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We Need a Price Reduction to Pay for Our Preferred Upgrades
Sacramento home buyers always have reasons for a price reduction but few matter.
Reasons for a price reduction in Sacramento. You’ve gotta love buyers who send offers with the explanation that they have adjusted the offer to account for all of the upgrades and repairs they plan to make. For starters, they think it has some bearing on the offer. Or maybe they simply just hope it is relevant in some way. It’s a wasted effort. Hello? I’d like to buy your house, but first you need to lower the price to to accommodate my desires. I’d like to install a swimming pool in the back yard because this house has no pool. What were you thinking, a lawn, in this drought? Plus, I’m really loving the Eames craze and plan to build low-level seating around the fireplace that’s not yet been built but which I will construct from hand-fired brick touched only by virgin hands.
Ooooh, I am NOT jiggy over the front door. No, see, this home really needs a double-door entry with a humongous lion head for a knocker. Do you know where I can buy such a thing? Oh, never mind, I’ll find it on eBay. Just give me that price reduction.
The roof is not jamming. That black and gray composition shingle is at least 10 years old. Whoa. It needs to be brilliant blue, perhaps imported tile from Japan. That kind of roof is really expensive, as you know, so I need to knock another $25,000 off the sales price. You don’t mind, do you, because you’re already making a boatload of bucks on this deal, right? Help a fella out, why doncha? What’s a price reduction to you anyway? It’s peanuts.
The kitchen appliances? The dishwasher, gas cooktop and refrigerator are white, for crying out loud. I don’t care that they’re brand new, I hate white. Hate it, hate it, hate it. If it’s not stainless with a hint of edgy ornate. Fuhgeddaboutit.
Let me also point out, I found a cracked tile in the master bath. Speaking of the master bath, I would really like a Jacuzzi instead of a regular bath tub. OK, it doesn’t need to be a Jacuzzi brand, but it still needs to bubble. Like my personality! Hey, look at my most recent selfie! I just shot it this morning when I ran over a homeless person in the street. My hair flowing in the wind. I felt this bump under my bicycle tire, but what the hey.
And the list goes on. Many buyers hold these types of opinions and demands today. Thank goodness there are still investors in the Sacramento marketplace. I’m finding that when homebuyer occupants thumb their noses, the investors swoop in. Lately, investors have been paying more, a lot more, than owner occupants to buy the same house. Why do you think that is happening? Could it be that investors know something that regular homebuyers do not?
You wanna price reduction in a low inventory market in Sacramento? Think again. If you need a Sacramento Realtor, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Reasons Sellers Might Reject Purchase Contracts in Sacramento
Sellers reject purchase contracts for many reasons during multiple offers.
After receiving a dozen offers for a home in Sacramento, a seller is poised to reject purchase contracts, there’s just no way around it. Sellers might want to sell the home to every single buyer, but that’s impossible. They can pick only one. Of course, it doesn’t mean they can’t send multiple counter offers to every buyer yet, again, that’s not always reasonable. Most sellers tend to pick 2 or 3 offers to counter, which means the bulk of the offers, while reviewed and considered, are unacceptable.
As a top Sacramento listing agent, I see many situations in which sellers reject purchase contracts. I provide guidance, but I do not choose the winning offer, even when the seller begs me to just pick one, I don’t do it. And, yes, sellers have asked me to choose for them. I say the obvious: it’s not my house. I have a 6% interest in the sale but they have 94%, so their opinion is a whole helluva lot more important than mine.
I do realize that sometimes buyers in Sacramento are reluctant to submit an offer when they figure there might be multiple offers. But the way I’ve watched multiple offers work lately, an agent could receive 10 or more offers but only 1 or 2 are competitive. So the odds are if you submit a competitive offer, your offer won’t be among those that cause the seller to reject purchase contracts.
So, why do sellers reject purchase contracts? Let’s look at a few generic situations that could cause such rejection in a multiple-offer situation. I never provide specific reasons for rejection because it’s not any of my business and it is bad risk management.
Offers at list price or slightly above list price by a few thousand. It doesn’t matter if this type of offer is cash or 100% financing. If you truly love the home and see that many other buyers do, judging by the number of cards on the kitchen counter, the number of people crowding the open house, or simply the appeal and price, an offer at list price or slightly above is rarely enough to generate excitement for the seller. One certainly would not offer list price and an hour later send a revised offer to reduce it, under any circumstances, yet people drink the Kool-Aid anyway.
VA offers in which the buyer does not agree to pay for a pest completion nor compensate for certain fees the buyer cannot pay. For example, a VA buyer cannot pay for escrow, which is customarily split 50 / 50. But a VA buyer could split the owner’s title insurance instead to make up for it.
FHA offers with less than 20% down. Particularly FHA offers with 15% down. While a buyer is free to put down any amount, it makes a seller wonder why a buyer would put down 15% when 20% down would eliminate mutual mortgage insurance premiums. One reason is perhaps the maximum loan a buyer can obtain is with 15% down, and that’s all they have. So they can’t pay more than list price nor bridge a gap in an appraisal. Even 3.5% down buyers might have more money available than a buyer with 15% maximum.
CalHFA loans or any type of first-time home buyer programs that provide the funds for the down payment and closing costs, on top of adding an additional layer for a second approval. Sellers wonder who buys a home without any money? How tight are the ratios? Could any little thing cause the transaction to blow up based on thin margins? This is not a judgment on CalHFA loans, btw, which are perfectly acceptable loans for first-time home buyers who need them.
If you take any combination of these reasons sellers reject purchase contracts, it can compound the rejection and cause an offer to fall to the bottom of the pile.
Why Trulia Listings Are Missing Homes for Sale in Sacramento
The delays in delivering Trulia listings to the public means that home is probably not available.
It doesn’t matter if you are looking for Trulia listings on Trulia or Zillow listings on Zillow, the information offered is not exactly the same data a home buyer could receive if the buyer obtained her listings from a Sacramento Realtor. That’s a major disadvantage to a buyer who does not have an agent. Relying on Trulia listings or Zillow listings is a very difficult way to hope to buy a home in Sacramento; almost impossible. Yet you wouldn’t know that because the photographs are pretty and the homes appear to be for sale, even when many are not.
Let’s say, just for the fun of it, that you find a home through Trulia listings that you would like to buy. Here’s what you don’t know. You don’t know if any of the four agents presented to you as authorities for a particular neighborhood have ever sold a home in that neighborhood. Fact. Many are new agents who pay to advertise their mugs on Trulia in hopes you will call them. If you do call one of those agents, realize the phone number is not the agent’s phone number. The individual phone numbers listed for agents belongs to Trulia or Zillow and . . . Big Brother is tracking and recording your call. Betcha didn’t know that.
If you do manage by some miracle to contact an agent who answers her phone, the agent will want to show you other homes if that home is pending, and that particular home is most likely pending or sold. Just realize the odds of that home being for sale are not very high. The market for Sacramento real estate is moving FAST. Often homes sell before the For Sale sign is pounded into the ground.
I can assure you there are homes you want to buy RIGHT NOW that are not among Trulia listings. I hear Trulia is working on this issue, but it’s been an issue for us agents forever. When will it get fixed? I don’t know. Like you, I want it now, and I can’t get it from Trulia. If a 40-year veteran agent can’t get it, what does it say about you?
The lead time for MLS data from brokers to download into Trulia is 48 to 72 hours. There is a delay. Two to three days for brand new listings to appear! Fact. Plus, Trulia does not pick up every listing that shows up on Zillow, either. Although Zillow tends to immediately reflects new listings for sale, providing they were not entered into its site in some earlier format, but loses points because it also lists homes that are not for sale at all such as so-called preforeclosures.
If you are not working a local Sacramento Realtor, the truth is you probably will not buy a home. Or, certainly not the home you really want. You need that connection to the inventory and our specific market knowledge, not to mention our networking within the industry.
If you want to find out if the listing agent presented to you is actually the listing agent, then you need to click on that agent’s website and look for the address. Or, you can decide to hire the best Sacramento buyer’s agent you can find. The agents who work on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team are top-notch, and we are crazy busy in this spring market, but never too busy for you. Call us. We can help you to navigate the maze of independent websites offering homes for sale. Your best bet is not Trulia listings nor Zillow listings. Your best bet is an experienced Sacramento Realtor. This is not a do-it-yourself situation.
Call your internet specialist, Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Top producer Sacramento Realtor at Lyon Real Estate, the #1 Sacramento brokerage for sales.
What is Wrong With This Sacramento Home Offer?
It is rare to receive a perfect Sacramento home offer.
The way I sell real estate in Sacramento works extremely well for my sellers because I am on the constant look out for what is wrong with this Sacramento home offer. My first instinct, unlike many Sacramento Realtors, is NOT oh, boy, we have an offer, let’s sign it. As in: press hard, third copy is yours. My sellers and I intend to close the transaction. To us, a purchase contract is a legal and binding contract issued in Good Faith. To other agents, though, we can be at opposite ends of the spectrum before ever going into escrow.
Of course, as with any purchase offer, the way it is completed by the buyer’s agent is more than half the battle. First the offer needs to be completed correctly (spelling, math errors, unchecked boxes, blank lines, wrong forms) and much of the time it is not. But that is no surprise and not the primary issue. Those are clerical errors we can fix.
The real issue is the motivation, intentions and qualifications of the buyer. In a hot seller’s market in Sacramento, the most obvious sign in a Sacramento home offer is typically the sales price. Too low or too high can be a red flag, and I never know which we will receive. Digging deeper, we might find, for example, that the buyer has never seen the property. When buyers don’t view properties, it means they might have more concerns and try to renegotiate later.
It can be a kiss of death to remove a home from the market and put it back on market. Sellers lose the momentum of being a brand new listing in a hot, hot Sacramento market. Now the sellers’ home is damaged goods. And why? Because some agent tried to take a short cut and not show the property, and then tried to induce the seller to accept the Sacramento home offer by offering pie in the sky.
There are many other factors that enter into the work of analyzing a Sacramento home offer. The result can be as simple as a buyer offering less to entice a counter offer, which means once the counter is out, another offer is likely to arrive at full-price without the bickering, and the seller will jump on it, and withdraw the counter. Bickering on the front end can lead to bickering in the middle.
This Sacramento Realtor is patient. I wait for what is best for my sellers and advise accordingly. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Finding the Address of an Off Market Sacramento Listing
Ask an agent to set up an MLS account for you to find new listings in Sacramento.
Inventory is so dramatically low in Sacramento — we have 1,735 active listings in the county at the moment — that buyer’s agents are contacting top listing agents to beg for details on an upcoming or off market Sacramento listing. They want to look at the home in Google maps or drive by or send their buyers to investigate, all before the home comes on the market. Some try to locate an old listing in the MLS archives with photographs or maybe they check Zillow where old photographs go to die.
I’m not gonna say they go so far as to park in front of the house and wait for the owners to leave for work, but it’s a possibility. They definitely want to peek in the windows. Be first. Get a glimpse. Trespass. They don’t think of it as trespassing or invading privacy because people are often too danged wrapped up in themselves and their own needs to care about how they appear to others or the consequences of their own actions. They live in the surreal world of “I want it, so it must be OK,” and they don’t give any of it a second thought.
Personally, I blame those parents and educators who tossed out awards like candy when the kids didn’t really deserve it. Because everybody in Johnny’s class is a winner! No, everybody is not a winner. Some kids are losers. Like Donald Trump, for example. Why they need to be instilled with grandiose ideas is beyond me, but I do know this, I am NOT disclosing an address of a new listing unless my sellers authorize it, and no sellers do. An off market Sacramento listing is just that, off market.
Well, except for my Elizabeth Weintraub Team members. I do share information with them. They work closely with buyers.
Negative Housing Inventory Fuels Push for Off Market Sacramento Listing
It’s not for any of the reasons some agents might presume. I do not disclose off market addresses to protect my sellers’ privacy. It’s rough enough to go on the market and be bombarded by calls to show, agents who traipse through and leave on lights, doors unlocked, flipped-up duvet covers because they were crawling around and looking under the bed for whatever reason. It’s an inconvenience, albeit for a short period of time.
We don’t need the advantages of Coming Soon in Sacramento this spring. It’s already crazy enough.
We Have More Homes Pending Than Homes for Sale in Sacramento County
We have 1,928 listings pending in the county of Sacramento today. That’s more than the number of homes we have for sale (see first paragraph). Do the math. It means we’re at a negative for “months of inventory” as compared to the pending sales. The median days on market for 3-bedroom pending sales is 10. The average days on market for 3-bedroom pendings is 27. Nobody is gonna get a jumpstart on an off market Sacramento listing until it goes on the market.
Then everybody can fight over it. Maximum exposure, maximum profit for my sellers. That’s what I care about.
If you’re interested in talking about selling your home in the greater Sacramento area, I work as a top producer and cover 4 counties. I pay attention to detail and offer personalized service. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
