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Saying Goodbye to the Downtown Sacramento Mall
After shooting photos of a new listing yesterday afternoon, I stopped at the downtown Sacramento Mall to visit Macy’s to see if I could pick up a new pair of shoes, as I have not been shoe shopping in person at a department store for almost a year. I work too much. The problem with Macy’s, of course, is it has downgraded its inventory so it tends to carry a lot of cheap-ass crap nowadays because it thinks that’s what Sacramentans want to buy and who knows, maybe they do.
Much of the downtown Sacramento mall is deserted. It won’t be long before the men’s store and furniture division of Macy’s will move out, too. This is where the new stadium for the Kings will be built. I owed it to myself to give it one more quick walkthrough before everything changes.
Fortunately, I did find two pairs of shoes I liked, but they were very similar to each other. As I stood there admiring them on my feet and prancing about, I decided I did not have all day to ponder the pros and cons between the two pairs, and I could not easily make up my mind, so I just bought them both. That seemed like the most cost effective way to solve my dilemma. The salesman saw that I had been struggling in my predicament and undoubtedly noticed how I resolved the issue by grabbing both pairs. He suggested maybe I would like the same shoe in a different color. Well, maybe he should go into real estate and stop wasting his talents in the Macy’s shoe department?
Macy’s now has WiFi so my cellphone worked all over the store, which was great! I chatted with buyers looking for homes, an agent in Phoenix sending me a referral, and a possible new listing for a seller in East Sacramento. But I knew I had to get back to my home office and upload photos for my new listing before it went live in MLS at midnight. That was a pressing deadline. I had allocated an hour for shopping and my hour was over.
I dashed for the elevator. The door opened, I got on and reached into my pocket for my cellphone. Just then a heard a guy yell HOLD THE ELEVATOR as he sprinted across the parking lot, his face beet red from puffing and huffing. I pushed CLOSE. Rats. He stuck his magazine into the door and jammed it open. I am nice all day long, darn it.
Foiled. He got on anyway.
Karma gets you, you know. Sure enough, I zipped into the middle exit lane, the one without a dude in the box who can take your ticket, and I ended up having to back out while some woman in a sporty red car yelled at me because she thought I was going to hit her.
As I drove up 9th Street with the top down and hair flying, leaves whirling around me in gusts of wind, I thought about how different it is to be working from my home office today versus what it was like in the 1980s. Almost nobody back then worked from home, and if you did, you didn’t tell anybody about it. Nowadays, it’s very common place. Few top-producing real estate agents work out of an office. You meet clients at the office, but you work from your home office.
If you haven’t been to the downtown Sacramento mall yet to say goodbye to the old place, this might be a good time to do it. And tell that guy in the shoe department at Macy’s, the kid with the red hair, he should go into real estate.
New Home Listings in Roseville, Greenhaven, Fair Oaks
When I woke up to rain in Sacramento this morning, my first thought was how excited I am to work on preparing my new home listings for this month, but my second thought was April showers bring May flowers — that ditty has little to do with anything because it’s still only March and because we already have flowers. By the time April rolls around, I have summer fever. I also wish we had enough rain to end the drought, but it looks like we are in a for a long struggle and need to practice continual water conservation.
A report in the Sacramento Bee revealed most of the water consumption in the Sacramento area is in Granite Bay as residents in Granite Bay use twice as much water over Sacramento residents. Larger lots, more grass, mostly. My new listings for this month are not located in Granite Bay, although I do sell homes in Placer County. These are homes in Fair Oaks, Greenhaven and Roseville, all areas I know very well. When you sell homes all over Sacramento like I do, it’s nice to be able to pick and choose which homes I want to sell and which sellers I want to represent.
While I’m selecting my new projects, homeowners are also selecting the agent they want to work with, and goodness knows, they have a huge selection from which to choose. A seller shared with me last week that one of the reasons she chose to hire Elizabeth Weintraub over the other agents she interviewed was because I did not talk AT her; I talked with her. Of course I talked with her, because that’s how I talk. Plus, I need to get to know my sellers on a personal level so I can best communicate and deliver the type of service they want. Make them not just happy but ecstatic. You can’t do that if you’re talking AT people.
If you are looking for a home in Greenhaven, Fair Oaks or Roseville, you will love this selection. First, they are all equity (traditional sales) homes, so you can close in 30 days. The home in Greenhaven sports gorgeous hardwood floors and an oversized lot, located in a pretty, tucked-away neighborhood, ready for immediate occupancy, under $300,000. The home in Fair Oaks boasts granite, is an updated and spacious single-level and offers country living in the city, priced under $400,000. The single-level home in Roseville features matted cherry cabinets throughout, granite counters, ceramic and marble floors, a popular model with a beautifully landscaped back yard, also priced under $400,000.
If you are a buyer working with the Elizabeth Weintraub Team, you’ll get first glimpse of these homes as they come on the market. All of our buyers tend to enjoy a bit of an edge in the Sacramento marketplace, and it’s not because they’re working with the smartest agents I know, but that certainly helps.
How the New Mortgage Rules Affect Sacramento Home Buyers
At first blush, it was reasonable to figure that the QM (Qualified Mortgage) and ATR (Ability to Repay) new mortgage rules put into place on January 10th by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau probably would not affect very many borrowers. That’s because lenders had already tightened their guidelines. But some of the new rules are difficult for some borrowers to meet, such as the 43% back-end debt ratio.
For those of you not in the real estate business, a back-end debt ratio is calculated by taking all of your revolving monthly debt, including your mortgage payment, taxes and insurance, and dividing that number by your gross monthly income. For example, if you earn $5,000 a month and all your debt payments plus mortgage obligation adds up to $2,200 per month, you most likely will not qualify to buy a home under the new mortgage rules because your back-end ratio is 44%.
I am a REALTOR in Sacramento, not a mortgage broker, so I won’t go into all the sticky details about how a borrower is qualified for a mortgage because that’s the job of people like Dan Tharp at Guild Mortgage. You can reach Dan at 916 257 1470. He’s a very patient person who will spend all the time it takes to explain mortgage options to you and help a borrower to pick the best loan. He also obtains great rates from major lenders (probably better than you can get directly), so if there’s a bank you particularly want to get a loan through, he’s your guy.
I can tell you that mortgage lenders are definitely more thorough lately. Just the other day, we had a lender run a nationwide check on a borrower. This was not my borrower but the seller is my client. Also, this would not have happened in the old days. This lender looked for lawsuits or any other kind of derogatory item filed against the borrower and sure enough, it found a lawsuit filed in Missouri.
The Social Security numbers matched, even though the borrower denied that he was one and the same person. After a bit, he finally backed down and admitted that the lawsuit was his. And you know what? He did not get the loan.
Websites that Match Top Ranked Agents in Sacramento
When potential sellers and / or first-time home buyers in Sacramento set out to find a good match in a Sacramento real estate agent, they often turn to the internet and try to find a top ranked agent online. But then there are all those google ads and distractions, and property sites vying for eyeballs, it can be confusing. In the midst of all this are websites that offer to match sellers and buyers with top ranking real estate agents, and this is why I get a lot of emails and phone calls from these websites.
They call me because they pull insider MLS reports, which are not available to the public, and see that I sell hundreds of homes. I am a top ranked agent in Sacramento because I rank in the top 1%, which probably doesn’t mean much to most people and, if you want to know the truth, kinda freaks me out when I think about it. But it’s a reason those websites hunt me down because they know for a fact that no grass grows under my feet. I’m out there doing business, and I’m plenty busy. You know the adage, if you want something done right, ask a busy person, er agent.
Other agents get upset when these websites contact them, I hear. The critics say what the hey? Why should I pay a referral fee to some stupid website for referring business to me that they just scraped off the internet, like gum off the bottom of a shoe. I guess because you didn’t scrape that business off the internet yourself, would be my reply. I don’t turn down business that lands in my lap.
However, yesterday a really weird thing happened. A certain Top Ranked Agent website sent me a buyer lead for a buyer I’m already in escrow with! Whoa. It seems the buyer found me faster than that website did. I mean, she’s been in escrow with us for a week. Of course, now we have to ask her why she signed up on a website to find a buyer’s agent when she’s already in escrow.
But at least the buyer knows she came to the right place.
Appreciation vs. Market Recovery for Sacramento Real Estate
If a reporter at the Financial Times does not understand the mathematical calculations of our Sacramento real estate market, it stands to reason, I suppose, that the average consumer is confused as well. Or, maybe some of us just didn’t pay enough attention in math class, hard to say. Not everybody likes math or realizes in school how useful math is when we’re all grown up. If you’re struggling to understand what has happened in the Sacramento real estate market, I’ll lay it out for you in terms that are easy to understand.
From January of 2012 through January of 2014, our Sacramento real estate market median price has increased 50%. When I mentioned this over the weekend to a Financial Times reporter, she said, “But your market has fallen at least 50%, so that means you’re at breakeven now, right?” I might have rather stuck hot pokers in my eyes than be forced to learn that an isosceles triangle has 2 equal sides, but I do comprehend that one can’t solely pluck the median price range and decide our market is back to normal.
- For starters, that 50% price increase applies only to the median price. Our median price moved from $160,000 in January 2012 to $240,000 in January 2014.
- Second, averaged over those 2 years, that’s only 25%, and the market is fairly flat today.
- Third, homes priced above that price point and below that price point have not necessarily appreciated by 50%.
- Fourth, if you take a home that was originally valued at $500,000, apply a 50% fall in market value, that would drop the value of that home to $250,000. A 50% increase would make it worth $375,000, not $500,000.
All real estate is local to neighborhoods. Some areas of Sacramento fared better than others. Some areas of Sacramento were hit harder than others during the downturn, most notably the newer home subdivisions in Elk Grove, Natomas, Roseville and Lincoln. It’s amazing, our Sacramento real estate market, varies so much from one neighborhood to another!
I freely admit that I didn’t really fare so well in high school math. I think I took the class because I needed one more class to graduate. I took off so much time during my senior year by hitchhiking around the country, I probably earned a B- or a dreaded C. English was my strong suit, though, straight A’s. Yet, even I, a lowly Sacramento real estate agent, know how to run the numbers. My high school math teacher would be so proud. If you want to know more about the Sacramento real estate market, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I’m never too busy to talk.
