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It’s the Going Not the Getting There for a Sacramento Agent
As a Sacramento real estate agent who works with a lot of sellers in the Sacramento area, I do basically 3 things during the week, besides brush my teeth twice a day.
- Take new listings
- Scrutinize and negotiate offers, and
- Manage existing escrows to the point of closing.
The one thing I really don’t do is spend a lot of time looking for new business. I don’t hunt for it because I get a lot of new business from the Internet and from referrals. Potential clients searching for a Sacramento real estate agent read my reviews and client testimonials, maybe they read about my extensive background and then decide to talk with me. Others might ask their friends or relatives for a referral and, since I’ve been fortunate to close hundreds of homes, I have many previous clients every year with good experiences to share.
Not having to spend any time scouring for new business lets me take that chunk of time — those 30% of hours another agent would spend prospecting — and put those hours into servicing my existing clients. That’s a lot of time to look for new clients — a third of your life. I bet if you asked a seller if he or she minds if a Sacramento agent uses their listing to advertise herself, a seller would object, but that’s what most agents do. There’s nothing really wrong with it because it brings the agent more business and it promotes the seller’s house, but it’s not an approach I employ.
I’m not the kind of Sacramento agent who says look at this house I listed, I can list yours, too. Because sellers don’t want a home listed. They want a home sold. They want a home sold for the most money they can get and not a lot of drama. Clean and efficient and professional. I will custom tailor a listing plan for my sellers because every seller and situation is different. I don’t have any qualms about grilling a buyer’s agent before my sellers accept an offer to discuss potential pitfalls and lay out expectations to see if a buyer is a good fit. How many agents do that for their clients?
Engaging in these types of conversations and providing quality service for my sellers is part of what my clients get with an agent who has almost 40 years of experience in the business. My experience is not one year times 40. I am constantly learning and trying to improve because I don’t care how good you are, there is always room for improvement. My career as a Sacramento real estate agent is a journey, not a destination. Like Harry Chapin said in Greyhound: it’s the going, not the getting there.
Trust and Dual Agency in Real Estate
While I was at the doctor’s office yesterday getting a shingles vaccine, the nurse practioner asked what I was doing the rest of the day. This was only 10 in the morning. Well, putting a home into escrow and listing 2 homes, I replied. The earth didn’t stand still. No trays of medical instruments shattered to the floor. It was obvious to me that no real estate agents were in the doctor’s office yesterday or the next question would have been WHERE? Because inventory is a prized possession right now. If you’re a Sacramento listing agent, you’re suddenly everybody’s BFF.
More on that a minute. About the shingle’s vaccine, though, did you know almost everybody over the age of 60 is supposed to get it? And did you know it’s only one shot, one time; it doesn’t guarantee you won’t ever get shingles, plus it’s pretty expensive. My husband says it’s not as expensive as the stuff we got for malaria when we went to Ecuador but it’s expensive enough that insurance companies want your signature on a document that proves you received the vaccine. I guess they are concerned that some doctors’ offices submit false reports / claims about patients receiving the vaccine, so they try to verify that the patient actually got it. If they don’t trust doctors, whom do they trust?
Trust is a funny thing. Some people don’t trust anybody, no matter what. Take desperate buyers. I’m a little wary of them right now because some will go to any lengths to buy a home. Some buyers can be cluelessly insulting as well. They will call and beg me to represent them. They could be buyers with a real estate license telling me I can keep all of the commission, or they could be buyers dumping their agents in favor of working with the listing agent. They think they will get an edge because they believe all listing agents can be bought and manipulated. That kinda ticks me off on several levels, which I suspect throws them for a loop.
One guy yesterday tried to explain California real estate law to this California real estate broker. He rattled on and on about how it is completely legal for me to represent both the seller and the buyer. I won’t always do dual agency. There are some situations in which the line is so thin and finely drawn that dual agency could step over it. Plus, I’m way too busy to have to stop and calculate whether I am fairly representing both sides of the transaction. I just wanna represent the seller in some cases. Only have fiduciary to the seller. It keeps life simple. I like simple.
Buuuuut you’re giving away all of that money, people stutter. You would have thought I’m telling people the sky is green and the grass is blue. My integrity is not for sale. My ethics are not for sale. I don’t know why that’s so hard to understand. What they may see as stupid, I see as risk management and what’s best for my seller. Fiduciary carries weight with many agents, as it should.
As for my two new listings, one is in Curtis Park, and it’s a positively charming 1910 bungalow that is guaranteed to capture your heart. The other is in West Sacramento in the state streets and it’s updated, a three-bedroom, two-bath with hardwood floors. Call this Sacramento real estate agent for more information: 916.233.6759.
No Excuses Sacramento
If you think the real estate market is deplorable in Sacramento just remember, you could be stuck instead on that Carnival cruise ship that broke down in the Gulf of Mexico. Sewage spewing forth down the aisles. No electricity. Rubbing shoulders with 3,000 other people who haven’t bathed and are pooping into plastic baggies. I think that would be enough to make me want to swipe a life craft and jump overboard. Now, that would be desperate times. I wouldn’t even care if it involved a floating orangutan and bananas, I would not want to be aboard that disaster.
Unfortunately, no matter how bad the market gets, there will always be those people who justify their actions based on the extreme market conditions. At least that’s their excuse and they’re sticking to it. Reminds me of that movie clip my husband likes to recite from the Blues Brothers, with John Belushi explaining why it wasn’t his fault. You know: I ran out of gas I had a flat tire I didn’t have enough money for cab fare my tux didn’t come back from the cleaners an old friend came in from outta town someone stole my car there was an earthquake a terrible flood locusts it wasn’t my fault I swear to god except today agents blame their inexcusable behavior on the market conditions.
There is no excuse. If you’ve been less-than-honorable in your dealings with other people, you know it. Own it.
That’s not to say it’s OK. It’s not OK. The other side of the coin is that California mantra of Dude, I flaked. You don’t even have to be stoned when you say it. If you just hold out out your arm and bend your fingers into a gang symbol and wag that hand while sporting a pathetic look splashed on your face, you get your point across. But it’s still unacceptable. I don’t care what you did, missed dinner, late for an appointment, bit the dentist, ran over the neighbor’s dog.
I talked with a guy in Washington, D.C. last night who is having difficulty buying a home in Rancho Cordova. Like most buyers in Sacramento these days, times are tough. It’s worse than 2005. Much worse. He wanted to know what he could do to improve his chances of being able to buy a home. Well, the first thing you do is engage the services of a Sacramento real estate agent and don’t try to go it alone. You need somebody in your corner. A person with ethics, and a person who is willing to work hard for you.
Not excuses. Nobody needs excuses.
Why Multiple Offers Are Wrong
It’s not that I don’t trust people; it’s that people can’t always be trusted. Which isn’t necessarily the same thing. When you’re a Sacramento real estate agent like me — and been in the business since kids wore bellbottoms — you see enough to question what seems odd to you. People take that as mistrust, but it’s just enough usually to put my radar on alert. It’s the reason I was accepted into law school in my younger years. I am naturally inquisitive. The oddball in any equation is often suspect for a reason.
Sure enough, the offer that stood apart from all of the other offers this weekend for that home in Elk Grove did not make it past a 24-hour period. It’s not that the purchase offer crumbled and fell, it’s that it was most likely falsely presented in the first place. A statement in MLS informed buyer’s agents that all offers would be reviewed on a certain day at a certain time. This put buyers on notice that all offers would be given an equal opportunity for presentation. Therefore, by extension, a buyer who was not willing to wait for a response by that certain day should not submit an offer. To submit an offer without an intent to wait could very well invalidate the good faith covenant inherent in purchase contracts.
Whether a buyer realizes it or not, a buyer can make only one offer for a home in Sacramento. Some agents will tell buyers that they can make as many offers as they want and those agents would not only be wrong but they could be subject to discipline. If a buyer does not have the financial means to purchase every home a buyer writes an offer to buy, the offers are not real. There are laws that prohibit writing pretend offers. Buyers writing multiple offers they can’t afford to all buy is a big, huge, no-no. It’s also unprofessional, and fiduciary could be called into question as well because who would advise a buyer to break the law?
Yet, that did not stop an agent and Elk Grove buyers from writing more than one offer for a home in Elk Grove, offering as a lame excuse the buyers did not want to wait. This intent was undisclosed. This agent does not work for Lyon Real Estate, thank goodness. I can’t tell you which company but it wasn’t Lyon. I love working with Lyon real estate agents. I know they have been trained and they are supervised. Any little problems that could ever pop up are handled in a prompt and efficient manner. We have great management and communication among our agents at Lyon Real Estate. I can always trust a Lyon agent to do the job correctly.
When agents don’t respond after being informed their buyer’s offer has been accepted, that’s the first sign something is amiss. I didn’t hear from this buyer’s agent for more than 24 hours. A full 24 hours was also enough time to negotiate another offer. Of course, unknown to me, the agent could have dropped dead from a heart attack and been found lying splattered in the street somewhere, but that’s a long shot, don’t you think?
In any case, I have 3 very happy buyers this morning who have a renewed chance to buy a home in Elk Grove. If you read yesterday’s blog, 35 offers for a home in Elk Grove, you’ll see my gut said we should have countered all four offers. That was my suggestion. It’s not that I don’t trust people; it’s that some prove unworthy of trust. Being cautious is always wise in my playbook.
One deal is not worth a reputation. The shame is some agents never learn that lesson.
35 Offers for a Home in Elk Grove
I was so busy last night dealing with purchase offers that I did not have time to call my sister at our usual time to chat. She’s snowed under in Minnesota and freezing her tootsies off. I, on the other hand, am observing goldfinches swoop from my crepe myrtle tree to our water fountain and back. That’s what those birds do, over and over. It provides an excellent show for the cats, which is why we moved the water fountain to the middle of the cactus garden.
It’s nice to have some kind of control over one’s environment because there is no control over the real estate market in Sacramento. It’s simply insane. All together we received 35 offers for a home in Elk Grove. This Elk Grove agent held it open Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon to try to draw a different type of crowd. I posted that home everywhere online, splashed it from one end of the Internet to the other. Tweaked the photographs — agonized over choosing the best among 50 or so for the front photograph — enhanced the colors, eliminated the shadows, all in all I’d say it looks fabulous online. Enough to attract 35 offers from buyers all wanting to buy that home in Elk Grove.
Of the 35 offers, about one in four was an investor. The rest were owner occupants, people who wanted to live there. Two of the offers were less than the sales price, which makes one wonder about those buyers. Seven of the offers were at list price, which makes one wonder about those buyers, too. That meant almost 1 out of 3 offers had absolutely zero chance of acceptance upon inception. Yet, it also meant 2 out of 3 buyers actually had a chance to buy the home. See, the odds are improving. You may think it is hopeless to write an offer, but it is not.
One offer stood out above all the rest. I suggested to the seller that they counter the top four offers, but they picked the offer that gave them exactly what they wanted. That was their choice; it’s their home. That buyer’s agent read the confidential agent remarks and addressed the sellers’ concerns, in addition to writing a perfect purchase contract at a satisfactory price and terms. The hard part was telling 34 other buyer’s agents: you will not go to space today. It was important enough to do that I didn’t call my sister. I hope she forgives me.
