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Working With Lawyers as Clients in Real Estate
Working with lawyers as their Sacramento real estate agent is not high on the priority list of many agents in Sacramento, if you want to know the truth, but I really enjoy that type of personality. I enjoy working with many types of personalities except for the you-know-who’s. I’ll also take the harmless nut-jobs, but not the explosive guys. I draw the line there. Yet, Type A personalities and the analytical guys are interesting and fun for me. Lawyers also tend to care more about their transactions, sometimes as much as I do.
You might find that difficult to believe but lots of people don’t put a lot of credence into what agents do for them, especially when we are talking about listing agents. The public has this impression that it’s easy to sell a home, that all we do is stick a sign in the yard and people call us. They don’t always understand why we are so highly compensate for what we do, because they don’t view the inner workings of real estate and often agents don’t share that information.
One of the things that I try to do with my blog is share what goes on inside a transaction without giving away any personal identifying data about anybody so people can understand what agents do. OK, maybe not all agents, but this particular Sacramento real estate agent. I do things a little bit differently. I constantly evolve, reassess.
I focus completely on my sellers and what’s best for them. Ordinarily that part is pretty easy, because what’s best for them is usually netting the most money out of a sale and closing without headaches. When I’m working with lawyers, they expect me to handle the details efficiently and effortlessly.
For example, when my seller receives a purchase offer that entails crediting closing costs of say, $15,000, to the buyer, I go that extra step. I will call the buyer’s lender to schmooze. In the middle of schmoozing, I might say, “Hey, this borrower of yours, how well do you know her?”
Then, they tell me all kinds of things they wouldn’t ordinarily spill.
I might also say, wow, this borrower is very strong and you are lucky to work with somebody like this who can afford to pay her own closing costs. Not many borrowers today can do that. This borrower has a lot of assets and is fortunate.
Then the buyer’s mortgage lender confirms it.
See, right there I might have saved that seller $15,000 or more. Turns out the buyer did not “need” a closing cost credit. Because I think about purchase offers and strategize counter offers. The seller didn’t ask me to go that extra step, I just did it because that’s my job, and I like my job. It’s another reason that lawyers love to work with me. So, you sellers who are hemming and hawing about paying a full commission, you have no idea what you get when you don’t. You want to save $5,000, yet throw $15,000 away.
You would be really hard pressed to find an agent who loves working with lawyers in Sacramento real estate more than this agent. Lawyers get it.
On the Fence About Buying a Home in Sacramento?
If you’re on the fence about buying a home in Sacramento, this blog is for you. How often have you said to yourself, I would like to do this other enormously fun and hugely rewarding thing, but I have to work or perform some other pure drudgery I don’t really want to do, so I’ll have to pass? Yeah, I’ll have to do the responsible thing. Make the adult choice. And then later you regret it? I once passed on a trip to London with my mother because I spent the money I would have used for the trip on fixing my car, a 1965 Mustang. I should have gone to London, even if it meant borrowing the money.
When faced with choices of do or don’t, this is where analyzing risk comes in. You’ve got to ponder what would happen if you did it anyway and whether you could live with the possible downside of those results. I’m not saying you should do something stupid like run out into the freeway at rush hour because the likelihood is you would get killed. But what if when faced with an unusual decision, you did something nice for yourself or someone else instead, something that was out of the ordinary for you?
People spend so much time trying to plan for the future. As though we have all the time in the world and nobody can take that time away from us when everything can change overnight with the snap of a finger. We’re so busy with our noses stuck in our cellphones that we don’t see the here and now. We can’t be here and now if we’re elsewhere. The future most likely will come regardless of our plans, but the here and now will be gone tomorrow.
Why not give yourself permission to enjoy something different or just be happy? There is innocence in happiness, and as we grow older sometimes we forget about that innocence, but it’s still there. We tell ourselves that we’ll be buying a home in Sacramento when we have secure jobs (ha, ha) and have socked away a big down payment, but that day might never come. Emergencies pop up, stuff happens, things change. Life gets in the way. Before you know it, you’re in your 40s and have never owned a home. You get into your 50s and your bucket list gets longer and longer.
If you want to take tomorrow off work and head for the beach, just go, follow your heart. If you’re thinking about buying a home in Sacramento, talk to a mortgage broker and find out what you need to do to clean up your credit report or apply for down payment assistance. Think how you’ll look back at your situation 5 years from now. Try a different perspective. For guidance, call a Sacramento real estate agent like Elizabeth Weintraub, 916.233.6759.
Do You Really Have to Interview 3 Agents in Sacramento?
A home seller in Elk Grove figured he should interview 3 real estate agents in person because, well, he didn’t really know for certain, because somebody said that he should interview 3 agents. That somebody might have even been me; I write a lot of online content about real estate. But that advice doesn’t apply to me, I laughed. For starters, most people who call me to come over have already decided they want to hire me.
They’ve read my Weintraub reviews; my clients love me. They’ve perused my website and know I’ve got 40 years of experience. Flipped through my blogs. Studied the photos of my cats, checked out my travels on Pinterest. They know who I’m married to, the places I’ve previously worked, the addresses of hundreds of homes I’ve sold, the type of vegetation in my garden, what kind of Nikon I use, how late I sleep in, the awards I’ve won, and they know more about me than my husband knows and more than I will ever recall.
They probably also know about the day my underwear fell off in the middle of Albertson’s grocery store in Costa Mesa. Yeah, the elastic just went kaput while I was pawing through the potatoes. There I was in the produce aisle, in a yellow sundress under bright lights, when I realized a catastrophe was about to hit. I felt the elastic go ka-ping! Squeezing my legs together in an effort to keep the fabric from slipping and toting a bag of potatoes on my hip, I tried to quietly slip around the corner. Maneuvering a grocery cart with one hand is difficult, especially when the wheels go every which way.
Then, right there at the corner where canned tomato paste meets canned tomatoes, my underwear fell to the floor. First and last time that’s ever happened. I quickly kicked the cramped fabric under the ledge, along with loose rolling wasabi peas. I figured if I kept my eyes level and did not look down, that runaway garment did not belong to me, and I did not to have claim it or even pretend to recognize it.
Now, I’ll do an interview over the phone, but much of the time when somebody says they want to interview 3 agents, they only want to pick my brain. They want to know how they should stage their home, how much it is worth, along with tips and tricks for selling it. They aren’t really looking for a real estate agent because they already have one, but the one they have isn’t as experienced so they call me. Such a waste of time I spend chasing supposed leads.
This means I have to find a way to explain what I do and give people a reason to choose me as their real estate agent without necessarily meeting in person. No easy task. Of course, there is FaceTime, and that works well for people who feel the need to stare into my brown eyes. Unless, of course, I have fooled them by inserting my brilliant blue contact lenses. Or, they can just decide to hire the Sacramento real estate agent all my clients trust. You don’t have to interview 3 agents in person.
How Not to Be a Real Estate Radio Star in Sacramento
Real estate radio has never really appealed to me but that didn’t stop the Real Estate Radio Network from calling this Sacramento real estate agent. They offered to make me a radio star. Yup, put me on the air and allow me to share my knowledge and humor with all the people who listen to radio on weekend mornings. Like me, you might be wondering how much you can earn being a real estate radio star. First question I asked:
How much can I earn? I’m not shy.
Oh, they have one person who makes $250,000 a year, the caller assured. Well, that certainly sends up a red flag, doesn’t it? When was the last time somebody called you out of the blue and offered you a quarter of a million bucks?
Second question: Why are they calling me?
What makes me stand out from all of the other real estate agents in Sacramento? Apart from the fact that my name is plastered everywhere, and you can’t click around online without stumbling across my content — and of course the fact that I have a big mouth coupled with 4 decades of real estate — but I wanted to hear it from the representative at Real Estate Radio Network. Why was I targeted?
She fumbled a bit and then mentioned my interviews with the Wall Street Journal and CBS News. She must be looking at my bio page. That sounds a little lame.
How much time does this entail, being a real estate radio star at Real Estate Radio Network?
I already rank as a top-producer agent in Sacramento and move a ton of inventory every year, on top of being the homebuying expert at About.com, I don’t really need a third job. I earn a sufficient income. Time is a precious commodity.
An hour a week. It was flexible.
How does it work, exactly?
This wasn’t entirely clear and would be explained at lunch. It has something to do with sponsors. What if I don’t have any friends or coworkers or associates who would like to appear on the show as my sponsor, then what? No worry, the Real Estate Radio Network would help me and teach me how to do it. All I have to do is commit to a lunch date. Turns out the lunch date wasn’t really a one-on-one lunch date, it was some sort of seminar, a grouping of other real estate agents, although they did promise to feed us.
Nah, if your leader dude wants to meet with me, he can make an appointment and come to my office. I’ll give him 30 minutes to explain his program. See, I offered up, I’m already being a problem. I am not conforming. I want you guys to meet at my office and not in some group setting out by Sacramento State. I don’t think you want me. I am most likely not your targeted radio star.
Sure enough, hunting online, I found a former real estate radio star who had signed up earlier this year with the Real Estate Radio Network. I wondered if she was still broadcasting. No, she quit. She said she can do her own radio show for less money, and she did not need Real Estate Radio Network, nor did she need to pay $1700 per month for airtime plus another $995 as a monthly fee to Real Estate Radio Network.
Well, that quarter of a million income went flying out the window pretty quickly.
Buying a Sacramento Home Parked in Shadow Inventory
When inventory is low and the quality of available homes for sale in Sacramento is spotty, it might seem like there are no homes to buy, but that’s because nobody is looking at the shadow inventory. Shadow inventory can be defined as a lot of things — it can be homes that have been foreclosed upon and not yet on the market, or it can pertain to the pending sales, active release, short contingent and temporarily off the market listings, among other select status modifiers.
You might find gold in those listings.
I’ve noticed that some real estate agents are diligently digging through MLS to try to uncover shadow inventory for their buyers. Buyers can’t find these listings on their own, for the most part. Oh, they can find homes that closed escrow a few months ago on websites like Trulia and Zillow, but much of that stuff is dated. Even our own MLS, MetroList, hides the status of some listings down at the bottom on the right-hand side, so buyers get all excited and think homes are available to buy when they are actually under contract.
This is when it pays to get in touch the listing agent to find out whether the agent and her seller might welcome a backup offer. The thing about a backup offer is it guarantees the buyer that nobody else can step in to snatch the home should the existing pending sale blowup. If the existing buyer cancels, a backup offer, properly prepared, would put the second buyer into first position, effectively locking out the competition.
You might wonder how many pending sales blow up? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly but it’s not unusual for some listings to sell 3, 4 or 5 times before they close. Part of that problem is unscrupulous buyers writing more than one offer when they can’t afford to buy two homes. Part is due to tightened lending restrictions. Whatever the problem might be in an existing transaction, having a backup offer can give the seller peace of mind and it can also be a bonanza for a buyer who missed out on making an offer for that home.
If a buyer has not lifted contingencies and the transaction is still influx, it might be a good idea to check out a few pending sales to see if there is an opportunity lurking in the shadow inventory for you.
