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Working as a Sacramento Agent on Aloha Time
Working in an Aloha state-of-mind should be recommended for all Sacramento real estate agents who are stressed out, overworked and exhausted, because it’s pretty much impossible to get all excited or worked up over normal day-to-day crap when you’re in Maui. I much prefer to be a Sacramento agent on Aloha time. Much of the time I do not let external factors bother me one way or the other because I am too busy to allot time to focus on minor irritations. Out of sight, out of mind, work on the next task at hand, is my motto.
There is always something new and exciting on the horizon. Just this morning, a red-crested cardinal landed on our balcony railing. I grabbed my cellphone to shoot a picture. Problem is with the ocean and palm trees behind the balcony, the cardinal was washed out. The picture didn’t turn out very well. But the cardinal will be back. We have another week here, and the odds are I will have another opportunity to catch the cardinal in a photo. Because I am a Sacramento agent on Aloha time in Maui.
Barbara says motivation is somewhat complicated for her. She knows, for example, that she needs to make what could be construed as an uncomfortable phone call to a guy she doesn’t really want to speak to, so she looks out at the ocean and temporarily spaces out making the call. But she is excellent at prioritizing tasks. Her list of people she needs to call is laid out in front of her, and her fingers finally whip across the face of her cellphone, and she does the deed. She is a Sacramento agent on Aloha time.
Because no matter what happens, she will work it out. If not right now, perhaps in an hour from now or maybe tomorrow. No big deal. We’re definitely working on Aloha time. Bring it on.
FSBO Seller to Agent: Will You Find a Buyer for My Home?
As a busy Sacramento real estate agent, I receive all kinds of odd calls during the day, but probably the strangest call I received lately was from a FSBO, a for sale by owner, who asked me to find a buyer for her. Now, I know the way I was supposed to answer that question, the way a real estate agent who is hungry for listings might do it, but I couldn’t bring myself to stoop that low.
I was supposed to say sure, I would help her find a buyer, knowing that there was no way in hell I would. Then I would email her and talk about the market and other sales in the neighborhood, and day by day, week by week, I would wear her down until she is so damn tired of trying to find a buyer all by herself that she will turn to me, the real estate pro, and list. Because that’s how it works with FSBO sellers.
No, thanks. I’m not wired like that. Instead, I leveled with her. She didn’t like it one little bit. There are a lot of people in the world who just don’t want to hear the truth because it’s not the version they expect.
But you know, I wasn’t the person who called this real estate agent and flat out stated she had no desire to hire me as her listing agent because she wasn’t planning to hire any listing agent, and starts off by implying she has no respect for the job that I do because any person with a for sale sign and a hammer can slam it into the yard to find a buyer, but she wanted my help anyway. Oy. I tried to explain this was the wrong way to go about it, but she didn’t want to hear any of that.
I asked if she knows where buyers come from? No, she didn’t. Well, obviously not because she was calling to beg me to bring her a buyer. Buyers come from a listing. When a listing agent puts a listing into MLS and across the Internet, that agent gets buyers. That’s the way it works. No listing in MLS, no buyers.
Another reason she has no buyers and has taken to calling complete strangers from the Internet is because she thinks that agents who do have buyers are dying to work with her. No, they are not, and in fact, they go out of their way not work with a FSBO if they don’t have to and have a lick of common sense. They don’t want the liability, and they certainly don’t want the extra work that comes with trying to close an escrow with a FSBO seller who is unrepresented. Whoa, she was very unhappy and told me that was not true.
Well, between a person who has been in the business for 40 years selling homes, and a FSBO seller who is so desperate she is calling random agents to try to find a buyer, I think we know who has a better handle on the real estate market and the way things work. But you know what, I am on my way to Maui this morning with a team member for a little R&R in an oceanfront suite at Fairmont Kea, and you know what they say? Hair today gone to Maui. And my hair looks great!
Why is Land Park a Great Neighborhood?
What makes a good neighborhood a great neighborhood in Land Park? That question crossed my mind for two reasons. First, I was reading a blog written by an agent friend from Benicia about the topic of great neighborhoods. I read through her blog and into the responses. Somebody remarked that a good neighborhood is a place where people don’t mow lawns at 7 AM or sing along top volume to G-L-O-R-I-A at midnight and don’t run over your cat, and then it dawned on me, right at the point where I was thinking: hey, I completely agree with this poster, yeah, right on, that the person who wrote the comment was me. And that particular blog was written last year.
Which just made me laugh out loud. This Sacramento real estate agent gets around online, I guess.
Second, I think about when I retire, even though that’s a ways off and I don’t know where to retire, and I wonder about giving up the benefits we enjoy from living in Land Park. We all should appreciate the here and now while the here and now is here. I noticed that while watching Californication, the episode at Hank’s house when Becca tells him she’s getting married, which looks like that balcony scene was filmed in a beach community, maybe Venice or Malibu, in southern California. What I couldn’t help but notice was how close the houses are, tumbled on top of each other (which I had forgotten) and that most people left their windows open.
Being that close to the water means tourists, too. Traffic and noise. I used to live at 1234 Balboa Boulevard in Newport Beach in the 1970s, the decade in which I was first licensed to sell real estate. This was smack dab on the beach peninsula, extreme noise, traffic all day past my humble abode, but I never noticed it. Young people screaming, hootering and hollering, drinking and smoking pot and what-have-you, running amuck, carrying on, playing records too loudly, and this was just the noise from inside my apartment.
While I yearn to return to the beach life, I also realize that I will never afford a $10 million retreat on the water, which means anything less equates to putting up with a bit of noise. We don’t have noise in Land Park. It’s really quiet. No cars hardly drive down my street. There are no children squealing or shrieking around my house. My neighbors in Land Park are respectful and keep to themselves. Friendly enough when they need to be but mostly private. I like it this way.
Sometimes, when we leave the windows open at night, we can hear slight traffic way off in the distance or the fireworks from Raley’s field. With the windows closed, though, I don’t even notice the morning sprinklers which, due to the drought, is only twice a week now. I appreciate the silence. I especially love the fruit from my next door neighbor’s cherry tree as much as he enjoys the tomatoes from our garden. If you’re looking for a friendly but quiet neighborhood, you won’t find much better than Land Park.
You can view existing vintage homes in Land Park here or active listings of homes for sale in Land Park here.
What Were You Thinking?
One phrase you’ll probably never hear this Sacramento real estate agent mutter is: What was I thinking? Because a) I generally know what I am thinking and b) it’s usually right, because I’ve worked through a process to arrive at a reasonable conclusion. One of the biggest problems I’ve encountered in the real estate industry is that so many people do not think. They react. They do. They participate. They take action. Words fast fall out of their mouths, like some drunken orgy, but they don’t think.
I’ve encountered agents whom I want to grab by the shoulders and shake. We have all had that experience. I’m not alone. We want to scream: What were you thinking? But it doesn’t matter because it was the wrong thing. Sometimes, it’s a horribly wrong thing.
What is wrong with thinking twice? Or three times? Or asking yourself: what are the consequences if I choose option A over B? Are there other choices I have yet to contemplate that might better fit the situation at hand? How will others react to me? Am I doing the right thing?
You know who often does the wrong thing? Individuals who think only about themselves. People who believe the world revolves around them and they are the most important item in it. They focus on narcissism and call it self help. They run around in circles unsupervised, like a chicken with its head cut off.
And this is why most real estate agents are not successful. To be successful you have to think about other people, how other people react, and what is truly best for your clients over what is best for yourself. Because what is best for your clients is always always always what is best for you.
The answer to what were you thinking is you were not. I wish we could teach people how to think and reason. That used to be what schools were for and why we read books. #Whatwereyouthinking? You weren’t.
We All Need Somebody to Pick On
You know, it occurred to me that those lyrics in Let it Bleed could be easily twisted Yankovic-style to: we all need somebody to pick on. It’s an American pastime. America is one of those places where people like to make fun of other people who are not like themselves. I suppose it’s a way that people can feel better about their own lot in life. There’s always somebody who is worse off in some way you can pick on. Ask Cat Stevens.
I was watching Cat Stevens last night, aka Yusef Islam, get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I never quite got over Cat Stevens leaving the music industry in the 1970s. Almost all of his songs, I could play on guitar and his lyrics were memorized by heart. It was painful for me personally when he abandoned his fans, as silly as that might sound to some of you. I also pretty much stopped listening to new music about that time. No Cat Stevens, screw it.
I was also too busy selling real estate and dealing with all of the drama in my life during the 1980s to care about any new bands. So, as a result, I pretty much missed that era, which according to Yours Truly I didn’t miss much — although my husband, who graduated high school 11 years after me, would disagree. We often argue about my view point, that being that the 1980s was a huge vast wasteland of big hair and nonsense. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that my taste in music was restored, and I was able to move past the music of the 1960s and 1970s to embrace new musicians.
As he stood on the stage to accept his award, Stevens made a joke about how he was better off than some of the others in the crowd. That was a true statement. But it also made some people hit their heads on the tables laughing. It was funny but it was sad. In contrast, there’s always somebody worse off. My mother used to talk about the starving children in China whenever I complained as a kid about her meal choices.
It made me think about a conversation I had with my sister earlier in the day. We noted how difficult it is to gauge how much another person weighs, especially extremely overweight people. She was astonished to discover that hefty people she thought had weighed like 500 pounds were really only 280 or 300 pounds.
Then, I came up with an idea for a new television show: America’s Got Fat. Contestant’s could appear kind of like on The Dating Game, hidden behind a screen, and the skinny little rails who make up the panel of judges behind the microphones could guess how much the contestants weighed based on answers to questions. I bet it would be a big hit. Everybody knows somebody who is fatter than they are, and people seem to love to pick on the obese. Then the winner could go on a diet, supervised by one of the judges.
I can’t tell how much people weigh. It doesn’t matter to me; although I did just reach my goal of losing 25 pounds myself over the past 3 months, just in time for my upcoming trip to Maui. My reward for a successful first half of 2014 and overcoming the challenges associated with my career as a top Sacramento real estate agent. It is kind of nice that Cat Stevens came back, don’t you think?
