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What It’s Like to Be a Sacramento Home Buyer
Where does a Sacramento home buyer get her information? She talks to friends, family and coworkers. Maybe she dabbles around at the Sac Bee website on her cellphone but she’s pretty much focused on her life, her own situation. Just like anybody else. She puts on her pants one leg at a time, brushes her teeth, worries about her job, feeds the cat or walks the dog and doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the state of the real estate market in Sacramento. That’s because she is not a real estate agent. She is a Sacramento home buyer looking for Sacramento homes.
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. 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!
I spoke to an agent yesterday who told me she had submitted an offer for her buyer and the listing agent said her offer was #18. The funny thing about this situation is the listing agent was holding out for more offers. Why? Why on God’s green earth would a seller or an agent need to collect more purchase offers than that? Talk about misery. If one can’t find an acceptable offer among 17 offers, I hate to say this, but something has gone horribly wrong with the agent, the seller or both. Another agent lamented that he had not had an offer accepted for any of his buyers for more than 30 days, and he writes 4 to 5 offers a week.
Sacramento buyer’s agents are suffocating.
I’ve had buyers call me directly and ask if they can get an edge by working with a high producing Sacramento listing agent. I guess they figure they’ll go where the homes are rather than waiting for the listings to come to them. It’s a desperate situation. Buyers need to prepare for disappointment. A Sacramento home buyer might not be able to buy her first choice or even her 10th choice. She needs to slap on that steel armor and keep her eyes on the horizon. Above all, don’t give up. Align with an experienced Sacramento REALTOR.
It is possible to buy a home in Sacramento. I see happy home buyers go into escrow every week! In addition to hitting refresh on that MLS link, home buyers can also check my Sacramento short sale updates to see which listings are coming live. Voodoo dolls, prayers on your knees, salt over your shoulder, whatever you’ve got — use it.
What Will a Sacramento Home Seller Take?
Would a seller take this to sell a house? Would a seller take that to buy a mouse? Would you, could you, in a car, take them, take them, here they are? This is what it’s like putting a home on the market in Sacramento today. Offers falling out of the woodwork and from all directions. I tell sellers that I’m almost afraid for them because I know what will happen, and they do not. Sam, I am. I am prepared. But sellers are freaking out. I know it before it happens.
There is a long parade of offers coming my way today. Thinking ahead, I had mentioned to a seller last week that we should go on the market on Monday so we can all enjoy a relatively quiet Labor Day Weekend. Meaning her home will probably be sold by this Wednesday, at the latest. What is a little bit wild are the calls and emails that I’ve been receiving from buyer’s agents. They all want to know what the seller will do and what the seller will accept.
The answer to those kinds of questions is I do not know. I am not the seller. I am just the listing agent. I’m not inside the seller’s head. I don’t make decisions for the seller. It’s the seller’s house, and she can sell to whomever she wants in this market. It’s a seller’s market. If your buyer is not a cash buyer, you’re probably at a disadvantage, but not necessarily. There are some sellers who care more about the type of person who is making the offer than the type of offer. But let’s not fool anybody, cash offers, as long as the buyer is not a jerk, are more likely to win.
Especially in a short sale situation. In the past, like a few months ago, a cash buyer might be a drawback and not as desirable to a short sale seller. That’s because cash buyers are often distracted by a new listing, something else shiny to buy, and they can bail with great ease. But today, they are very unlikely to walk away because there is nothing else for them to buy. So, that makes a cash buyer just as attractive commitment-wise as, say, my personal favorite, which are VA buyers. VA buyers will stick with the deal because they have no other place to go. But now, neither do the cash buyers.
This is a really good time to be a seller in Sacramento. If you’re searching for an experienced and straight-forward Sacramento real estate agent to help you get top dollar for your home, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. I’ll help you to navigate these crazy multiple offer waters and get the edge in the market. It’s what I do, Sam, I am.
How the Elizabeth Weintraub Team Sells Sacramento Homes
My Sacramento sellers often remark on how astonished they are that I quickly respond to their needs. I respond in the medium of their choosing. Email, text, phone, doesn’t matter. Email is probably the fastest as I’m in front of my computer during the week more often than not. What they don’t realize is it’s not that I’m so lightning fast — although I am probably faster with a response than most Sacramento real estate agents (which is why I win so much business) — the reason I quickly respond is because if I don’t, I’ll most likely forget about it.
I’m a busy Sacramento real estate agent. I’ll call a seller once but if she doesn’t respond, I’ll probably never call her again. I don’t hound people. That’s not in my nature. Some sellers are afraid to call a real estate agent because they worry that the agent will continue to call and call and call and pressure them to do business with that agent. I suppose some agents fit that description, but I’m not one of them. With that attitude, I’ve sold more than a 100 Sacramento homes over the past 12 months.
Which is why it’s easy for me to stop what I’m doing when a seller makes an inquiry and respond. Moreover, a Sacramento home buyer gets special treatment. You see, I have team members who will follow up on buyer leads. It’s important for my sellers to know that no inquiry from a curious home buyer will ever fall by the wayside when they hire the Elizabeth Weintraub Team to sell their home. We snap to attention when a home buyer calls. When I receive a buyer inquiry via email, for example, it is immediately forwarded to a team member for a response.
The Elizabeth Weintraub Team members are dedicated. Their job is to follow up. They keep trying to contact the buyer until they speak with the buyer. If you want your home sold, we’ll get it sold. If you have a question about selling a home in Sacramento, you’ll get a response from me right away during business hours. Not 2 days later or when it’s convenient. If I am not with a client, you’ll get a call or email or text immediately upon contact. Not an automatic response, a response from a real live real estate agent. I don’t know very many other Sacramento real estate agents who can promise you that.
Clear Out the Clutter Before Home Selling in Sacramento
Most people have too much personal stuff, and this Sacramento real estate agent is no exception. I tell my clients to clear out rooms to make them look more spacious while I continue to shove furniture into mine. Of course, my home is not for sale. And we don’t invite any friends over because we don’t have any friends. Yet, our motto is if something comes into the house, something must go out.
OK, I admit that’s my motto and not that of my husband. Getting him to part with any personal belonging is tragic. Once a treasure touches his hands, it somehow transforms from an inanimate object into a living, breathing artifact worthy of preservation until the end of time.
But for the rest of us, into the trash. Or, to the Salvation Army or some other charity. Or, my favorite, the curb in front of our house, because it’s so immediate. I hardly ever see anybody remove the stuff — it’s magical elves who come in the night. Except for this guy who knocked on the door yesterday to ask me if there were any parasites living in the Oriental rug I had placed on a chair at the curb. Excuse me, parasites? Is that what you expect when an owner decides to clear out the clutter?
We had cleaned out the garage. The garage is a place where things go to prepare to die. It’s like the stopping ground before a final death. The weigh station before the graveyard. The hospice, like Denver International Airport. It’s for things we aren’t quite ready to part with, things that we might have some use for down the road and would be devastated, I imagine, if we could not find it in the garage when this immediate and urgent need arose. Of course, I can’t ever recall going out to the garage to find a stored item that I really, really needed to use at that very moment but if I needed it, it would be there.
Like a kitchen chair that came with a table and 5 other chairs but doesn’t fit in our kitchen space. It’s been living in the garage for 7 years. My husband pleaded with me, as I ferociously marched this kitchen chair to the curb, to return the chair to its rightful spot in the garage. His rationale was someday in the future we might want to give away our kitchen table, along with its 5 remaining chairs, and our lucky recipient would be horrified to discover the set did not come with 6 chairs. Oh, contraire, sugar bear. Our lucky recipient would be thrilled with the set of 4 chairs and one bonus chair that she can store in the garage. It’s one way to clear out the clutter.
Which brings me to a point about selling homes in Sacramento. See, it doesn’t matter if your home is a short sale or it’s a regular traditional sale, almost every home on the planet will show better with fewer pieces of furniture. Every seller should prepare a home for sale. Take down those photos on the walls — those grinning pictures of Aunt Mildred and Uncle Henry toking up in 1969 at Woodstock — and clear out the clutter. Your Sacramento real estate agent will thank you. And you’ll most likely sell faster and at a higher price. Not to mention, if you’re driving around homes in Land Park, please, feel free to take that kitchen chair sitting at the curb. I’m no stranger either to having to clear out the clutter.
How Do Sacramento Appraisals Work?
People think Sacramento appraisals are etched in stone, but that kind of thinking is flawed. Appraisals represent an opinion of value. Get 10 appraisers together in a room, and you’ll have 10 opinions of value, and some of them will undoubtedly be worthless. But that doesn’t stop people from thinking their home in Sacramento is worth a certain value because the appraiser said so or the agent said so.
Market value is that price at which a seller is willing to sell and an able buyer is willing to buy. It’s when you throw a lender into the mix that appraisals come into play. This is a reason sellers tend to prefer cash buyers. When you throw an appraiser into the transaction, it’s not unusual for market value to vanish — poof! The appraisal is for the lender, to protect the lender’s security; it’s not for the buyer, even though the buyer pays for it.
I closed a Sacramento short sale transaction this month in which we had 2 appraisals. The first was ordered by the mortgage lender by mistake. It was a conventional appraisal, not an FHA appraisal, and there is a difference between the two. The conventional appraisal came in at, oh, let’s say $200,000. The problem was the buyer had applied for an FHA loan, not a conventional loan and did not qualify for a conventional loan. So, the buyer could not use the $200,000 appraisal for her loan.
Enter the FHA appraiser. Her appraised value was, oh, let’s say $180,000. Yup, a $20,000 difference. Which appraiser was right? They were both right, if you can believe that. Because this transaction was a short sale, though, the short sale bank had plenty to say about that FHA appraisal at $180,000. The bank had approved a sales price of $200,000. It would not agree to let the seller sell at $180,000. We supplied comparable sales and argued, but in the end, the bank agreed to, let’s say $195,000. The buyer had to pay the difference of $5,000.
How much was that home in Sacramento worth? It was worth $200,000 to the buyer. The buyer always has the last word. If you’re thinking about listing your home in Sacramento, hire the best Sacramento real estate agent you can find. Because you want somebody on your side, not just the agent who will promise the highest sales price. Agents will list at whatever price a seller wants. The agent doesn’t choose the price. And the seller doesn’t, either. It’s the buyer.
