Email Elizabethsacramento real estate market
July 4th Weekend is Blazing Hot for a Sacramento Real Estate Agent
Blame it on the weather. It’s been so hot in Sacramento this week — temps over 100 degrees — that people have reluctantly chosen to sit under a ceiling fan or inside an air-conditioned space, over venturing out into the city to do one’s usual activities. As such, perhaps the July 4th weekend of lying on the sofa, wiping perspiration from one’s brow and contemplating the ceiling is what has generated such an influx of calls to Sacramento real estate agents.
It’s as though the thought might have suddenly dawned on potential sellers that hey, we have a home to sell and, it’s not on the market or, it’s on the market and it’s not selling, time to find a new agent. Because I don’t know what else could have stirred up this sudden and intense listing activity.
Ordinarily, right around the July 4th weekend, business slows down. People go out of town. They visit with relatives — stuff their faces with potato salad and hot dogs — or they go shopping, whatever, they’re not calling real estate agents. But this 4th of July has been anything but quiet. Heck, usually I go out of town for the 4th of July but since I celebrated my 61st birthday in Sausalito last weekend, I figured I can’t be gone two weekends in a row. My phone didn’t ring much last weekend, and even my email was relatively quiet, given the 300 or so emails I receive every day. Email is the bane of my existence but, as a Sacramento real estate agent, it’s necessary.
I can handle the extra business, though. Last year, there were times my inventory consisted of 70+ homes. I had to buy a whole bunch of extra lockboxes. That influx of business caused me to be even more organized and to develop more systems to efficiently manage my operations.
People often think that selling real estate is all about sales. To be really successful, one must think like a small business owner; and it’s a different mindset that is combined with a strong sales ability. I’ve got 3 wonderful agents who support me as my team members, and their livelihood is in my business plan as well. Together, we operate like a well-oiled machine. Focus.
Which allows for the occasional hiccup flow of unexpected business. I don’t want any client to wonder if I’m too busy for them because I will make the time; I treat every client like they are the only client I have. You know why? Because if I don’t, someday they could be the only client I have, and that would be a sorry state of affairs for this Sacramento real estate agent.
Look for a bunch of new listings from this real estate agent on Monday. If you need to buy a home in the four-county area of Sacramento and are having a tough time, call Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916 233 6759. We’ll put you into a home.
Flippers Rule in Some Sacramento Markets
June is shaping up to be a pretty good month for my real estate closings. I’ll probably have more sales close in June than any other month this year. I just closed a regular home sale in Curtis Park. This was a beautiful brick home in the St. Francis Oaks subdivision. Everybody who saw the home said pretty much the same thing about it: it was gorgeous but it wasn’t updated enough for their tastes. So, it sold to a flipper. I am seeing many homes in Sacramento sell to flippers nowadays, which is a stark contrast to 5 years ago.
It’s a challenge to negotiate between the two parties, to give a flipper enough room for a profit and to give a seller enough money to make the seller happy. But that’s a challenge I tackle day-in and day-out. My seller’s happiness and satisfying my seller’s goals is paramount to me.
It’s rare to sell a home in Sacramento over $300K without updates to a first-time home buyer. Like I’ve said many times, it’s the Sacramento flippers who originally focused on foreclosures who are to blame for the changed attitude of today’s buyers. There are tons and tons of rehabbed homes that have been resold. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with it because flippers have taken older, abandoned homes in disrepair and turned them into turnkey homes for first-time home buyers. That’s a good thing.
Sacramento flippers are actually good for neighborhoods. They revitalize downtrodden areas. Goodbye boarded-up homes, hello sparkling new stucco and shiny gutters. But they also shape buyer’s expectations, often unrealistically.
It’s no longer enough to buy a home with good bones and potential. Buyers don’t want those homes. Not when they are tempted by all the rehabbed inventory on the market. So the only surefire way to move homes without updates, which are now called fixers, is to sell them at a discount to compensate. The problem that arises for sellers who want to fix up their own homes is a seller cannot compete with a flipper. Because the average seller can’t buy materials at wholesale, nor do most ordinary sellers have access to low-cost rehab crews.
If a seller improves a home for resale, the seller is quite likely to lose money on the sale. A seller doesn’t generally enjoy the profit margins that flippers possess. So, that means the homes that need updates are more often than not sold to flippers.
Last year my database held very few flippers. Not so today.
How to Get a Sweet Deal in This Sacramento Real Estate Market
If you’ve ever required special circumstances to sell your home in Sacramento, this is the market in which to do it. As a REALTOR in Sacramento, I can tell you unabashedly that buyers will agree to do some of the craziest things just to buy your house. It’s a seller’s market. Sellers rule. I keep thinking that we can’t possibly make the restrictions and conditions under which a seller will sell any more ridiculous, but then I surpass my own thoughts and beat my wildest imagination.
There is very little inventory in Sacramento. If you’ve got a desirable home, you can pretty much write the rules, as long as you’re not breaking any laws, under which you will agree to sell. Me? I just go with the flow and try to make my sellers happy. What I think about the situation is not really important. What matters is what my sellers would like to do and whether I can accomplish that for them. I don’t run around thumbing my nose at people, telling them I know more than they do, even if I do. I just find out what the seller wants, and then I determine whether I am up to the challenge. I love challenges.
I’ll show you one nutty situation. We were ready to close escrow on an Elk Grove short sale when one of the tenants refused to move out. The tenant said he’d go when the sheriff tossed him out on his ear (code for: give me some money). Two days before closing. The buyer’s agent said the buyer was canceling under those circumstances, so I put the home back on the market, with a pending rescission modifier. The confidential comments informed agents that a buyer would have to purchase this home sight unseen and close escrow with a hostile tenant inside. I received a bunch of offers. No joke.
Realizing this, the existing buyer closed.
In another transaction that closed last month, a seller did not want to move out until he moved into his new home. He was steadfast about it, and nothing I could say would change his mind. He also lived in a somewhat difficult area because this little pocket of homes sat among others that were nonconforming. There was only comparable sale. We bumped the price by 6% above that one comp and put it on the market. We received a good half-dozen offers or so, and one of those offers was cash and 4% above the list price. That means the home sold for 10% more than the last home like it. See, it doesn’t cost to hire a Sacramento real estate agent, it pays you.
On top of this, I put the seller into a contingent purchase for a short sale in Elk Grove. Elk Grove, one of the hardest places in town to buy because buyers can stand 30 deep. The contingency period didn’t last very long because I sold and closed his existing residence in 7 days. The buyer of his residence agreed to let the seller rent-back for a period of up to one year at about a $500 reduction from the monthly market rent. He has the right to move out during this one-year period with 30 days’ notice. If that’s not a sweet deal for that seller, I don’t know what is.
If you’ve got a home to sell in Sacramento, go ahead and call your Sacramento agent Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put 39 years of experience to work for you.
Have Sacramento Short Sales Dragged Down the Market?
People think that short sales are dragging down the economy in Sacramento and messing up neighborhoods, yet little is further from actuality. Sacramento short sales are turning around neighborhoods and revitalizing entire pockets of homes that have been drowning underwater for years and years. In some areas, especially among neglected, board-up homes, a short sale is a chance for that home to live again, to bring life to itself and make a welcoming home that will begin to build memories for some lucky first-time home buyer.
I am on the tougher end of the rope, the more difficult side of the transaction, because I work on hundreds of Sacramento short sales. I’ve heard it rumored that some real estate agents have pointed to me and scoffed to their clients, saying I can’t sell traditional homes, although it’s not true because I do. I sell a lot of traditional homes with equity in the four-county area. They seem to believe, whether it’s through spite, green-eyes or ignorance, that an agent who is very successful at selling Sacramento short sales should never sell a regular home, and that’s pretty insane. Just because they can’t do two things doesn’t mean they should point fingers at those of us who can do more than one thing. Besides, before short sales, I sold traditional homes for decades, and I still do.
A Sacramento Business Journal article quoted me last week as saying that selling a short sale is like selling 5 homes in one. And that is true. If I can sell a short sale, by George, I can certainly sell any seller’s home with equity. A short sale is 5 times the work, and much more complicated. Selling a home with equity is an activity I can almost do blindfolded. Trained monkeys can sell a home with equity in Sacramento in a seller’s market, with buyers camping out in your yard. But an experienced Sacramento real estate agent is the person who bring you the most money and the smoothest transaction, and that’s what every seller wants.
I spotted a new home listing this morning come on the market in Carmichael. It’s a home I sold for $100,000 a year ago as a short sale. It’s also a home that took me 12 months to sell. I listed it in May of 2011 and it did not actually sell and close until May 2012. Well, it sold a bunch of times, and buyers flaked out. That helped me to get the bottom line from the bank, though, and I told every buyer who called the home could be theirs for $100,000. I had buyers who walked away completely and then came back crying, others who walked when we wouldn’t take their offer of $98,000. You ask yourself: What is wrong with people? Why do they let their egos get in the way?
I can’t count the number of offers we received that were between $90,000 and $99,000 but these guys just refused to inch over and join us at the winning $100K offer price. It wasn’t a secret. They knew they had to pay $100K, they just wouldn’t do it. They walked away due to a $2,000 or a $5,000 difference. Doh, doh, double-doh. But persistence prevailed, I don’t give up, no matter what, and it did sell at $100,000.
This particular home just came back on the market at $229,900. And you know what? That’s a good price. Those sellers will get it. I just wish I had this end of the listing, too, where the living is easy.
When Will Home Prices Double in Sacramento?
“When my home is worth a gazillion dollars, call me.” That’s what a former client expressed this morning. It put a smile on my face, and it was a good thing to wake up to find in my email. It makes me realize that as a Sacramento real estate agent, I need to keep in the back of my mind that we are all a sum of our total experiences. Most sellers do not really know anything about real estate or how it works — even though they might think they do — because they are not in the real estate business and / or they didn’t focus on economics much less real estate in college.
We can’t forget our roots, from whence we came. At one point in my life, I knew very little about real estate. Back when I was crawling around on all fours. After I gained an upright position and could jump rope and tie my shoes, I began an early fascination with real estate. I built houses out of sandboxes. Later, of course, I learned much from college courses, mentors, books, and the very best learning ground: first-hand experience. That means I probably made mistakes from which I learned. That was about 40 years ago, but I still try to keep those moments in time in check and myself grounded in reality.
A former client called yesterday in a panic because she thought for certain that I had sent her the wrong document to sign. For some reason, she did not read the lone sentence on the document, which gave her exactly what she wanted. No, she insisted that I send her a different form that we do not use. Then, she dove into further panic mode because she had signed the document in DocuSign and that was not her signature on the document. How could that be legal, she asked?
We are all a sum of our total experiences.
However, that does not explain how Kevin Spacey acquired that upper-crust Southern accent when his character’s father was a peach farmer. I’m talking about that great Netflix show: House of Cards. I suppose it comes from hanging around with other aristocrats. You don’t have to grow up with it.
I am also excited about Game of Thrones. First, let me say I am no Scarlett O’Hara. I am not clutching a handful of dirt thrust into the air and crying as God is my witness, but I do remember my roots. And I try to stay true to who I am. I grew up in the Midwest, in Minnesota. I relate to that pull-herself-up-by-her-bootstraps character, the Khaleesi. Something I read described her as the balls of a man and the heart of a woman. I appreciate strong women, and it makes the show interesting to me because it wouldn’t be interesting if it was just about men fighting. I get enough of that excitement from third-party mortgage brokers who can’t fund. Only thing is I don’t have any dragons. I have cats, but almost the same thing. Except they can’t breathe fire or explain to clients that I will be dead and gone by the time their $300,000 home is worth again $600,000 in Sacramento.
