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Full Service for Sacramento Real Estate Clients Does Not Mean Everybody
Jackson, Tessa and Pica asleep on the desk of Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub
There are days I wonder how I ever find time to oversee my business and sell real estate, yet still manage to provide standard full service for our Sacramento real estate clients while juggling the chores of life. I just do it. Lately, it’s been a bit tricky because our diabetic cat, Pica, is struggling with sudden health issues. As a result, stoic Pica gets 3 antibiotic pills shot down his throat, a Pepcid, an anti-vomiting pill, Prozac, 2 Sam-E, and a 1/2 tablet of Prednisolone each day. This is in addition to his twice daily injections of insulin to treat his diabetes and his twice daily injections of fluids to prevent dehydration.
The fluids are administered by a long needle inserted under his skin and requires a lot of patience from the cat. On top of squirting full syringes filled with baby food down his throat because his appetite shut down, and trying different samples of wet cat food to entice him to eat. It’s a struggle. Before giving insulin now, we also have to test his blood sugar by stabbing his paw with a needle to draw blood. That’s a lot of medical attention, poking, prodding, for one cat to endure.
I almost feel like a full-time feline caretaker. You haven’t really lived until you’ve had to shove a thermometer up a cat’s butt. Speaking of sticking things up a butt, this reminds me of the supposed home buyers who call, demanding an immediate showing of a Sacramento home, when they aren’t planning to use us to write the offer because they have their own darned agent who is unavailable to show . . . and it is not our listing.
I tell you what. Why don’t you come over tonight and sort my recycled trash from organic? Oh, not your job description? OK, how about you wash my car? Maybe you would like to weed our gardens or lay fertilizer? That’s makes as much sense as expecting an agent offering full service for Sacramento real estate clients to do a job for which she is not your Realtor.
If you are our client, we move heaven and earth to accommodate you. Not our client; not our circus, not our monkey.
I stop whatever I’m doing when a client needs me and calls. Half dressed, I stop. In the middle of lunch, plate into the ‘frig. I answer the phone. My clients’ needs come first. My husband is used to this by now and nothing I do amazes him anymore. How I am able to offer full service for Sacramento real estate clients is because I work with clients who deserve the best. I don’t work with somebody else’s real estate client.
Although a buyer did call me a few days ago and asked us to write an offer for her. She had viewed the home with the listing agent but for some smart reason decided she deserved her own representation. We called that listing agent and we offered the agent a referral fee, because that’s the kind of Sacramento Realtors we are. We’re not out to steal anybody’s client. But first you have to be our client for us to offer full-service to you.
Our poor little Pica, the ocicat, gets the rest of my attention this week, well, aside from a couple of new listings. He is recovering and starting to pull through, which is excellent news. His temperature has been drastically reduced, and he’s starting to eat again. I don’t give up on him, and I most certainly do not give up on our clients.
Why Sacramento Listing Agents Do Not Need Listing Presentations
Most Sacramento listing agents deliver listing presentations to sellers, except Elizabeth Weintraub
Trying to figure out if listing agents are on the level is often a gut thing for sellers and buyers. In fact, trying to determine if any sales person is handing you a pile of crap can be difficult because so many salespeople use scripts, canned presentations, or memorize lines designed to confuse or instill fear. I’ve certainly been running across the BS when updating my website, but at least I have a designing background and formal html education, and yet they still try to snowball me.
One web designer read my featured blog on Active Rain about 7 tips for updating your website and left me a voice mail yesterday about how she “suddenly” discovered Google errors and offered help. That web designer is a big part of the reason I’ve had to pay to have my site reconfigured and then redesigned a second time. Another put my website on an old server, and reconfigured the outdated server to work with my website rather than coding my website for my own host server. Both were horrid experiences. The sales presentations were good but the performances were terrible.
I was thinking about that when I met with a seller yesterday in West Sacramento. She has been talking with several listing agents about listing her home. I could use scripts and whatnot in my business, but I don’t. I just wing it. If you can believe that, and it’s true. Every person is different and every situation deserves a custom approach. I don’t worry about first impressions, persuading sellers to do business with me, or reciting prepared speeches. I just talk with them. I listen to their objectives and questions and do my best to address.
They either like me or they don’t, I figure. Guess I’m pretty lucky because most of the time they do. During this conversation yesterday at my seller’s home in West Sacramento — and I don’t even recall what I was saying — all of a sudden the seller blurted: You’re hired. That quick pronouncement took me by surprise but what the hey, I told her that was great, thank you, and she made a good decision. Because it was and she did.
As one of Sacramento’s top-producer listing agents, I don’t use a prepared listing presentation. Oh, of course, I email a comprehensive comparative market analysis, but the rest of my visit is devoted to finding out what my sellers want and delivering. I don’t need or use props. No 100-page books, literature or flip charts. People do business with other people. My impressive track record and 40+ years of experience speaks volumes, but I am the only person who speaks solely for me. And I believe that’s what sellers appreciate.
What the Heck is a “Coming Soon” Home?
There are reasons to pursue a Coming Soon home for sale listing in Sacramento.
There are pros and cons to a Coming Soon home for sale, which you’ve probably noticed around Sacramento. You might have wondered what they are. Perhaps you’ve spotted a sign in front of a home that looks like it might be for sale but the rider on top of the sign post reads: “Coming Soon.” Or, maybe you’ve seen it as a type of off-market listing in Zillow that promotes it as Coming Soon, and it’s not yet in any online MLS system that you can find. What’s the deal? And further, what’s the point if you can’t buy it?
The best thing a buyer can do is ask her buyer’s agent to follow up with the listing agent. Now, I realize some listing agents in Sacramento routinely try to position new listings in such a way that buyers will call the listing agent directly, which allows the listing agent to double-end the commission — what is known as dual representation — by locking out all other agents. It’s a reason we contend with pocket listings, for example, and how sellers can potentially lose out on all of the benefits of mass marketing; we mourn for them the lost opportunities due to reducing exposure to the largest pool of buyers through a pocket listing.
That’s never been the method of operation nor intent of this Sacramento Realtor. My goal is to treat all agents fairly. In fact, I prefer that buyers hire a buyer’s agent instead of trying to deal with me directly. This way I can focus on my seller’s needs and not feel torn nor conflicted; my vision is clear.
While a listing agent cannot show a home that is in Coming Soon status nor solicit purchase offers while it is not yet on the market, agents have always been permitted to network with other real estate agents. I use this opportunity to network with other agents. The Coming Soon listings in Zillow typically contain an on market date.
If I’m working on a Coming Soon home listing, I let buyer’s agents know that they can show the home when it comes on the market. In fact, they can be first, if they like, but in a market with limited inventory and high demand like our present Sacramento real estate market, we will likely hold an open house on Sunday after the home hits the market. It only makes sense from a seller’s perspective to give the home a few days on market and to promote the open house before entertaining purchase offers. But it doesn’t mean a buyer who spots a Coming Soon listing can’t prepare a strategy with his or her own buyer’s agent and end up the winning recipient.
Home buyers definitely can get an edge over multiple offers by following a simple strategy.
Coming Soon home listings generate excitement. That approach also gives buyers a little bit of advance notice that a home is coming on the market. It stops the feeling of agony some buyers experience when a home pops up on the market and less than 24 hours later is in pending status, before a buyer has even noticed the home was for sale.
What Sacramento Listing Agents Know for Certain
Sacramento listing agents often joke that all we have to do is go out of town for the weekend to get offers rolling in, and this last weekend trip from Sacramento to see Aimee Mann was no exception. I managed to put another two transactions into escrow for Monday morning. It’s always a good way to start the week. It seems to complete the circle of life of Sacramento real estate, meaning new escrows on Monday, new listings on Thursday and closings on Friday.
Lest anybody who reads this thinks that the circle of life of Sacramento real estate is an easy feat to pull off, let me be clear that this market is a lot tougher for Sacramento listing agents than previous years. It seems like there is a lot more work involved. A few years ago we might get one or two offers, take the best one, and call it a day. Today, if a seller wants market value, we might end up negotiating 5 to 7 offers over the term of 30 days or longer. The first offer doesn’t always work out.
Sacramento listing agents can’t be 100% certain that a buyer will perform no matter what we do. The listing agent can call the lender directly and interrogate but that’s no guarantee. The buyer’s agent can swear up and down that the buyer will close, but that’s no assurance, either. Half the time the agents don’t even know the buyers, they met them briefly at an open house, at the bar or maybe during “floor time” — perhaps bumped into them at the grocery store.
Then I get the buyer’s agents who want to know what my sellers will do. Heck, I don’t know. I’m not inside their head. I’m just the Sacramento listing agent who knows if the buyers sign an offer at the list price, we’ll take it. Don’t call and ask what will my sellers do because I don’t know. No other listing agent likely knows, either, if you want to know the truth.
And if we do have an inkling, we’re not allowed to tell ya.
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.
