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Are There Valid Reasons to Dump a Real Estate Agent?
I am rarely in the shoes of a first agent who listed a home that did not sell in Sacramento. Unless, of course, the seller was unreasonable on pricing or refused home staging. I’ve seen a handful of those sorry situations in which the seller dumps the agent, reduces the price, stages the home and then bingo, it sells with agent #2, with agent #1 left standing there wondering what am I, chopped liver? Why did nobody listen to me? But bottom line is nobody can really make another person do what that person doesn’t want to do without brute force, and few agents want to clobber a seller over the head, making him stare down the barrel of a gun with a foot up his neck.
More often than not I’m on the other side of this scenario. After a seller fired his agent — or took the path of least resistance and let the listing expire before hiring the next agent — namely in order to hire this top producing Sacramento real estate agent. That’s the position I love to be in because now I’ll get paid for another agent’s hard work, plus I am most likely working for a far more reasonable and seasoned seller.
I made an interesting point to a seller a few months ago when he was thinking about hiring another agent because he had not yet received an offer. Sellers can be impatient, I understand. I told the seller that he could certainly hire another agent but he’d be throwing away his money. He did not strike me as the kind of guy who wants to lose money, but that’s exactly what he would be doing by hiring somebody else. Another agent would simply capitalize on all of my efforts, duplicate my strategy and pocket my fee. He should reward the agent who has earned the commission and let her sell his home. Put that way, he agreed, and I sold that home for him.
Having said that, sometimes there are valid reasons to fire an agent. No iffs, ands, or butts about it, in this crazy profession, most agents are not on the ball. Read more on About.com today in an article I wrote about Top 10 Reasons Sellers Fire a Real Estate Agent.
Don’t Wait for Buyers to Tell You What’s Wrong With Homes in Sacramento
The colors of homes like these in the Netherlands do not work in Sacramento
What works for house colors in countries such as Italy, Ireland or Mexico, does not necessarily work as colors of choice for homes in Sacramento. Personally, I adore colorful homes and would love to see more Americans adopt color, but then again, pioneers tend to get arrows in their backs, so I don’t want to initiate the trend. If you’re expecting to put your home on the market, though, the color of your home down to the color of your carpeting can be the difference between selling or not selling.
Sometimes, these things are not evident to a homeowner nor necessarily apparent to the agent, either. But you find out what’s wrong by putting the home on the market and obtaining buyer feedback. You can do this on your own before putting your home on the market, which is what I advise. You can ask your neighbors and your friends and, what the heck, grab somebody you don’t know off the street and invite them on over. Ask for their honest opinions. Walk through the house and assess every room. Stand in each doorway and stare. What’s wrong with your house? Ask your agent, too. Some agents don’t want to tell you the truth for fear you won’t like them. Tell your agent: go ahead and offend me.
Because you know what? There’s probably something wrong with it. Not in your eyes, of course, but in the eyes of today’s buyers. Your eyes don’t count. You’re leaving and moving away where you can do the same horrible things to your new home. But this home, the one that you’re living in right now? This home needs to change to meet the needs of the buying public. Buyers have certain requirements that homes in Sacramento need to meet.
Yes, I realize you don’t wanna paint that wall or yank up that shag carpeting but you’ll pay for that stubbornness when selling. A neighbor of mine painted her Land Park home the same orange color as the light rail station over on 21st Street. I like it, I just wouldn’t buy it nor want to buy a home next to it because it doesn’t conform. It looks weird. People like homes in Sacramento to be similar and not stand out like a sore thumb. Trust this Sacramento real estate agent, you don’t want to be that weird home when you’re selling a home in Sacramento.
David Lindley and Hot Tuna at the Crest Theatre Sacramento
All the old hippies were out in throngs last night in Sacramento and heading over to the Crest Theatre to see David Lindley perform, followed by Hot Tuna. Always good for a few great Warren Zevon songs, Lindley also kissed and stroked his ostrich shoes on stage, which is what I guess one would expect. We had great seats, too, front and center. Jack Casady, one of the greatest bass players in the world, strolled on stage wearing a long scarf, which he dramatically flung off his shoulders and then paused for recognition, looking very San Franciscan and cool.
He wore a watch, though. Jorma had a watch on his wrist, too. Who do you know today who wears a watch?
The only problem with Hot Tuna at the Crest was it was past my bedtime by the time they got to any songs I remembered from my Jefferson Airplane days, and I was actually thinking about resting my head against my husband’s shoulder, but I knew what would happen. What would happen is I would fall sound asleep. You think a person can’t sleep through a concert? Ha. The last one I slept through was a few years ago at the The Fillmore when we went to see Richard Thompson, and I love Richard Thompson. This is the problem with getting older.
The only thing worse would be to fall asleep and drool or snore. Which I just did not feel was appropriate when a person is sitting in the front row of a show. Fortunately, during the Richard Thompson performance, I was in the balcony and even though I was probably snoring and drooling, nobody could notice because it was too dark and the music too loud. This is what happens when there is a table in front of me, it’s past my bedtime and I’m tired. Even though Hot Tuna at the Crest was entertaining, I started to slip down in my chair . . .
Which brings me to groan about what else I’m tired about. I’m tired of real estate agents who fall off the face of the earth. A seller called me a few days ago about listing his home. I looked it up in MLS and it was listed at “expired, pending.” He was not in contract. He had no offer. On top of this, the listing had expired in December. Our MLS can fine a Sacramento real estate agent for an expired pending listing. Until a listing is removed from MLS, a new listing cannot be entered.
I cannot understand how an agent would NOT notice a listing like this in MLS. I mother my listings daily and hover over them, checking status, showings, tweaking verbiage, switching out photographs, updating days on market with new MLS numbers. But then somebody else probably can’t figure out how I could fall asleep in the middle of a rock and roll show, especially Hot Tuna at the Crest. We all be different.
Sacramento Home Buyers Who Fall in Love With Homes
Have you ever noticed that the longer some companies remain in business, the crappier their products become? I suspect it’s because corporations tend to value bottom-line profit over anything else. They might promote a cute slogan like “people first” but you and I both know that’s just marketing fluff. It doesn’t really matter where you look, you’ll find some item that was made years ago is probably a better quality product than today’s merchandise. Even homes. Even homes in Sacramento.
Tour homes in some of our leafier neighborhoods such as homes in Land Park or homes in Carmichael, and Sacramento home buyers will find thick redwood joists and plaster walls, not the cheaper wood and thin drywall like today. I poke my cheap-ass Jawbone device and wonder why can’t they make it work like the earlier models when callers could actually hear me talk. Or, what about the Victoria’s Secret pajamas that used to actually keep a person warm at night and now you can see through the material, and btw, that’s not on purpose. Don’t even get me started on cars made out of plastic. Cheaper, and cheaper and cheaper until the corporation can no longer sustain itself because the profit margin is so thin and it bankrupts.
The one thing that hasn’t changed is our love affairs with real estate. No matter how small or cheap builders build, we keep buying these homes and falling in love with them. If you think people don’t fall in love with a home, then you’re not a Sacramento real estate agent. One of the entities that publishes homes for sale online, just on a lark, I guess, conducted a survey among 1,000 buyers and their lust for homes. It found that 2 out of every 3 buyers stare at online real estate porn and develop fixations.
I was surprised that the number wasn’t higher. But surveys can be skewed. People tend to participate if they have a strong opinion one way or the other and the results don’t always represent the opinion of an average person. In any case, I try to present my photographs online in such a manner that people will stay up late, glued to their laptop and click on every one of them. Because I want that next click to be an email to me, asking to see the home. What else they do with their laptop on the privacy of their own sofa, I don’t want to know about.
If you’ve about to fall in love with homes, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Don’t wait. Do it today. The really cute homes go fast this spring.
Let It Be and Hire a REALTOR in Sacramento
If you’ve ever wondered why it’s a good idea to hire a REALTOR, the California Association of Realtors has launched what it says is new content for REALTORS, even though the source of its data is 2012. Or, maybe that’s a typo in the artwork image. We can all make mistakes — heck, while watching the Grammy’s Salute to The Beatles a few nights back, I suddenly realized I had misheard the lyrics to Let it Be all these years later. No joke.
Turns out Paul McCartney’s mother was named Mary. Why I do not readily recall this tidbit is a mystery. I surely must have stashed away this bit of information into my memory blocks at some significant time in my childhood, just as surely as I vividly recall writing The Beatles over and over, trying to write it 5000 times during class to win a Beatles wig from a local Minneapolis radio station, and suffering the agony and instant flash of hatred toward my teacher who snatched the papers off my desk, crumpling my work into her own little twisted hands while an evil grin spread slowly across her wretched face . . .
The line in Let it Be is When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me. Don’t ask me how I managed to believe during all of these decades that The Beatles sang: When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother married constantly. It made sense to me on some weird level. Maybe I thought if you couldn’t afford to pay your bills, you could always marry into money? Some things don’t make sense like a dead skunk in the middle of the road.
It also doesn’t make sense to try to sell a home in Sacramento by yourself when you can hire an agent who, if she’s any good, will probably make you more money than you could get on your own, even after paying the agent a commission. The California Association of Realtors says on average FSBO homes sold for $184,000 versus homes sold by a REALTOR at an average price of $230,000. C.A.R. concludes that sellers lose $46,000 by not hiring a REALTOR.
Bottom line, no matter how much you think you might know all the words to your favorite songs, some of us can mess it up and get it in our heads the wrong way. Just don’t mess up your home sale by trying to go it alone. If you need an experienced and aggressive listing agent, call Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916.233.6759.
Image: California Association of Realtors
