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How to Stay Happy in Sacramento Weather of Tule Fog and Rain
Low Temperature Forecast: Racine, Wisconsin
If you ever want to feel better about the tule fog and our biting cold Sacramento weather during the winter, all you have to do is call somebody in the Upper Midwest and ask how she’s doing. Eventually she’ll tell you why life is so completely horrible and stinks because of the stinkin’ weather. By comparison, let me tell you, life in Sacramento is pretty darn good, and Sacramento weather is lovely.
I gave an interview to a reporter from Eagan, Minnesota, this week. Eagan is a suburb of St. Paul that did not exist in its present form when I grew up in Minneapolis. It was mostly a farming community named after some Irish guy. Today, it is a thriving suburban area with mega shopping malls surrounding numerous subdivisions of massively huge tract homes, and it has four feet of snow. The reporter asked what my weather was like. Low 50s, about to climb into the high 60s. Bit of fog.
Pretty nice, actually. See, how that works?
We talked about curb appeal: how sellers can create curb appeal and how home buyers respond to curb appeal. She thanked me for the interview saying I gave her a lot more in-depth information that she had not expected, and her newly accumulated wealth of data would make it very easy to write her article. I did one of many good deeds for the day. Managed to list a couple of homes in the Sacramento area as well.
I then stopped by to see my dermatologist at UC Davis who somehow has locked me into visiting her every six months. In the beginning I thought she was a specialist to study suspicious spots on my body but she always finds something to take care of or recommend, so it seems like she is now a regular doctor for me to visit because of my old age. It’s those barnacles and warts and other weirdness stuff that keep appearing in strange places that she magically removes. I don’t wanna end up looking like Art Linkletter.
She asked me how I stay so healthy and vibrant. It’s positive thoughts, I joked with her, raising my hands over my head with palms up, and surrounding myself with positive people. Always looking on the bright side. But then I realized I wasn’t really joking. I do try to dissipate negativity. It’s built into my Midwest genes.
My husband is in Racine, Wisconsin, for a family memorial. With me, having just returned from my month-long winter vacation to Vanuatu and Hawaii and leaping into the Sacramento January real estate market, I would be overwhelmed if I had joined him. But he did jolt my heart a little yesterday when he sent me the photo on this page. He was concerned about the Marriott’s low temperature forecast for Racine, Wisconsin. You can see the Marriott had predicted a low of minus 460 degrees. Sacramento weather looks better all the time.
Why Sacramento Listings Are Withdrawn, Canceled or Expired From MLS
Not to have a single withdrawn, canceled or expired real estate listing in today’s Sacramento real estate market is completely impossible among top producers, yet some websites rank agents by percentage of listings sold. If a Sacramento real estate agent had only two listings a year — and that’s about the number of listings that most agents list — and she sold one and the other seller canceled, the agent would show a 50% ratio, which is really bad.
There are many reasons why a home listing in Sacramento might not see its way to closing, and most of those reasons are out of the agent’s control. Let’s take a look at withdrawn or canceled listings, for example. This is excluding a canceled listing that comes back on the market with a new MLS number to reset the days on market, or is off the market for a spell during a winter vacation or improvement project. Typically, 3 things cause a canceled listing:
- Insanity
- Exhaustion
- Overpriced
Insanity. When an agent deals with a large cross section of the population, she is likely to encounter a few sellers who suffer from sort of mental incapacity. They could be completely psychotic or simply bipolar but not every seller is balanced. Is it the agent’s fault that she doesn’t have time to administer the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test prior to accepting the listing?
Exhaustion. This happens more frequently during short sales because these types of transactions take much longer than other types of home sales. If the buyer, for example, drops dead or buys another home (same thing to the seller, basically), thereby canceling, the short sale can start over. There are many reasons for short sale rejection, and sellers need patience to eventually close. Some sellers give up the fight and choose foreclosure.
Overpriced. This is the most common reason for a withdrawn, canceled or expired listing. It is the worst mistake a seller can make, but sellers choose the sales price. When a home doesn’t sell due to price, sellers become angry at themselves and some of that anger ends up hurled in the agent’s direction, too, because who wants to squirm in their own hostility all by themselves? Misery loves company.
There is a guy in my real estate office who makes a very good living by working with withdrawn, canceled and expired listings. He spends all day in a space about the size of a phone booth calling these sellers. Can you imagine his phone conversations? The guy has got to be an armadillo in disguise or a saint, I’m not sure which.
In any case, all of these canceled listings can affect an agent’s percentage performance on some websites, and percentage of listings sold is not an accurate indicator of the agent’s actual performance.
