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Robert Randolph and the 86th Academy Awards Show
This will be the first night in many decades that I will have to view the 86th Academy Awards show on some other day. The reason is that Robert Randolph and the Family Band is bringing funky soul tonight to the Crest Theatre in downtown Sacramento. Randolph is a guy who got his start in southern church music and was named about 10 years ago to the Rolling Stone’s list of 100 best guitar players ever. I just hope he doesn’t make us get up on stage and dance because I’ll be fighting the bedtime nod-off time. Hey, 9 PM, I want to go to sleep. I don’t care where I am.
Of course, the downside is I will get up tomorrow morning and read in the headlines who won the Oscars, and I won’t have watched the Academy Awards. I have decided that this is OK, worked through the rationalization. After all, it’s not like I don’t know who is in the running. It will be one of those movies, and one of those best actresses, and one of those best actors. And 12 Years a Slave, a favorite, with 9 nominations and which isn’t yet out on Netflix (darn), will probably steal the show with many Oscars. That movie, which I wish my husband would have agreed to see with me, has generated a lot of momentum and buzz.
My fingers are crossed for Bruce Dern in Nebraska.
Then I will get to watch at my leisure the very amusing Ellen DeGeneres and fast-forward through all of the commercials. I read in Parade today that one of DeGeneres’ favorite top 5 movies is Steven Martin’s and Carl Reiner’s The Jerk. What do you know! That’s one of my favorite all-time movies, too, primarily because it’s a movie that makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it. It never gets old. Unlike some of us.
Plus, that movie is responsible for the way I have long been filling out biographies about my background. Whenever a document directed me to write a little bit more about myself or share private information, I would write: I was born a poor black child.
I hope nobody thought that was racist and they got the reference. See, this is probably why I had to go into real estate in the 1970s and why nobody would hire me to do anything else. I make an excellent Sacramento real estate agent.
There is a Limit to How Much Help a Sacramento Real Estate Agent Can Give
Elizabeth Weintraub can help with relocation referrals.
If your home isn’t selling in Sacramento, call Elizabeth Weintraub, a top-producer Sacramento real estate agent, to fix it. She’ll know exactly what to do, what’s wrong with it and how to correctly price that home. That seems to the general consensus lately based on some of the phone calls I’ve received. While it is true, and I try to help everybody if I can, there are only so many hours in the day and, besides, let’s face it, if it’s not my listing, I don’t get paid for this assistance. I am not a nonprofit entity. Agents don’t work for free (unless they’re working on short sales in bankruptcy). If you’re not planning on canceling your listing, don’t call me. This agent cannot interfere in another agent’s listing. If you’re canceling your listing, though, that’s another story.
People call and say I found you online, and you seem to be so smart with great reviews, I need some help. Sure, flatter and then stab me in the heart when you say you’re working with another agent. I’ve asked sellers why they stay with an agent who is not producing results and whom they complain about, because I don’t understand that attitude. It sounds so defeatist. Maybe it’s like people who are attracted to torture and get off on it, what do you call those people, there’s a noun for that, oh, yeah, politicians.
Another agent in Sacramento asked yesterday if I would be willing to meet with him privately and advise on best real estate practices and marketing plans for his brokerage. Do I look like a representative at the Small Business Association? I am a hard-working real estate broker who sells real estate under the Lyon banner in a four-county area in Sacramento. I run a business. My own business. I have team members who support and work with me. My own clients to take care of and produce results for. Even if the agent was willing to pay me, I don’t work in the field of agent support.
This is what happens when a person gives advice on the internet. People tend to forget that you are a business entity who works 12 hours a day in her own business. That’s not to say I don’t answer a quick question here and there or that I wouldn’t help an agent if I could be of assistance, but that’s not really my job.
My job is to sell homes for my sellers and make sure home buyers get into a home. If you want to buy or sell a home in Sacramento, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. If you need a referral to an agent elsewhere, I’ll be happy to assist.
Why Not Call a Sacramento Listing Agent Before Writing an Offer?
It’s always a good idea for the buyer’s agent to call a Sacramento listing agent to talk about the home a buyer might want to purchase, but so few agents seem to call the listing agent. Some will send text messages but it’s so much better to just dial the darned phone. Especially for me because my phone is not always visible; it’s often on mute and I rely on my Bluetooth. Of course, some Sacramento real estate agents don’t answer the phone, I get it, and it can be very frustrating for a buyer’s agent to try to get a listing agent to respond, but they owe it to the buyer to try.
Because I’ll tell you what happens when they don’t. When they don’t, the Sacramento listing agent and the seller are left to their own devices and interpretation of that buyer, and it might not be pretty. I received a few offers from buyers that arrived out of left field over the weekend, no warning. Some without the proper documentation and some at such low prices the sellers thought the buyers were on crack. I encouraged them to issue a counter offer anyway, and to address all of the issues in the counter.
Low and behold, the buyers accepted that counter offer. So, you never know. One of the crucial elements left out of the original purchase offer was a one-line sentence in the purchase agreement that mentioned the sale was contingent on selling the buyer’s home without further explanation. There was no Contingency of Purchase addendum submitted. But when I questioned the agent, it turned out the buyer’s home was in escrow. That makes all the difference in the world. It was a huge turning point for the seller and moved the seller from no way in hell to where do I sign.
We need to get back to the day when an agent calls the Sacramento listing agent. Buyer’s agents can find out if the home is still available, whether there are counter offers in the works or other offers on the way, if there is some special consideration that needs attention in the contract. Moreover, it gives the buyer’s agent a chance to pitch the qualifications of the buyer, network a little with the listing agent, establish communication and set the stage for offer acceptance.
Whether I’m listing homes in Elk Grove or West Sacramento, soon as I spot a showing through my SUPRA lockbox, I shoot off an email to the buyer’s agent to see if I can help to answer questions. My hope is to open a line of dialogue before they write an offer and to give agents easy access to my email.
Why Some Sacramento Home Buyers are Not Buying a Home
Sacramento real estate runs in cycles but no year lately has been the same as the last, much less the approaches used by Sacramento home buyers. We had a big run for 8 long years of short sales and foreclosures, but that reign is pretty much over. Sacramento has been on the rebound for the past 2 years and rising prices has shown us that. The really big push in price increases was in 2012, which continued into the summer of 2013 — what some would call a market correction. That’s why the investors have left the market because they were there at the bottom and don’t want to ride the wave up, leaving us in a real estate market filled with confused home buyers.
Yet, don’t get the idea that the market is overpriced or over inflated because it’s still appreciating, it’s simply doing so at a quiet and very slow pace. In some neighborhoods, prices might be a little flat, but they’re not falling. Full-price offers and multiple offers are still happening on the entry-level homes, especially those that are highly desirable, ready to move into. My February is filling up the calendar with March closing inventory nicely. I predict we’ll see a huge push in closed sales for March across the board in Sacramento.
I also see some Sacramento home buyers making big mistakes. I highly doubt they’re not getting good advice from their buyer’s agents because most agents have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. I suspect that buyers are talking to Uncle Joe who’s moving kinda slow, the guy who mows their lawn, the clerk at Safeway, and getting bad advice because they’re looking for advice in the wrong places. The buyer’s agents I know are working extremely hard and feeling like they’re banging their heads back and forth in a door jamb — because it feels so good when they stop. But they’re not going into escrow with their buyers.
Some Sacramento home buyers think a seller would grab an offer without financing, known as all-cash, over an offer with financing. But sellers don’t really care if you hand them a brown paper sack filled with $100 bills or a check drawn on Bank of America, it will all end up in their bank account anyway. Sellers care about the sales price and terms. Buyers don’t get a break due to financing. They might move up the scale in a multiple-offer situation with better financing or cash, but price is still king. Price rules. Get with the program. It’s a new dawn.
I’ve also seen Sacramento buyers submit under-market price offers, sometimes known as lowball offers, when they know the seller has received multiple offers, as in 3 or 5 offers or more. I wonder why they do that to their agents? It sounds sadistic to me. They have no chance in negotiations yet they insist on submitting an offer. Maybe that’s not sadistic, perhaps that’s the definition of insane, doing the same thing over and over with no chance in hell of accomplishing anything.
Not Every Sacramento Home Seller Wants to Deal With a Counter Offer
When an agent says to me, you can always issue a counter offer to my buyer, that sounds like code for: the buyer is unreasonable, because I don’t think an agent is trying to tell a veteran how to sell real estate. But you never know in this market. We have a very weird market in Sacramento right now made up of serious buyers and squirrelly buyers and lowballing investors. I never know on which the roulette ball will land, as it is like a roulette wheel.
I can share with an agent that we have multiple offers, and yet the buyer’s agent will send me an offer that is contingent on selling the buyer’s home without a Contingency of Purchase addendum, much less a pre-approval letter. You can’t make this stuff up. Oh, and on top of it, maybe the agent hasn’t shown the home. It makes you wonder if buyers aren’t thumbing through MLS listings like a Neiman Marcus catalog and saying when I win the lottery, I’ll buy this house and that house and that house. And agents are writing offers for these guys. Blows my mind.
Most sellers in Sacramento do not enjoy bidding wars, believe it or not. They hope that a nice family will purchase their home at a fair price and close escrow — live there happily ever after. That’s what sellers want. Not every seller will want to deal with a counter offer. It’s stressful for many sellers. Negotiating does not come as easily to some of us as it does to others.
Myself, as a top-producing Sacramento real estate agent, I negotiate daily for a living, and I love to negotiate. But I’m also sensitive enough to realize that many of my sellers do not want to negotiate. They don’t want to deal with counter offers and all that they imply. They just want to sell their home.
If we receive 5 offers, the sellers, more likely than not, will take the path of least resistance and choose the best offer for them. Especially if it doesn’t involve a counter offer. If you’re thinking about writing an offer for a home in Sacramento, you should ask your buyer’s agent to call the listing agent to discuss what you might want to do. Although a listing agent cannot and should not ever speak for the seller, a listing agent can help to guide. You might have to write your best offer and stop trying to ding around.
On top of all of this, no offer should ever land on a listing agent’s computer without an advance call from a buyer’s agent. Not in this Sacramento real estate market.
