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Elizabeth Weintraub Can Sell Even This Home in Sacramento
People have asked this Sacramento real estate agent why her clients are so ecstatic about her to write such fabulous and expressive reviews after escrow closes. They ask how do I generate such positive feedback when I’m so busy? I generally don’t get the usual type of reviews that just say I did a good job and the clients would recommend me, and then they could go about their normal business and forget my name. Clients instead tend to say that the Elizabeth Weintraub Team does the supernatural and performs impossible feats, and they would pretty much strew rose petals everywhere we walked if they could afford it. Why do they say these things when all we really do is close that sale for them? I bet some people think we bribe them, but my clients are not the kind of people to accept a bribe or we might have tried it.
Here is an example of a remarkable short sale that closed against all odds in Sacramento. I started to work on this in July of last year. The seller did not have a key and the home was tenant occupied. I prefer that tenants move out because some are uncooperative and, even if they initially appear cooperative, soon as they learn it’s a short sale, many stop answering the phone or the door. Even though it’s against the law, they often stop paying rent, stop letting buyers see the home and all-in-all become a general nuisance. The seller hoped for the best.
I was my charming self, though, because Elizabeth Weintraub can sell, and persuaded the tenant to let us show the home on Friday afternoons. We quickly went into contract with a cash buyer. This was a buyer with whom we had closed another short sale in Antelope. He was a real estate agent. We asked him to produce updated proof of funds because his proof of funds was dated several months ago. Banks want docs dated within 30 days. He couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. So, after issuing a Notice to Perform and he failed to perform, the seller canceled this particular buyer.
The tenants were getting a bit testy by this time, but they cooperated and we went into escrow with another buyer, short sale buyer #2. Finally, the credit union issued a verbal counter offer. These responses are rarely in writing. The credit union demanded a higher price. They dinged around with this short sale for so long that the prices had gone up. I proposed the higher price to the buyer, but the buyer balked and elected to cancel, which in my book was a pretty stupid move because what kind of home would that buyer be able to purchase now? In a seller’s market when almost every property has a handful of offers? Not for me to worry about. Thank goodness I was not his agent.
We sold the home again to a new buyer in December: buyer #3 for this short sale. After battling the credit union for months, we secured short sale approval rather quickly this time. The buyer completed the home inspection and was getting ready to close escrow. The seller gave notice to the tenants and one of them moved out. The other tenant at the 11th hour refused. He told the seller that he wasn’t moving until the sheriff threw him out. The buyer’s agent called me to say the buyer was canceling because the buyer could not move into the home.
The purchase contract stated the seller would deliver the property without a tenant in it at closing. The seller could not deliver on the promise because one of the tenants refused to vacate.
My idea was to pay the tenant to move. That’s what he was angling for, cash for keys. It was cheaper than evicting him, and much safer than dragging him out in the back alley and whomping the living daylights out of him, which is what I suspect crossed some people’s minds at that point. But the buyer instead asked to cancel the escrow.
When it rains on your parade, you parade in the rain. I’ve learned that lesson in life. We put the home back on the market, pending rescission. In the confidential agent remarks, we wrote that:
- Potential buyers could not view the home
- Potential buyers could not view the home ever
- Potential buyers must purchase the home without ever seeing the inside of the home
- Potential buyers must purchase the home with a hostile tenant living inside.
- Potential buyers must pay about $25,000 more than our original list price
- The potential buyer’s agent would receive a severely discounted commission, an amount so low that most agents would refuse to even write an offer.
We received about a half-dozen full-price offers at those terms and conditions. Believe it. Because it happened. Because the real estate market in Sacramento is so insane and wild that a buyer would purchase a home they could not see with a tenant who would not move at the top of market value. Did I mention it needed to be all cash?
The existing buyer changed his mind about canceling and closed escrow last week.
Moreover, when a buyer’s agent told me last week that his buyer, who was purchasing a stripped out and vandalized home I had listed in north Sacramento, decided to try to renegotiate the agreed-upon sales price, the answer was no, followed by hell no.
If you’ve got a home to sell in Sacramento, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I’m more than happy to do it, and I guarantee you’ll be thrilled with my performance.
If You Can’t Buy a Home in Sacramento
How do you keep pushing on when the Sacramento real estate market is beating you down? I don’t know how some buyer’s agents are surviving out there in this desert of no inventory. One such veteran agent in Sacramento told me today that he is thinking about leaving the business. This is a dreadful market because there are buyers who will never buy a home in Sacramento in this market, especially if they are looking in Natomas or Elk Grove. It’s positively disheartening for many. At an open house in Elk Grove on Saturday we had more than 100 buyers come through. So far, we have almost 30 offers. Only one buyer will win.
Because I list so many homes in Sacramento, I see a wide variety of offers come across my desk. They range from lowball offers to asking price to 20% over market value. I can tell from those offers that we basically have two types of agents in Sacramento right now:
- The type of agents who talk to each other.
- The type of agents who work in a vacuum.
I also realize that a buyer’s agent can lead a buyer to water but she can’t force the buyer to drink. I’m not so sure that buyers truly understand what is going on. This climate makes me a bit concerned that buyers might blame their agents for their failure to buy a home in Sacramento when it’s the market and not necessarily the agent’s fault.
Years from now we might look back at this like the 1930s Dust Bowl. At least during that horrible episode in our country’s history it was pretty clear what was happening because you couldn’t see two feet in front of you. In Sacramento, everything looks normal. For Sale signs are in the yards. Agents are accompanying buyers to show homes. People are smiling. But it’s a nervous smile, and underneath they are depressed and worried and anxious. We need inventory in Sacramento.
Well, here’s my solution, because you know I have a solution, right? I’m not the kind of Sacramento real estate agent to paint this dismal picture and not offer you a solution. I’ve been in the business for almost 40 years, and that’s long enough to learn a thing or two. The first tip is if you’re gonna give up, then go home and crawl under the sheets and stay there because there is no room in this market for whiners.
The second tip is turn over the unturned stones. There are homes in Sacramento that are not getting showings. Not because there’s anything wrong with them. It’s because they are either overpriced homes, in need of repair, or on the market for too long. There is nothing wrong with a home that needs a little bit of work. All you need to do is adjust your attitude toward hiring a contractor or doing some work yourself. Often the prices of these homes can be adjusted a bit to compensate for the work needed. Align yourself to the fact that if you want to buy a home you need to look at all of the homes that are available and not just the cherries.
You want to know where the ants go, right? You follow the ant trail. At the end of it, you will find ants. It’s too simple of a principle for many people.
There are homes for sale in Sacramento that buyers and agents are ignoring. There is no competition for these homes. No multiple offers. No stabbing each other in the back and clawing your way over dead bodies to get to the top. These homes are sitting quietly, waiting to be discovered. Go out there and discover them. Find a way to write an offer and make it work. If you need help and want to buy a home in Sacramento, you can call the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. 916.233.6759. We’re putting buyers into homes.
Sacramento Sellers With Equity a New Trend!
You know how sometimes when your phone rings, and you either hear the phone number repeated in your ear, because you’re wearing a Bluetooth device, or you look at your phone and either way think to yourself: Oh, rats, nothing good can come from this, but you answer your phone anyway? OK, maybe you’re not in real estate then nor a Sacramento real estate agent like me. But I admit that I have, on occasion, fostered preconceived notions about who is calling me because so often I am correct about the fresh hell. There are times I do regret answering my phone and then there are other times that I am pleasantly surprised. It’s the trade-off for being proactive in this business.
Lately, what I’m finding is I am talking to more and more sellers with equity who want to sell their home in the Sacramento area. That’s a very good sign that our market is beginning to rebound and could be a new trend. I love working with sellers with equity. I would not say our Sacramento real estate market is recovering in leaps and bounds and you can get all crazy and ask whatever price you want for your home — because it’s not and you can’t — but the market is definitely turning the corner and the upward trend points to equity sellers. For the past 7 years, about 80% of my listings have been short sales. In 2012 alone I closed around 165 sides of which 129 sides were short sales. That still works out to about 1 out of every 5 is an equity sale, a seller who is not upside down.
I am predicting that if things continue on the same path I see now, my listing percentages for 2013 will be 1 out of every 3 sellers will be sellers with equity. I’d like to see at least half, you know, 50 / 50, but I suspect we have a ways to go on that. Who would have thought 7 years ago that a listing agent today would be so saturated with short sales that she’d almost forget what it was like to do a regular transaction? The pure joy?
I’ve learned so much about listing and selling homes in Sacramento from selling short sales that I can’t begin to tell you what an education it has been. I’ve learned a lot over the almost 40 years I’ve been in this business, no grass grows under my feet, but my extensive short sale experience has definitely made me a stronger and better real estate agent. If I can sell a short sale, I can sell anything. I can sell that empty cup from Starbucks you’re clutching. You need a home sold in Sacramento? You call this Sacramento real estate agent: Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I answer my phone. Even if I regret it at times.
Did You Miss the Boat to Buy a Home?
A Sacramento home buyer called yesterday to lament about her attempts to buy a home. She asked me if this was a good time to buy or a bad time to buy. It’s not as simple as that, I’m afraid. It’s a good time to buy if you can conform to the market, and if you can buy a home. That’s because interest rates are low and prices are very affordable. But it’s a lousy time to buy as well because you might not be able to buy a home at all. It’s not like a buyer can make a full price offer and expect that offer to be accepted. Come on, this is not the middle of the Mojave desert — even though that’s how Bay Area investors see us — this is Sacramento.
Sacramento — a severely distressed real estate market that is beginning to rebound. Prices are inches up. Prices are not kissing the sky like Jimi Hendrix. Yet home buyers are making crazy offers like Charlie Sheen on a bender. I can quietly list a home and slip it into MLS and within 24 hours, I’ll have a pile of offers on my desk for $20,000 to $50,000 more than list price. If this isn’t madness, I don’t know what is. If those Charlie Sheen offers were cash, I’d be dancing naked on my desk, but they aren’t. They are financed offers, and if the property won’t appraise to get that loan, they may as well be offering us a cart filled with gold bullion, which we all know will never leave the vaults at the U. S. Mint.
I can’t tell you if this a good time to buy a home. It depends on how much stamina you have and your appetite for rejection. It depends on your type of mortgage, too. It depends on who you are working with, which Sacramento real estate agents you choose to represent you. I can tell you the Elizabeth Weintraub Team is closing deals. I can tell you that some of the largest real estate companies in Sacramento tend to list most of the homes for sale in Sacramento. Some of the real estate companies do not put every listing immediately into MLS. If you are lucky enough to be working with a top producer in Sacramento, you might gain a bit of an edge.
It doesn’t mean that going to the listing agent ensures that buying edge because no reputable listing agent in Sacramento would put her seller at a disadvantage. No way, Jose. We want our sellers to get the highest and best offer; there are no compromises. No favorites. Everyone has an equal chance. But you might get a chance, and that’s the important part.
In this seller’s market in Sacramento, hitching your wagon to a top producer might be the wiser decision.
Goodbye to 2012 Sacramento Real Estate Market
This past year of 2012 could have been the best of times and also the worst of times but I’m not saying which. No sense making a proclamation. I will say for many sellers of short sales in Sacramento, the year was bitter sweet. It’s a relief to eliminate a financial burden, an albatross around the neck. For many, the road to a short sale was anything but comfortable. Nobody wants to come to the realization that it’s time to get rid of the house. The house they so desperately wanted to buy when it was purchased.
I’ve worked with sellers this past year who did not do a short sale. Believe it or not. Some of my clients were traditional sellers, that is sellers who had equity. Even the clients who were moving out of state, looking forward to a new life elsewhere, were not exactly ecstatic to be forced to release their home by selling it to a complete stranger.
It’s a little odd working with sellers who are not thrilled to be selling. It’s not like the old days, the days of the 1970s . . . and thank god I don’t have to listen to Barry Manilow anymore . . . the days when sellers were making money hand over fist. Sellers were selling even if they didn’t have to sell because there was too much money in their home, equity that was burning a hole in their pockets. They wanted to see it up close and personal. Cash in fist. Selling was a good way to capitalize on their equity.
So was creating paper. I worked with sellers who became buyers by creating a promissory note and recording a trust deed against their residences. These prom notes were often straight notes, without payments and accruing, often annually compounding, interest. Sellers used these prom notes as down payments on other homes, which also carried straight notes secured to them as part of the financing. This was like putting a roulette gun to their heads and not pulling the financial trigger for a few years. Maybe there was a bullet in that gun, maybe not. Riskier today than it sounded back then.
It’s much more straight forward these days. Although, in Sacramento’s frantic real estate market, I have been able to squeeze out a few sales this last quarter for sellers that were not short sales and probably would have or should have been if they had been listed with somebody else. Fortunately, we were able to stretch that sales price far enough to make the home sale an equity sale. That’s the advantage of hiring a Sacramento real estate agent with her finger on the pulse of the Sacramento real estate market. The market shows no signs of letting up. The tide is still rolling in.
Yup. Twice a day in French Polynesia, where I will watch fireworks tonight. Happy New Year to you!
