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How Many Listings Should a Sacramento Realtor Carry?
The number of listings might have little bearing on a Sacramento Realtor’s ability to service.
A question that really has no bearing on reality but I get asked it often enough all the same is: Elizabeth, how many listings do you have? For starters, I suspect people want to use the answer as a quantifier. If you have one or two listings, you look like a loser in some people’s eyes. If you have 200 listings, you could look like a person who doesn’t have time to brush her teeth much less pay attention to her clients, and that assumption could be way off base, too.
What makes a difference, though, is in what position are those Sacramento listings? By that I mean are they pending, pending short lender approval (which is different than a pending sale), active contingent, pending bring back-up, active release clause, an active short sale or simply an active listing? I generally carry about 25 listings at any given time, but the active listings, the homes that take up most of my time, might only range from 3 to 5. I typically sell my active listings pretty quickly because I do things right. The short sale listings require a lot more time on the market because today’s buyers tend to pass those by.
A few years back, like 2010 or 2011, I carried on average about 75 listings in various states of status. Talk about stress. I am conscientious, though. When I worked on that amount of inventory, I was often out of bed by 4 or 5 AM and hard at work. I do what it takes, and that’s what it took to keep my sanity and my sellers happy with my performance. Now, that my inventory has fallen by about two-thirds as the number of homes for sale overall in the Sacramento Valley have slipped, things are fairly normal and quiet for me. It’s almost like being on vacation.
I realize for another Sacramento Realtor, 25 listings might seem like a horrendous number, but for me, it’s just business as usual. I can sleep in until 7 AM now. That’s a luxury. There is no question what my focus is for the day. I don’t spend much time on looking for business because business comes to me. I’m very fortunate that way. Many other real estate agents spend at least half of their time prospecting for clients, but I don’t. Some choose to work only part-time. I work full-time. My time is focused 100% on my clients and my listings.
Keeping track of 25 files and maneuvering moving targets is easy for an organized person to do. Besides, many decades ago, like in the 1970s, I was a certified escrow officer, and I used to work on a caseload of 60 to 80 files at a time. If you think handling a real estate file as an agent is time consuming, try being an escrow officer. Escrow is where I developed my organizational skills, and that ability has served me well as a top producer Sacramento Realtor. I try to treat each of my clients as though they are my ONLY client, because if I don’t, that’s exactly what would happen.
I am never too busy for a client. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I answer my cell.
Why Sacramento Real Estate Agents Get All the Good Deals
Agents get the good deals that home buyers pass up.
Do you know why so many of the good deals seem to go to real estate agents? I’ll tell you why. It’s not because agents are stealing all the good deals. It’s because they recognize a good deal when they spot it. When one is working in the real estate business day after day and year after year, I don’t care how unfocused you are, eventually some of it rubs off and sticks with you. So many of my long-term listings that other buyers and investors pass by because the properties need work, end up sold to a Sacramento Realtor. It’s sorta becoming par for the course. In fact, I’ve thought about buying a few myself but that would be a conflict of interest.
A few years back I had a short sale home in Carmichael to sell that was completely trashed. The seller just picked up his briefcase and walked out, leaving all of the furniture and his personal belongings. Same situation for a short sale home in Galt, now that I pause to reflect, and both sold about the same time. That home in Carmichael, though, nobody would buy, even though it was only $100,000 and the bank had approved the short sale. We were apart by $5,000 and the investor bit the dust. Finally, a real estate agent picked it up, fixed it up and flipped that home for about $300,000.
Investors and other buyers today seem to pause at the sales price and then offer less for no apparent reason. They act like they’re bartering for a trinket at a Tijuana flea market, saying things like I’ll give you $350,000 for a home listed at $395,000. It makes me want to retort: Tell you what, why don’t we raise the price to $450,000 and then you can offer $395,000? They don’t understand that it’s not make-me-an-offer season in Sacramento, and many homes are generally priced right where they should be. If list price and market value are synonymous, why would an investor get a break?
Homes that need work often linger on the market because they are not what most first-time home buyers want to purchase. Although many fixer upper prices are already reduced to reflect the work required, most home buyers desire turn-key, ready to move into, and they don’t want to tackle any work. If a home needs a roof, for example, they can’t seem to figure out that a roof might cost about $10,000, and they can finance that roof through an Energy Efficient Mortgage (which takes one day to install) and, when they are finished, they will own a home with a brand new roof, and the sales price is still a bargain.
I sold a home like that in Elk Grove to another real estate agent last year, and I’ll most likely do it again this year. That’s because agents see the value. They know the neighborhoods. They don’t automatically assume longer days on market means the price is too high because that’s not always true and they know it. But then they also work with first-time home buyers, so they understand the disconnect going on. Buyers don’t often spot the good deals but agents do.
Telling Sacramento Sellers What They Don’t Want to Hear
You can’t really be an effective Sacramento real estate agent if you’re not willing to tell sellers what they don’t want to hear. That means you have to figure out how to share bad news in such a way that people don’t immediately take off their shoes and start beating on your head. There is a way to frame bad news. Not necessarily like the cat on a roof story.
I don’t know how one can expect a seller, for example, to make a decision without all of the information necessary to weigh the facts and come up with a response. I suspect that some real estate agents are too worried that they will hurt another’s feelings or worse, that maybe the seller won’t list with them if the seller gets upset by the news. But you can’t tiptoe around on little cat feet. That’s not helpful for anybody.
Not everybody appreciates a person who is straight forward and direct. There is a way to be straight forward by tempering the news a little bit because if you just blurt it out, in our present society, people will accuse you of being rude. Oh, my god, my ears. What did you say? I’m ugly and people don’t like me? Of course if you don’t care what they think — and sometimes, let’s face it, we don’t — then it doesn’t matter.
A guy called me this morning to talk about his listing. He was unhappy because his agent doesn’t communicate with him and makes him feel like he is not a priority. He gave me several examples, so I have to kinda agree with him, even though I realize there is always another side to every story. He said he knew his listing was priced too high but he needed that amount in order to pay off his loans.
What?
Why didn’t anybody say anything to this poor guy? Why are they letting him rot in MLS, hopeful yet frustrated? This makes no sense to me whatsoever. He talked to several agents. Even if they explained the truth and he didn’t listen, it still doesn’t explain why his home is in MLS the way that it is.
Paperwork: It is Not Personal, It is My Job, Ack!
Anybody who works with Sacramento real estate agents knows that a truism for many agents is we all hate to do paperwork. That’s a fact. Further, many agents are not detail oriented. The traits that make an agent excellent at working with other people and a successful negotiator don’t necessarily transfer to the paperwork department. Most people cannot be the life of the party the night before and settle into a cramped chair to prepare a tax return the following day.
The two don’t necessarily mix. Like rap and classics, although Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga would disagree.
Some of us buck the norm; even though we are gregarious, we might carry that weird gene — the one that wants to make sure all of the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed and will occasionally give in on ending a sentence in a preposition if it happens to add flavor and comes with. This weird gene somehow blends rather nicely with the social-butterfly gene, that one that embraces people and life and looks for the joy in the world. That’s my personal makeup as a Sacramento real estate agent.
When a buyer’s agent sends me a purchase contract, I want to make sure we are all on the same page. I sometimes ask the seller to send a counter offer, but it’s much cleaner if the paperwork is prepared properly in the first place. Sometimes agents can get very exasperated because they didn’t check a box or they checked the wrong box or they didn’t include the proper addendum or are missing required documentation, and they might misinterpret a request for those documents as extreme personal punishment, which is understandable from their point of view. They hate paperwork. Just because they hold a real estate license does not mean they understand contract law.
It’s a difficult spot, between rock and hard. Does a listing agent prepare a two-page counter offer that could make the buyer’s agent look incompetent or does the agent ask for a revised offer? How does the seller know if the buyer understands the agreed-upon terms if it’s unclear?
Yet, it’s engrained in me that if we’re entering into a legal contract, then it should be a clear understanding and agreement and executed correctly. That behavior probably stems from my years as a Certified Escrow Officer. In a buyer’s market — which is what it seems like we’re transitioning into — sometimes the best solution is to correct the other side’s mistakes for them and just go forward with the transaction. Focusing on the big picture and sweeping up along the way. Just get it done. That’s why we’re hired.
The only time a client will notice this stuff is if we’re sitting in front of a judge in a court of law who asks why we didn’t require a completed purchase contract. And that’s not a place any of us wants to go. I know the difference, and I’ll continue to ensure it’s done correctly in the first place, regardless of what I have to do to achieve it. Paperwork: it’s not personal, it’s my job.
Sacramento Real Estate Commissions
Sacramento real estate commissions are in direct proportion to ability.
It is not unusual for a seller to ask if I will take a lower fee than my usual commission, that is, to discount my standard commission, if they hire me instead of one of the other dozen Sacramento real estate agents they are talking to. I understand the need to try to save money wherever one can in a real estate transaction because money is a seller’s main concern and my responsibility to manage. But Sacramento real estate commissions are the wrong place to look. My primary two focal points when working as a listing agent are to save money for my sellers and to make money for my sellers. That’s why home sellers tend to hire a real estate agent. To help manage the money. Maximize the profit.
They think they are hiring a Realtor to sell a home, but that’s not the whole picture.
As real estate agents, we manage our sellers’ money in a wide variety of ways, and Sacramento real estate commissions don’t really enter the picture. We manage our sellers’ money through our marketing and pricing strategy, our reach on the internet and through open houses, our extensive experience, our professional advice, our successful negotiation tactics and our unwavering ability to close the transaction in a seamless manner. Which means all agents are different.
It’s not enough these days to get a contract into escrow. That’s just the beginning, of course, before the inspections, before the pest reports, the roof inspections, sewer inspections, chimney inspections, other homes coming on the market that can detract, other homes closing that affect appraisals, and a bazillion other things that can happen in a real estate transaction, including buyer’s cold feet.
Who is gonna see a seller through that maize? Hopefully, it’s the Sacramento real estate agent who is managing the seller’s money. I get paid the same percentage that I’ve been paid for the past 40 years; whether prices go up or prices go down, I don’t get a raise. My Sacramento real estate commissions have remained constant. Although, sometimes sellers pay me more after closing. They think my standard fee is not high enough. They send me gifts. The best lately was a $500 gift certificate.
The other day a client asked if he could pay me a big bonus if his home sold in 30 days. That tells me that people think we will alter the way we do business if sellers dangle more money in front our faces, and that’s not true. A really good agent can’t be bought and sold like a commodity. Many Sacramento real estate agents, me included, are not all that motivated by money. Our motivation, whether you want to believe it or not, is truly seller satisfaction. Our income is a by-product.
In conclusion, I will listen to your situation and will not be offended to discuss my fees because all Sacramento real estate commissions are negotiable, but in the end, a seller will pay me what I am worth. And they will be ecstatic about it after the home sells and closes. That’s my goal. All agents should want this.
