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Sacramento Home Staging Agents Maximize Your Profit
The talents of a real estate agent are often multifaceted but Sacramento home staging agents are generally not real estate agents. Real estate agents must be excellent communicators, expert negotiators and excel at marketing, but they are not a home stager. That’s not to say that a real estate agent can’t give you home staging advice because she most certainly can. But if you want her to stage your home, she’s not the best person to go to — because her specialty is selling real estate not warehousing furniture, not to mention she does not possess the specialized experience that is required to create the stage. There are home staging specialists in Sacramento who do nothing else but that job.
A home seller would no more hire her listing agent to stage her home than she would hire the listing agent to paint the walls or replace an aging roof. If her real estate agent does offer to stage the home, it’s possible the home stager is a professional home stager and not an effective real estate agent. You also would not hire a mortgage broker who happens to hold a real estate license to sell your home. Well, some people might without realizing it. Then they pay for it later when it’s too late.
The fact remains you should hire a person to do a job that the person is licensed to do and solely specializes in doing. My real estate practice is so specialized that I have agents, for example, who work with me to show property because showing homes is not something that I personally do. I’m not that good at it, if you want to know the truth. I walk into the wrong house, get on the wrong freeways, break my nails opening doors and can’t keep my mouth shut if the place stinks.
I’m much better at representing sellers and selling homes for top dollar. That’s my strength. Being an expert listing agent is a real specialty. And I sell homes throughout Sacramento, Placer, Yolo and Eldorado. I can tell you if a room has too much furniture in it and to take down your photographs from the walls. But if your home needs staging — and let me say that not every home does — then I will be the first to tell you so and to help you to settle on a home stager. I have access to many home stagers in Sacramento in my arsenal, but I would never presume to do a better job for you at home staging than a professional home stager will do. To think that an agent would is a crazy presumption.
I prefer to hire the specialists when I need a job done professionally and so should a home seller. Don’t try to shop on price, instead, hire the home stager you relate to. They all tend to charge about the same; it makes sense to hire a professional home stager if and when you need it. Then listen to your home stager and take her or his advice. Home stagers focus solely on staging your home for maximum profit, and typically have earned degrees and certifications in the business. It’s an entirely different business from selling real estate, although it deals with the same outcome, a closing.
If you just want to dump your home in its present condition, I can certainly do that for you. But if I recommend a home stager, it’s because I believe you can make more to cover that cost of home staging and pocket the rest. I have a home right now that if it were sold in its present shape, the seller would lose about $25,000 to $35,000, but with home staging, with fees less than 1/10th of that potential loss, the seller will make a big profit. I’m all about maximizing profit. Home staging pays, it doesn’t cost. If your Sacramento agent suggests it, ask how much you will lose if you don’t.
Why Some People Hate Their Real Estate Agents
If you hate real estate agents, get in line; lots of people do and, as agents, we’re not supposed to talk about it. They say the easiest person to sell to in the world is a salesperson because salespeople are gullible (they believe their own lies), which makes them susceptible (an easy “mark”), and a Sacramento real estate agent is no exception. The third-party vendors to real estate agents realize this as do the trade associations who pander to us. I also realize it when I work with other fellow agents because there are telltale signs that give it away.
I use it to my advantage when I spot it. I can’t help myself. It’s just lying there like bundles of thousand dollar bills on a sidewalk. I could lay out all of those signs for you but it wouldn’t really make much difference because I find the tendency is then to separate one of those peculiarities, focus on that one thing, and one sign by itself is not enough to deserve a bad rap except maybe that REALTOR Badge graphic. I’m bringing this up to help explain why some people dislike and even hate their real estate agents. It’s because they feel like they’re being played and being sold to.
Nobody wants to feel like they are being manipulated, even if they know they are, they don’t want to personally feel those grabby little fingers of lies. It makes them uncomfortable. It’s much better to be straight with people and tell your clients what they don’t want to hear as long as it leads them to the direction they want to go.
That’s where I come in, and one of the reasons I sell so much real estate in Sacramento. I will tell my sellers and buyers what they don’t want to hear. But I try not to be rude about it, and I also want to give them what they want. They want an agent who is smart, pays extreme attention to detail but doesn’t sweat the unnecessary stuff, is empathetic to their situation and cares about them. Somebody else once said that a client won’t care about how much you know until you show how much you care about them. When you naturally care about other people, this is easy to do.
I am reading a book I love called #GirlBoss, written by my freaky twin sister Sophia Amoruso, CEO of Nasty Gal. She doesn’t know she is my twin sister — and she’s also 32 years younger than I am — but we’ve led parallel lives in many ways. She discovered what is unique about her, stayed true to it, and her company has revenue exceeding $100 million. But that’s not the only reason to listen to her. She has common sense, probably realizes it is the best of the 5 senses. A great sense of humor, too, the second most important sense.
I am unique in how I sell real estate as well; it’s how I got to where I am. I relate to people both emotionally and intellectually. That’s a weird combination. I also filter out the noise. Stuff that doesn’t need to enter my brain doesn’t get in there. I focus on what my client wants and on getting it for my client. If you need to hire a Sacramento real estate agent, you’ve come to the right blog. Send me an email above by clicking the envelope titled email or pick up any old phone and call. I still answer my cell, 916.233.6759.
How Much Will Your Sacramento Home Seller Take?
A common question asked by Sacramento real estate agents and directed toward the listing agent is how much will the seller take for that home? Now, you see, I could swear that there is a listing price attached to that home, but maybe the print is too small to read. I know, we could outfit buyer’s agents with those big honkin’ magnifying glasses like you see in photos of Sherlock Holmes. Or, maybe we should attach spectacles to a chain they can keep in their pockets or wear around their necks to whip out for such an occasion?
When an agent asked me that question yesterday, I immediately suggested he look in Zillow. I was being facetious, of course, but he didn’t realize it because I made that suggestion by projecting a lot of excitement and enthusiasm in my voice. I can’t help it. I have fun at work; and I like to make people laugh. Except the agent didn’t laugh because he didn’t know I was joking. I mean, let’s face it, Zillow is the last place for any reasonable much less professional real estate person to look for a market value, but that doesn’t mean the public doesn’t go there because they do. The professionals, on the other hand, use MLS for comparable sales to determine market value.
But it’s such an innocent question, an outsider might presume. How much will the seller take? It is . . . for a person who is not a real estate agent. And I suppose that question is OK for an agent to ask as well if they can get an answer. As my husband is fond of saying: a guy can ask 10 women to go home with him at the bar and the first 9 might slap his face. But that 10th . . .
I asked the buyer’s agent why he would ask me, the listing agent, because I am not the seller. I don’t make decisions for the seller and all that I really know for certain is the seller will accept list price. Not to mention, it’s a breach of fiduciary to utter any kind of different answer.
Well, he didn’t want to “waste time” writing an offer the seller would reject. What? Isn’t that the name of the real estate game? An agent writes an offer on behalf of a buyer and a seller either accepts, counters or rejects? And there is one way to find out what a seller will do, too. If you want to know how much the seller will take for that home, there is one sure-fired, tried-and-true-method to get that answer. You write a purchase offer and send it to the listing agent.
A Listing Agent Explains All Home Selling Steps
Sacramento real estate clients rely on their agents to explain what’s going on in a transaction and the next home selling steps, even if the clients appear knowledgable. Because an agent never wants to disappoint a client or fail to keep a client informed. Even at the risk of being overly simplistic, it’s important to communicate and inform. I realize that agents don’t want to insult their clients, but clients are insulted if they don’t understand, take your pick.
Not to mention, every home seller has her own perceptions about how she believes things work.
Earlier this week for example I was talking to a seller about putting a sign rider on the post outside that says: Don’t Disturb Occupant. I often put up sign riders like this on vacant homes to try to dissuade the thugs who break into them, but I also use those riders for occupied homes in some areas. The seller said she didn’t need that sign rider because if anybody approached her doorstep with evil intentions she would shoot them. This astonished me, mostly because the seller was old enough to be my great grandmother. I asked if she had a gun. Her response was yes, everybody has guns.
Well, no, I don’t own a gun.
Regardless of how many homes this seller might have sold in her life or how much she might know about home selling in Sacramento, I still explained every step of the transaction to her; fully cognizant that I may need to repeat the steps later on. I try to imagine what is likely to happen in a real estate sale and then I share that knowledge with my sellers.
One of the worst things that could happen to me as a real estate agent is to have a seller wonder what comes next and not know.
Well, I guess I could be shot.
How a Sacramento Agent Stays on Course
In a conversation with my sister in Minneapolis this weekend, we discussed how as we get older it becomes easier to understand how a person can mistake her husband for a hat or an umbrella. We have so much overload in our lives today as compared to a few years ago. Especially as an agent selling real estate in Sacramento in the month of May. This is why as a busy agent I often feel the need to take breaks now and then, but even while I’m riding my bicycle around Land Park in the afternoons, I can spot weird things out of the corner of my eye that can morph into, oh, I dunno, imaginary animated objects, for example. I’m not going bonkers. I’m sure of it.
But listen . . .
In the newest version of Plants vs. Zombies, the game board uses triangles and other traffic zone images that impart super powers to the plants. If a person’s brain is otherwise engaged, like mine often is when I’m riding my bike (because I’m listening to music on my wireless headphones, interrupted only when I answer a real estate call — hey, why did the music stop? — Oh, yeah, I’m getting a phone call), it’s easy to zip past a triangle in the road and perhaps picture a double-fisted bok choy nestled securely behind a boosted walnut. I can see how people lose their minds. And you know what? It’s not all that frightening.
I’m here to tell ya that if you’re gonna turn into a vegetable in your old age, there are probably worse things.
Like many top producer Sacramento agents, we keep a lot of information categorized in our heads, and it’s a balancing act much of the time, especially when an escrow has a contingency to sell. I noticed yesterday as I filed away closed escrows that I am often lately helping sellers to buy homes at the same time they are selling. Even so, these escrows don’t last anywhere nearly as long as the short sales used to several years ago. During that time period, it was not unusual to work on a file for 4 to 6 months or longer. In fact, during that particular ice age, I usually got to know my sellers fairly well and their home inside out, with every single detail embedded in my brain.
When we got to closing, it was sometimes a bitter sweet farewell. I often felt like I was parting with an old friend, because I was intimately familiar with each facet of the transaction. Nowadays, I take a listing, it sells, it quickly closes, and that lengthy interaction is often shortened. I feel like, hey, we just met, and now you’re going into the closed box under my desk. Wha? Come back!
But it’s all for the best. At least this Sacramento real estate agent is not losing her mind. Not yet, anyway.
