person we’re trying to attract and receive an offer from, well, that’s a defeatist attitude and not in our seller’s best interest, much less anybody else’s. My advice to agents struggling with snarky syndrome is to suppress the snark. Save it for your friends who appreciate it. Or for your own blog. Like this one.
As a listing agent, I want buyers to feel comfortable and happy and their agents to be thrilled. That’s the goal. When all is said and done and the escrow has closed, is the buyer’s agent a hero / heroine to the buyer or a person to avoid by walking on the other side of the street?
Part of marketing homes in Sacramento successfully is achieved by making the buyer ecstatic over the home purchase. Home staging is a proven strategy and tends to generate a lot more money for the seller than homes that are vacant, and it generates happiness. It’s different than decorating or furnishing a home. Home staging highlights features of the home without making it apparent, and it’s an art. A decorator or designer can’t do it. Staging, when done properly, creates an emotion the buyer can’t get out of her mind, no matter how she tries to shake it.
Another aspect is responding quickly to the buyer’s requests for paperwork and being available if the situation warrants. Little is worse than trying to call the listing agent who has vanished for the weekend. Cooperation is key. Meeting reasonable expectations. Finding solutions. When you put all of these elements together, it’s a recipe for a successful closing and happy parties. It’s not just the marketing of homes. But that’s where one begins.
