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Biggest Peeves Among Home Sellers in Sacramento
There are 3 things I do that other agents don’t seem to do on a regular basis, which is how this Sacramento real estate agent keeps her home sellers happy and content. I know there must be times when an agent looks at my new listing in MLS and wonders how I got that listing and why didn’t he get the listing. What is it about this agent, they may ask? I will tell you. Not only will I tell you but I do so without worrying that oh-my-gosh, now every real estate agent knows my secrets and will steal all of my business in town — because it won’t happen. I’m not bragging, it’s just the way things are.
Deep down my competitors know they should do this, they often just don’t do it.
It’s consistency, overall. Which agents can adopt if they want to badly enough.
The first secret is respond quickly. Don’t take all day to get around to answering an email or return a phone call. People don’t have all day. I don’t have all day. When a potential home seller contacts me, I answer. Naturally, if they leave me a message after hours, that is, after 7 PM or they send an email at 3 AM, they won’t get a response until the morning, but I do address concerns and questions with the fastest speed humanely possible.
The second secret is to answer the phone when it rings. Sometimes, we agents are on the other line when the phone rings and can’t disconnect. But for crying out loud, if an agent is talking to her hairdresser or one of her kids or friends, hang up and take the darn phone call that’s coming in during business hours. What the hey?
The third secret is to keep sellers informed about what’s happening with the sale of their home. Ever since the market shifted 2 years ago and short sales stopped being the dominant sales driver in Sacramento, it’s been a wild ride with those regular home sales. They close so quickly, and often tend to sell quickly, too, if they are priced right. If I hear anything about a home that I think the seller would like to know, I immediately pass on that information. I keep sellers informed. I’d hate for a seller to wonder what’s happening.
How do I know sellers want a Sacramento real estate agent to perform in this manner? Because they tell me so. My mission is to consistently perform.
How to Pick a Sales Price Without Comparable Sales
Trying to pick a sales price when there are few to none comparable sales is a little bit tricky in our Sacramento real estate market, but this is when an experienced real estate agent can be very helpful. Sometimes it comes down to relying on gut instinct, mixed with a bit of pixie dust sprinkled on top of those dusty old comparable sales, to come up with an accurate and reasonable number.
Further, I might do goofy things that are right on target such as grab a random sales price from 2005, divide it in half, multiple that result by 50%, and then slap another 25% on top to arrive at an estimate of value, which is often much closer than Zillow’s screwy Zestimate and computed about in the same fashion. But that’s just to double-check the ballpark. It’s not to pick a sales price.
When talking with a seller who just closed escrow yesterday on a fixer home I had listed, we had discussed the sales price and reviewed how we arrived at the final number. I confessed that it wasn’t based entirely on the comparable sales. My input was based a lot on how much I thought we could get for the property, resulting in the intrinsic market value of that home. The seller laughed and said he realized I had grabbed it from thin air when I made the recommendation.
Well, I wouldn’t say thin air. But it was an educated guess. It was an educated guess because although I had examined the comp prices for turnkey homes, I had not arrived at a value for the unknown condition of the property, which was basically trashed. I had been expecting to see a home in move-in condition. These types of homes are a bit difficult to price when the home has so much wrong with it that you can’t even figure out which part of the house you’re standing in. Oh, this must be the living room, I muttered to nobody, when it dawned on me where I was as the floor suddenly sloped down under my feet.
After hitting the market, lots of agents called to give me push back and to complain about the price. They thought it was too high. Many offered substantially less. They moaned and groaned. Hey, give the sellers what they want, I suggested; it’s simple, just do it. Don’t yak at me about the comps and your honorable intentions. Put up or shut up. Then, two buyers submitted offers that were very close to our asking price, and those were the two buyers we worked with, closing with the best offer and zero renegotiations during escrow.
Sometimes, you just get lucky trying to pick a sales price, but it helps to have experience on your side when you’re the seller.
An Accepted Purchase Offer in Sacramento is Only the Beginning
When buying or selling a home in Sacramento, the parties often don’t realize that it’s hardly over when both sides sign an accepted purchase offer; in fact, the process is just beginning and anything can go wrong. This is where FSBOs (For Sale By Owners) tend to struggle and where real estate agents with less experience can mess up as well.
Think of this point in time as that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy, all freshly scrubbed and sporting her sparkly ruby slippers, is merrily laughing and singing with her gangly companions, setting out from Munchkin Land to skip down the Yellow Brick Road, just before Glinda vanishes in a puff of twinkly fairy dust. Everybody is happy and excited, looking forward to arriving in the magical Emerald City. They have no idea what lies in store for them.
And neither do most Sacramento home sellers and buyers.
This is when your Sacramento real estate agent can make a world of difference to you. Selling a home in Sacramento is a lot more than just finding a buyer. It means qualifying the buyer, thinking ahead and predicting what could happen, and taking steps to prevent the trees from strangling you and throwing apples at your face. It means fighting off the winged monkeys.
And, if it’s necessary, making it snow.
Keeping everybody on the path to closing. And happy. It’s not the money, either, because a commission check can lose its luster fast if the seller or buyers are unhappy when it’s all over. This is no easy feat. But it’s what I do every day, and I believe I do it well. Going into escrow is just the beginning. If you’re looking for a veteran Sacramento real estate agent, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759.
Do Not Touch the Sacramento Lockbox Without Permission
I’m thinking about slapping a preprinted notice over my 70-some lockboxes that warn: don’t touch the lockbox without permission. It is never OK for a Sacramento real estate agent to use a lockbox and enter a home without checking the showing instructions in MLS — yet it happens. Unauthorized access happens not because agents think but because some of them don’t think. An agent today explained why he entered a home that is not even on the market, after I emailed him twice to ask for an explanation. He said it was because he lived across the street and the seller told him she was listing with me.
I imagine that news went over well.
So, he decided it was OK to bring over a buyer to walk around the home and trample on private property. Because he knew the seller. It did not occur to him that he had no written agreement with this seller nor permission to be there. Not only did he not understand that he was trespassing, but imagine his surprise when he noticed the lockbox and thought to himself, hey, here I am, a Sacramento real estate agent with a buyer and whoa, I have a display key that will open this lockbox. I will do it.
I know when the agent was there because I check my lockbox showings via the Supra website 2 to 3 times a day.
This agent did not bother to see if the home was listed. Which it is not published in MLS yet. Or maybe he did and he realized it was not on the market and that was simply his flimsy first excuse. Because his second excuse was he figured the seller would receive multiple offers, and he thought for some odd reason that we would give him priority with his offer if he submitted it quickly. And the way to submit a fast offer first was to break into the home without permission. Yeah!
This is winning on so many levels, not.
MLS guidelines allow showing of a home when that home is in active status in MLS and the showing instructions are followed. In some parts of town, and I’m not saying where, I don’t even put a for sale sign in the yard because agents out showing homes will use a lockbox if they can spot that lockbox without looking up the home in MLS to even determine if it’s available to be shown. I’ve had buyer’s agents enter occupied pending sales unauthorized with a naked seller in the shower. Geez, Louise!
MetroList should improve its training for agents and not just hand out lockboxes like they are candy.
All I can say is it’s a good thing that seller didn’t hire this agent and instead chose me. We’ll see what tomorrow brings when this home hits the market.
Buying and Selling in a Normal Sacramento Housing Market
You might wonder why about 50% of the homes are selling in Sacramento this spring and the other 50% of homes are not selling — especially when you read that we are experiencing a seller’s market for 2014 — and, as usual, this real estate agent has an explanation for our Sacramento housing market phenomena. For starters, this is not really a seller’s market for all Sacramento housing, because it doesn’t fit all of the criteria for a seller’s market. To have a seller’s market, you’ve got to have buyers, and we don’t have as many as buyers as we probably should for the amount of inventory available.
This means if a tree falls in the forest does it make it a sound?
Yes, our inventory is very low as compared to previous years but I don’t see as many buyers out and about our town. I’m not receiving as many multiple offers as I used to a few years ago, it takes longer to get an offer, and the days on market seem a bit longer as well. So, that would make for a pretty balanced market, wouldn’t you agree? Plus, let’s not forget, prices are up! You can probably get $100,000 more for that home than you could have a few years ago. It’s a great time to sell. Rates are low, so it’s still a good time to buy.
If you need to sell and buy a home, the good news is contingent offers are back! Little signals a normal Sacramento real estate market than contingent offers.
It’s also a Sacramento housing market in which some homes in Sacramento will sell very quickly because there is a high demand for that particular type of home, location, price range — or a combination of those factors. Other homes will take longer to sell. Especially those homes that are overpriced. I realize some sellers are exuberantly enthusiastic, let’s say, and optimistic to the point that they’ve priced themselves out of the market, but by golly, they sure do have that sign in the front yard.
I closed a home in Roseville earlier this week in the West Park neighborhood for sellers who are moving to the Midwest. If they had waited another month, they probably would have received the price they wanted, but since it didn’t sell within 2 weeks, they elected to reduce the price a bit to entice an offer. Bam. Flew into escrow with that price reduction. Of course, then they worried that they sold too low — that’s human nature — but they didn’t. They sold at market value, and we negotiated with the buyers to let them stay for a few weeks free of charge.
So, it all boils to if you’re planning to sell, you need to think about which side of the fence you want to be on. Do you want to be on the side of the fence that is receiving offers, going into escrow and closing? Or do you want to sit on the other side that, well, sits. Because only about half of our inventory is selling right now. But low inventory with low numbers of buyers is still a somewhat balanced market. Could this be the new normal for Sacramento real estate?
