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What It’s Like to Be a Sacramento Home Buyer’s Realtor
To be a successful Sacramento home buyer’s Realtor is a very important job. Because many agents sell homes, it does not mean they are excellent at their job. Selling homes takes two agents: a listing agent and a buyer’s agent. Often the stronger agent will get the job done for both sides. How can a seller’s agent help a buyer’s agent? Great question.
As a listing agent, we make sure the time frames and contracts are completed, along with all the disclosures and reports. We can explain in detail how and why we are taking action. We make sure we have a 100% complete file and stellar record of all communications. Even if the buyer’s agent doesn’t know what she or he is doing, we will get the transaction completed, regardless. They can’t miss an important milestone, as we won’t let them.
Another great question along this same theme is a post written by my partner, Elizabeth Weintraub, in September 2012: What it’s like to be a Sacramento home buyer? An excerpt is in italics below.
It’s up to real estate agents to explain to potential home buyers what the market is like in Sacramento. Tell them what they can expect. I tell it to them straight. I figure it’s better that they be prepared than shocked. Don’t need anybody having a heart attack and dropping dead at my feet.
Because, maybe this is NOT the time for them to buy a home. I know I would NOT want to be a home buyer in Sacramento today. That’s the truth. Because there is tremendous competition for the same homes. It’s an extreme seller’s market. Many buyers, little inventory. Many all cash buyers who will outbid an FHA or VA buyer. Multiple offers are normal right now. This is a sizzling hot market! — Elizabeth Weintraub
To be a Sacramento home buyer’s Realtor is a lot more than writing contracts. It is about knowing the inventory and knowing the numbers. If your agent doesn’t know the amount of inventory, the pending sales and days on the market, how can the agent possibly guide you effectively through the process and write successful offers? Our buyer’s agents are seasoned pros and they study the market daily.
I received an offer yesterday and it was 10% low on a property that is priced for a quick sale. No letter of explanation nothing. I asked the agent his strategy about why he wrote such a below-market offer? The answer, oh that’s what the buyers wanted to offer. This means the buyer’s agent didn’t inform the client that the inventory is 35% low compared to last year. The listed properties are selling for 97% of list price throughout Sacramento. Had this agent educated her client they might be looking at acceptance in-lieu-of rejection.
You can count on our team, so call today. We at Weintraub & Wallace Realtors, with RE/MAX Gold, look forward to helping you obtain home-ownership. Call us today at 916-233-6759.
— JaCi Wallace
What Happens If You Do Not Hire a Sacramento Realtor with Experience
Ever wonder what happens if you do not hire a Sacramento Realtor with experience? Well, here is a good example. While reviewing multiple offers on my East Sacramento listing last evening, It got me thinking about some of the sour grapes responses from buyer’s agents who had made offers. One of the agents called a bit upset. Muttering that he had called and texted about his offer, submitted the day before, and had not yet had a seller response. I explained that the seller had no obligation to respond to his offer. Additionally, that the MLS disclosed the seller is out of state so instructions were to give plenty of response time. His offer was a low offer price compared to the pile of top offers we had.
There is a definite benefit if you hire a Sacramento Realtor with experience, especially a team like Weintraub & Wallace, with 80 years of combined experience. Our exclusive Weintraub & Wallace buyer’s agents write offers to win by using a carefully designed strategy. I informed this agent that the MLS agent confidential remarks disclosed that there were multiple offers, and we were multiple-countering the top offers, so in fact, he had previous access to the information. Not a word more was uttered about his offer. He said a swift goodbye and hung up. Some agents will blow up your phone, rather than read. It is sad but true!
When should you hire a Sacramento Realtor with experience? Every step of the way! This agent said if had he known there were so many offers, he would have written a better offer. Well, that’s not an effective strategy, I blurted out, If your buyers wrote their highest and best offer, you could have been in the top offers. This agent acted like I should help him to win the offer process. I guess it slipped his mind that I work for the Seller exclusively.
It is not ethical to give a buyer’s agent an advantage over another agent. We treat everyone equally as it is written in our National Association of Realtors “Standards of Practice.” When you’re selling East Sacramento real estate, you must understand that it is a very popular place to live. There are several ways a Sacramento real estate agent could win in the offer process
One way to compete and win is to remove the appraisal contingency. This means that if the bank providing the buyer’s loan, doesn’t appraise the property for as much as the offer price, a buyer has to pay the difference between the loan amount and the listing price. An example: if your offer is $ 565,000 and it only appraises for $ 550,000, a buyer would have to pay the $15,000 difference, in addition to their down payment. By the way, the agent who was sour grapes, I also left him a message reminding him he could amend his offer. Another agent did just that amended her offer and now she is one of the top offers.
Just because an agent does not receive a multiple seller counter offer, an agent can always send over a higher offer as it is never over, until an East Sacramento listing is pending. An agent is duty bound to present all offers to the Seller during the listing period. If you want to win the offer process hire the Weintraub & Wallace team because it always pays to hire a Sacramento Realtor with experience.
— JaCi M. Wallace
When Buyer’s Agents Make Promises They Cannot Keep
What do Sacramento listing agents call it when buyer’s agents make promises they cannot keep? I know some people would call it lying. But with the way the world is going today, with all the crazy crap like truth is not truth and fake news accusations when the news is factual, it can make a person nuts. We want to believe our fellow agents, but sometimes, you just can’t.
I hate to say that, but you get good and bad in any profession. There are people whose word you can trust, take to the bank, and others who say whatever they have to say to accomplish a directive with little regard for the truth. No wonder agents have such a bad reputation. They have a bad reputation in part because they deserve it.
Now, when I had buyer’s agents make promises they cannot keep in the past, it was usually over a short sale. In retrospect, I was a lot more hard-nosed then than I am now. A buyer’s agent could weave a love story about how her buyers are madly in love with this house. Could not see buying any other property. They will gladly wait for the bank’s approval. When none of that crap they spewed forth was true. It was wishful thinking.
It is rare when one of my team members needs to cancel an escrow. They are educated, trained and skilled in real estate. If one of their buyers decides to cancel, it’s generally for an excellent reason. Every so often, though, the buyer is just not committed. However, I’ve never known any of my team members to be dishonest. Ever. And we discuss how to break the news to the listing agent without burning bridges.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve seem to have noticed a large number of buyer’s agents make promises they cannot keep. You would hope an agent’s word meant something. That there was honor. But that’s just my wishful thinking.
The 2018 Taste of Land Park and Best Sunday Open Houses
While my husband and I walked over to the 2018 Taste of Land Park event happening on 10th Avenue last Sunday, the team held our best Sunday open houses of all year. We had so much traffic through last Sunday as compared to the rest of the year so far. From the city of Davis to Land Park and into Natomas, buyers came out of the woodwork. Where have they been for so long? Very excited to see buyers showing an interest in Sacramento real estate.
Regardless, Sunday provided beautiful weather to attend the 2018 Taste of Land Park. Believe it or not, we have lived in Land Park for 16 years and have never got around to going to this event. Probably because the hours are a little odd, from 4 PM to 7 PM. It’s too early for dinner and too late for lunch. On top of which, I can’t believe they got all of the neighbors in that stretch of 10th Avenue to cooperate with the event.
There was a band playing in one yard, playing hits from their high school years, from the looks and sounds of it. I really don’t mean to say anything bad about the band, but let’s just say Tom Petty was a favorite. And Tom Petty is one of my favorites. So, see I’m not saying anything bad about the band. We even caught the tribute to Tom Petty at The Fillmore right after his death, all quite by accident. That trip to The Fillmore was focused on a meet up with the Afghan Whigs.
Plus, we were grateful there was a band to perform at all. Seemed like many volunteers at the Taste of Land Park, which is wonderful.
We followed the map given to us but when we got to the event, a security guard told we could not enter from the west of 10th Avenue. Nope, we had to walk around the block. Which was like another 5 blocks. But at least when we got to the other side, they didn’t card us. They handed us our glass and plate combo and off we went, in search of food. The first thing my husband found was dessert from the Freeport Bakery, so he loaded up on that.
There wasn’t a lot of actual meal selections or food. It seems the wineries outnumbered the tables of food. One of our favorite pizza places served not pizza but toasted bread. That was a bit of a disappointment. The salads by Raley’s were a big hit. One of the Mexican restaurants offered mostly chips with a salsa on top, although I think Dali’s supplied those delicious chicken enchiladas. The porchetta was tasty, too.
I discovered M2 wines, which I really enjoyed. Rich, full-bodied reds, very chewy and a bit jammy. Many of the wineries at the 2018 Taste of Land Park supplied interesting tastings. After eating our way heading west on 10th Avenue, we turned around and ate our way heading east and then gave up. It cost us $80 to attend this event, and I can’t bring myself to say we got $80 worth of food and wine, but it’s OK to support the Land Park Community Association. Which meant we just made a nice donation to the LPA. And that’s fine.
It also meant we got back to my home office in time for me to send updates in real time to my sellers about their successful open houses for the day.
Now my husband says we wore off all the calories by walking, but I think a few globbed on and did not let go. My heart app says I walked 7,544 steps, almost 2.7 miles. That’s better than my daily average of 200 steps. Looking on the bright side of stuff!
How to Customize Sacramento Listings to Reach Targeted Buyers
The Weintraub cats snoozing on a Sunday afternoon, Jackson, Tessa and Horatio.
To customize a Sacramento listing, especially to target certain buyers, you’ve got to know your audience. That’s the first rule of listing customization. When I walk into a home for a listing presentation, I pay close attention to the way the home is decorated and to the people who live in it. I am replacing the people who live in it with new people. And for most practical purposes, the new people generally tend to share things in common with the existing homeowners. People who are alike gravitate toward certain products.
Once you know your audience, that is the buyers you want to target, you can design a marketing campaign to reach those people. It can be simple things from the way the home is presented in MLS, to the words chosen to describe it and the places where buyers find the home. Or, it can be more complicated and marketed to specific mailing lists. Each listing I take is different because the people and the homes are different. I think about the preferences in music, books, TV Shows, extracurricular activities of my targeted buyers.
I would like to believe that all Realtors will customize Sacramento listings, but I know they do not. Some walk through the home and shoot vertical cellphone pictures. I don’t know how they sleep with themselves at night. As hokey as it sounds, each home has a certain feel to it. My plan is to turn that emotion into buying verbiage. To present the benefits in such a way my targeted buyers feel they absolutely must go see the home. I stand in the home and absorb it.
The second way to customize Sacramento listings is to find that one thing that propels purchasing buyer. There is always something. For example, it’s a known fact that buyers generally know whether they want to buy a home within the first 3 seconds of entering the home. It’s my job to find what they spot or feel during that first 3 seconds and transform that energy into clarity for them. I don’t want buyers to second guess. It should be right in front of them. Easily understandable.
There is always a way to make things work. The third way to customize Sacramento listings is to get rid of the things that interfere with the first two rules. When we decided to adopt a third cat in our household, we needed the perfect cat that would blend in with our existing two cats. Our adoption wasn’t just about Horatio, we had to take Tessa and Jackson into consideration. But, hey, that thought process paid off. Look at how well those three cats sleep together now.
If you’re looking to sell a home in Sacramento, why not call a Sacramento Realtor who treats each listing as a precious commodity that deserves her 100% attention? Put 43 years of experience to work for you. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
