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Is This a Good Time for Home Selling in Sacramento?
My days seem to be pretty balanced in Sacramento in that I talk to about the same number of home buyers as I do to home sellers. Yes, I am an oddball Sacramento real estate agent who answers her phone. I also respond to email very quickly. So fast that I tend to astonish potential clients. I get the phone calls and emails because I have a ton of listings in Sacramento. Once that activity gets ramped up, it doesn’t stop, it only continues to build more business and more client contacts. As a result, the question I get asked more often than not is whether this is a good time to sell in Sacramento.
I suspect you think that any Sacramento real estate agent worth her salt is going to respond YES. Except in this case, it would be absolutely true. It’s no secret that I am not a big fan of home selling during the holidays. Sometimes, though, you have to sell over the holidays, and if you do, I’m there for you. But right now, October, is an excellent time to have your home on the market. For example, I just put a home in Roseville on the market last Friday. Within 24 hours, we have 5 offers. Five excellent offers, no lowballs. If your home is priced right, marketed right, it will quickly sell and for a lot of money!
The question other people ask is whether this is a good time to buy. If you’re working with the Elizabeth Weintraub Team, it’s a fabulous time to buy. Interest rates are low. Prices are low. But competition is stiff. We beat the competition every single day. It’s why we are successful Sacramento real estate agents.
It seems that right now many of my Sacramento home sellers are getting geared up for the spring market. Yeah, the spring market in October. Who’d a thunk it? But preplanning is important. If you want to come out with a bang in January, now is the time to plan for it. Why would you want to appeal to a tiny pool of home buyers in November or December when your home can explode on the scene in January, splashed in front of thousands? I’ll give it to you straight.
Think about it. Call me. 916-233-6759. Sacramento real estate broker, Elizabeth Weintraub at Lyon Real Estate. Now taking appointments for selling homes in the four-county area of Sacramento.
A Day in the Life of a Top Producer
Elizabeth Weintraub is a top producer agent in Sacramento
Does the public care whether their Sacramento real estate agent is a top producer? Does the public even know what a top producer is, and why should it matter? It doesn’t. And I say that as a top producer, not as some aspiring real estate agent who hopes to make it big someday. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a seller announce that she needed to hire a top producer. That’s because the public tends to think every Sacramento real estate agent is a top producer. The truth is you’ve got closer to your 1% in this business, and then there’s the other 99%. But who really cares?
Some agent was mentioned in a REALTOR magazine about having sold more than 200 homes in 2 years. I thought, wow, that’s a lot! It made me wonder how many I have sold. See, I’m so busy selling real estate in Sacramento that I don’t always have time to count my big ‘ol stacks of money. I pulled up MLS and entered my ID, and asked it to show me sold transactions for the past 2 years. My number for October 11th was 199 transactions. My jaw dropped. I kid you not. That’s pretty spectacular, especially when compared to my early days in Sacramento, after I moved back to California from Minnesota.
I recall sitting at the manager’s desk at the Lyon office in midtown Sacramento. I was looking at my performance for the year. I think back then I sold around 20 homes a year. Respectable. Decent. More than enough to qualify for Master’s Club at the Sacramento Association of REALTORs. I was complaining and asking why I wasn’t doing better, that I had so much extra time on my hands which I could be utilizing in my business, and kibitzing in general. I felt that I was capable of doing more, selling more homes, but I wasn’t doing it.
It’s not like I had some grand plan that I implemented. No big epiphany. I just put my nose to the grindstone and didn’t look up for several years. Grabbed every business opportunity I spotted. Held open houses every week. Handed out my business card to strangers. Took Floor Calls and talked with walk-in traffic at the office. I did not discriminate except to try to weed out the crazy people. Somewhat nutty people are OK. The downright screwballs and looney-tunes, not so much. But by not discriminate, I mean I did not turn down a listing for a $30,000 condo anymore than I would reject a $1,000,000 listing in Granite Bay. And I agreed to work on short sales.
An agent in San Diego said the other day that listing short sales was so much easier than listing a regular home with equity. She said there was no need to address commission nor sales price. I believe that those two things generally are not really a big issue in a regular transaction. But maybe that’s just the way I do business. I look at the bigger picture. The bigger picture is a satisfied and happy client. A happy client means referrals. Referrals means I don’t have look for business. I make a client happy when I give them what they want.
If I am selling a client’s home quickly, with minimum fuss and at the highest price we can possibly get in the market place, that’s what a client wants. They want to trust their agent. They don’t want to sell real estate themselves, or that’s what they would be doing. They’re not really hung up on whether they are paying me X amount or Y amount, because I am giving them what they want. I tend to exceed expectations.
Today, I am meeting with a seller of a duplex in Foothill Farms. It’s a regular transaction. He also wants to buy a home in midtown Sacramento. I am taking a probate listing in River Park, over in East Sacramento. That home needs a bit of work. I might list a home in Fair Oaks, but that seller hasn’t yet decided whether she wants to finish remodeling the home or sell As Is. I met with her yesterday, and she needs to make some decisions fairly soon.
I’ve got two short sales to put into escrow today, an Active Short Contingent and a Pending Short Lender Approval. Just finished filing the purchase offers. I’m writing this in the dark. The sun hasn’t come up yet. So, if you’re an agent reading this and wondering why your life doesn’t mirror that of a top producer, you might try getting up earlier in the morning and squeezing more into your day. None of this sleeping-in-until-noon business. And don’t focus on becoming a top producer. Focus on the business at hand. The rest will follow.
The Three Prices for a Home in Sacramento
I hear all sorts of phrases from sellers when it comes time to price a home. I think they all went to the same school of ways to sell your home in Sacramento. Often, they want to price it too high, and they justify this by saying, “I don’t want to give it away.” Come on. Have you ever seen anybody give away their home? Hey, I found this sitting out back by the dumpster; will you take this deed off my hands? OK, maybe if it’s a short sale. Or, they will say, “Let’s test the market.” OK, but what if you fail the test? You only get one chance at being a brand new spankin’ listing. It’s like Goldilocks, you don’t want to be priced too high or too low. You want to be priced just right.
Pricing a home to sell is an art. It’s also a science. I listen to sellers because, believe it or not, I don’t always know everything. I realize that’s a difficult concept to wrap your head around, a Sacramento real estate agent who might admit she still has stuff to learn and is not the master puppeteer of the Sacramento world of real estate. Because stuff constantly changes. But I believe I have a pretty good handle on figuring out the best price for a home in Sacramento. Moreover, at the moment, I am selling homes at astronomical prices. That’s because it’s a seller’s market in Sacramento. A wild and crazy seller’s market. This nutty market doesn’t mean one can throw logic and reason out the window, though.
There are always 3 prices for a home:
- The price the seller would like to receive.
- The price the buyer wants to pay.
- The price the buyer’s appraises it at — and who ultimately has the last word.
If you get an appraiser from some other town — which isn’t hard to do these days — the appraisal can be too low. Sometimes, it’s because the comparable homes used by the appraiser to justify value sit in a different neighborhood, even though they are within a half mile of the subject property, and those homes in an adjoining neighborhood could be worth much less. An appraiser who is unfamiliar with the neighborhood wouldn’t know that fact.
The way pricing works is unless you receive a cash offer, your home will be assessed by the buyer’s appraiser. If there are no comparable sales for your home, the appraiser will use the sales that are available. This is why you need to examine the comparable sales — particularly the pending sales that will become your comparable sales — before you put your home on the market. If there are no comparable sales to justify your desired sales price, perhaps this is not the time to put your home up for sale. Perhaps you should wait and watch.
Of course, you will then miss the best real estate market in Sacramento since 2005. I don’t think you want to do that.
The No Pressure Sacramento Real Estate Agent
Wanna know a secret? I am really terrible when it comes to follow up for developing my Sacramento real estate business. By that I mean I wait for people to call me back. I don’t hound them or ask over and over if they are ready to buy or sell a home in Sacramento. My strategy is to be patient. I figure if they want to buy or sell, they will let me know, and that’s probably not a very good strategy for a Sacramento real estate agent to follow. That’s not what they teach in real estate school, you know. They teach you to be a lot more aggressive. To call, prod, email, push, inquire, check up on and keep one’s fingers on the pulse of business.
If some Sacramento real estate agent followed me around and picked up the business I let fall by the wayside, she or he could make a good living in real estate. Much of being a success in real estate is being in the right place at the right time. It helps to have experience, skill and knowledge, but those things aren’t necessarily essential in the real estate business, it pains me to say. Everybody sells real estate differently. No two agents are the same.
Since I move a lot of inventory, my approach is somewhat different. I prefer to be analytical and study each situation to determine the best strategy. Go for the highest price. I figure that’s part of what I’m getting paid for — to do the best job possible for my clients. That involves waiting until my sellers are ready to sell, for example. Once I’m given that green light, I’m working with lightning speed.
Still, I can’t help but wonder how many sellers lose my business card, forget my name or decide to list with their Uncle Joe or neighbor down the street simply because I didn’t continue to bug them to list with me. Well, it doesn’t really matter in the long run. It’s not in my nature to bug people. If they want to list with some other real estate agent, that’s OK.
I just sold my 95th house for the year yesterday. That’s only counting the sellers, the listing side. It doesn’t take buyers into consideration at all. It’s a good life, selling homes in Sacramento. That’s what I focus on. The business at hand. You want no pressure and a job well done? Give this Sacramento real estate agent a jingle. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I answer my phone, too.
Why Not Hire a Top Sacramento Real Estate Agent?
Wouldn’t you like to go away on vacation and come home to find your home has sold for many thousands of dollars over market value? You don’t have to put up with buyers traipsing through the house, or agents calling for an appointment at all hours. No time consuming open houses. Nope, you just pack your bags, enjoy your vacation and maybe once a day, if you feel like it, check email to tally the latest offer that arrived in your inbox. You can kick back, relax, and let your Sacramento real estate agent do all of the work.
In fact, you might have been able to hire another agent in Sacramento for a little bit less, but why? Commissions are negotiable. Why would you do it, though? Why would you give up all of that extra money just to save a few bucks on the commission? That’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It’s like driving down the street and throwing money out of the window. It’s being penny-wise but pound foolish. Yet, some Sacramento home sellers don’t know any better. They tend to think that all real estate agents are the same, and homes sell themselves by sticking a sign in the yard. Little could be further from the truth.
Last week we had 68 showings and 14 offers for a home in Elk Grove! The home sold while the sellers were on vacation. I had met with the sellers to discuss strategy, marketing and home staging months before we went on the market. I have a certain way I do things because I have found that over 35-some years in the real estate business that my way of doing things works. It’s why I am successful. I constantly strive to improve my performance. Money matters. It matters to my sellers. Immensely.
If money matters to you as well, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. Experience doesn’t cost you. Experience pays off. Because you deserve a top-notch Sacramento real estate agent. Don’t you?
