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Canceled Sacramento Home Listings
Nobody loves Sacramento home listings so much as when you take your home off the market. This is sort of the dirty little secret and underbelly of real estate. Almost the minute your home listing is canceled in MLS by your real estate agent, your phone will start to ring. It’s a fact, jack. And it’s not the fault of your Sacramento real estate agent. So, don’t blame her. She will have already removed your telephone number and your name from MLS, but there are ways for others to find it.
You might wonder, wow, how did my home become so danged popular all of a sudden! And why didn’t I know about all of these top-notch real estate professionals who can sell my home in record time for top dollar? Where have these real estate agents been hiding? They sound so wonderful and competent and aggressive. Why, they say my former Sacramento real estate agent was a lazy-ass jerk who didn’t do jack-crap, which is why my home did not sell and why I was forced to hang my head in shame. But if list my home with them, I will be showered in gold and riches beyond my wildest dreams. Holy toledo!
I know it might be tough for you, dear reader, to realize that some real estate agents might prey on sellers of canceled Sacramento home listings. It’s how they make a living. And there’s nothing wrong with it; it’s the approach that many sellers object to. These agents figure at least a canceled seller wanted to sell once so they should call them when the listing either expires or is withdrawn or canceled from MLS. In fact, there is an entire industry built around canceled listings. Real estate agents can attend seminars and take special training on how to approach a seller of a canceled listing.
When these agents call sellers of expired or canceled Sacramento home listings, often they have a prepared script in front of them. The agents are doing telemarketing calls and reading the script to you. It’s persuasive, and it works or these agents wouldn’t do it. They are focused on one thing. Talking you into listing with them. They may or may not have any experience, as you get both experienced and brand new agents making telemarketing calls to sellers of canceled listings.
My advice to you is to realize these chasers of expired listings are likely to do exactly what your agent already tried to do — they aren’t offering you anything new or revolutionary. If you like your agent, list again with your real estate agent. If you don’t like your agent, call another agent who has been referred to you, but don’t fall victim to empty words.
Practical Tips for Completing Seller Disclosures
This helpful Sacramento real estate agent is about to provide you with simple proof that the seller disclosures — which are required for a seller to complete to sell a home in Sacramento — are not as complicated and horrendous to complete as most sellers believe. Seller disclosures are definitely worse than that. They are filled with trick questions and big, unfamiliar words, but what do you expect from forms designed by a team of lawyers? See, one lawyer is OK. Two lawyers are permissible. But when you get more than two lawyers in a room, especially those who serve on a committee and must come up with a mutual agreement by noon or no Big Mac for you, well, all holy hell tends to break loose, and you get what we have in California: a transfer disclosure statement and a seller property questionnaire that very few sellers can fill out without guidance from their Sacramento real estate agent.
But that’s what I’m here for. To carefully guide my clients through the complicated process. We affectionally call the seller property questionnaire the SPQ. That’s because we speak in acronyms to annoy everybody around us and to disguise the swear words we can’t say out loud in public. You think we real estate agents are really talking about one thing when it’s totally something else unprintable. But that’s why you can’t tell us apart from the homeless people who wander around Midtown and mutter. Homeless guy or agent with a Bluetooth device? See, you don’t know, and it’s OK.
The second thing you need to know about seller disclosures is don’t ever worry about what you write on them. You can say anything to a buyer, and the buyer will still buy the home. Don’t believe me? I have 3 words for you: snake infested house. In Idaho. True story, those first-time home buyers bought it anyway.
Some of the questions on the SPQ can confuse a seller. For example, you might not know if you have received an order from the government that identified your home as being contaminated by methamphetamine. Is your home a meth lab? Well, I dunno. Maybe you weren’t home when the government showed up? Hey, you have to go to work, you’re not home all the time, tapping your toes, just waiting to see if some government official is gonna drop by to inspect your home for meth and hand you an order. I mean, let’s get real. We all have stuff to do.
What about that question about a death in the home? What is an occupant? Are they referring to an occupant who is a human being or could it be an animal like a dog or a cat? What about bugs? Actually, bugs are covered elsewhere in the SPQ. Section F asks whether a homeowner has encountered any problems with cows or pigs, swooping cranes or flamingos or those nasty little ants from Argentina, don’t cry for me. But if a person has died in the house over the last 3 years, a seller needs to disclose. That’s a long time. Regardless, nobody needs to hear all of the gory details, how you snuck up on your husband while he was sleeping and stabbed him in the head with an ice pick over and over, unless of course you can tell us all where to buy an ice pick these days. And don’t tell me on the internet.
Probably the most difficult question most sellers struggle with is whether to answer yes or no. I realize it is very tempting to answer with both. That’s why the lawyers who designed the seller disclosures realized it was necessary to explain under the “seller awareness” section that the questions should be answered by checking either yes or no. You would think this doesn’t need an explanation, but I am fully confident that it does. Because yes can mean no, and no can mean yes. And there is no I don’t know, and there should be because sometimes, let’s face it, maybe you just don’t know. Is your pet a dog or a cat? Hard to tell. Could be both. Your kid found it in the street. It’s not your critter.
This is when you should call your Sacramento real estate agent. Don’t ask the guy down the street or your mail carrier because they are hiding out from the guys who work for the government. Those meth labs are everywhere these days. Can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one.
Weintraub’s 2013 Real Estate Predictions
This Sacramento real estate agent and About.com homebuying expert finished her 2013 real estate predictions and forecast yesterday. It seemed like December 1 is a good target date to try to hit every year. It provides a healthy amount of time for people to argue with me before I head off to — this year it will be French Polynesia — my holiday vacation. And every year I get the same question: Elizabeth, how do you know this stuff?
I know this stuff because I look at the way things are going and I predict they will continue to move in that direction. Most of the time I am 100% on target with my forecast. Sometimes, things take a right or left turn or spin around and blow up, but not very often.
For example, one of my predictions is home prices will rise in 2013. They’re going up now in most major metropolitan cities. It doesn’t mean we have a recovery. It means inventory has shrunk and demand has grown. We’ve run out of homes to sell and buyers are clogging up the streets. I throw a home on the market and it’s like tossing bread crumbs to starving pigeons. They swoop down in droves and peck each other, jockeying for position to get a nibble.
Last year in my real estate predictions I talked about short sale fever. Oh, darn, there goes that song again in my head, White Line Fever. Nevertheless, I was spot on about that. Short sales took over and surpassed the position occupied by the foreclosure market. Many of the REO agents turned to try to do short sales. I don’t really agree that an REO agent is a good candidate to do a short sale because the qualities that make an REO agent successful are pretty much the opposite of the qualities inherent in an excellent short sale agent. 2013 will pretty much continue to be the year of the short sale.
The year 2013 will be an interesting ride. It marks my 39th year in the business. If you’re looking to buy or sell in Sacramento, Yolo, Placer or El Dorado County, rattle my cage. The Elizabeth Weintraub Team is well positioned to handle all of your real estate needs.
The Lengths Some Sacramento Investors Will Go
When I started in real estate in the 1970s, I represented mostly investors looking to buy a rental home. I also cultivated investors by showing regular homeowners how they could tap the equity in their homes to buy investment properties. It was a completely different world of real estate back then. You may find this difficult to believe, but I never asked my investors for their opinion or how they would like to write a purchase offer. I bought all of their properties in my name as assignee using promissory notes. The world of Sacramento investors has changed a bit.
The premise back then was as a real estate broker I could better negotiate and ferret out the good deals for them. After I bought the property, I assigned it to my investors, they put cash into escrow and we closed a week later. I received a commission and they got the property. It was a strange way to do business but it worked for many years.
One of the advantages to this system was I could act very quickly when a new home came on the market. Back then, we didn’t have computers. MLS books were printed once a month with weekly updates. Real estate agents found homes for sale through networking and the daily newspaper. It’s hard for me to even imagine doing business like that now. It seems so dark ages, like etchings on a cave wall, to think about having to stop at my office or a telephone booth if I needed to make a phone call.
Today in Sacramento the market is desperate. Sacramento investors are nearly hysterical. And first-time homebuyers are in tears. The problem is no inventory, and it’s getting worse as we head into the time of year that is generally the slowest — December. Five years ago there were almost 10,000 homes for sale in Sacramento County. I just ran a search in MLS, and we have 1,373 residential homes for sale in Sacramento County. We have 5,162 homes in escrow with accepted purchase offers. But most frightening is over the past 30 days during the month of November we have closed 1,370 homes. That’s only the number of homes that have been reported and many companies lag MLS input by a few days, so that number will increase by the time all is said and done.
We have less than 30 days of inventory. There is nothing to buy and the demand is extremely high. To say it’s a seller’s market is like saying we have a little rain here in Sacramento right now. We have a torrential storm.
Investors have figured out what they need to do is target the top producers. They are calling the biggest listing real estate agents in Sacramento and begging for first chance at writing an offer. I rank up near the top so they are calling this Sacramento real estate agent. One of them, and I won’t tell you who it is, called yesterday. They offered to kick back 66% of the commission to me if I would give them an edge in negotiations and make suggestions as to how they could beat out their competition.
I don’t think they were prepared for my response. That’s because this approach must work with other real estate agents or they wouldn’t be doing it. I said: “You know, it sort of sounds like you guys are asking me to compromise my fiduciary and give you a leg up in exchange for additional compensation. To grant favors. To ensure you win the purchase offer. I know you probably don’t mean it that way, but that’s exactly how it sounds.”
Their response:“I take it you’re not interested.”
Bingo.
If you’re looking for a Sacramento real estate agent to sell your home, give Elizabeth Weintraub a jingle at 916.233.6759. I answer my phone.
Selling a Rental Home With a Tenant
Selling a rental home with a tenant is often a PITA. It’s not that I am anti-tenant because many of my short sale clients in Sacramento have turned into temporary tenants. In fact, I myself, in my own crazy life, was many years ago, a tenant. It’s that I am pro-Sacramento real estate ownership. Which is not all that together surprising given the fact that I am a Sacramento real estate broker whose living depends on buying and selling homes, which are mostly occupied by owners. It’s why the National Association of REALTORS is so deadset against the banks bundling truckloads of once owner-occupied homes and selling them in bulk to investors. It dilutes home ownership in neighborhoods. When blocks of owner occupied homes turn into rentals, pride of ownership dissipates and property values tend to diminish.
Still, that doesn’t stop some tenants from behaving as though the home they occupy belongs to them and not to the landlord. I’ve got a Sacramento listing in which the tenants have pretty much trashed the home. It looks like a teenager lives there. Crap from one end to the other. They have also acquired a couple of pets, which are not allowed in their lease. See, this is yet another reason that I am not a landlord. I would hate to tell a person they could not enjoy the company of a pet if he or she wanted to adopt.
The seller is pretty close to closing escrow and we received short sale approval from the bank. This means it’s time for the buyer to do a home inspection. Somehow, the tenants believe they can choose the date and, because the home inspection time period falls outside of a time that the tenants deem to be convenient, that it is the tenant’s right to louse up the seller’s transaction. They don’t want to give the landlord access to the home. They are talking about changing the locks. They accused the owner of purposely putting the home on the market at the wrong time for the tenants. They say they do not trust the landlord to enter her own home. Wha? See? You can’t make this stuff up.
I offer yet another valid reason why many real estate agents are in favor of selling a rental home as a vacant home. The government, in its infinite wisdom, has offered the tenants $3,000 in this HAFA short sale to cooperate. That doesn’t ensure cooperation, though. The fact the new owner will become their landlord doesn’t seem to mean much, either.
Fortunately, not all tenants behave in this manner. I just closed a short sale in the Pocket that was occupied by one of the loveliest tenants I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Robin was polite and sweet. She kept the home immaculate, cooperated with showings and cleaned the home from top to bottom when she moved. Everybody in that transaction would have moved heaven and earth to accommodate Robin’s wishes.
Rest assured, however, that if you need to evict, your Sacramento real estate agent will wait for you. No future sale is that urgent. Think about this before you put your home on the market. If your future buyer will be an investor, selling a home with a tenant in place can be advantageous, but it’s not if the tenant is the tenant from hell. If your future buyer is an owner occupant — and remember that home owners tend to pay more than an investor will pay — a tenant in place is probably not your best move.
