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More on Translation App Tricks for Real Estate
If you have been using a translation app in real estate, I have more translation app tricks to share. You may recall that I wrote a blog on this subject a while back. Yesterday, something very interesting happened, I received a call from a Chinese buyer with limited English speaking skills. While on the call, I tried to converse using the “Translate Me” app on my cell phone, but the app was not working properly. Then, quickly I used another app, “Google Translate.” It worked perfectly. Free apps, you know. Should not complain.
Unfortunately, after several tries, the female caller had hung up. I had politely kept asking her to speak, please. The app only works if the other person actually speaks, and she had not responded. When I called back, her voice mail was full.
Now, there is a particular setting in the app called Conversation. You click on it after you have selected the languages. In this case I had chosen a Chinese dialect and English. You may not know this, but there are more than 200 Chinese dialects and really no such thing as a Chinese language. Most common is Cantonese or Mandarin.
Here are more translation app tricks in real estate that are so cool. As you speak, what shows on your screen is the conversation written in both English and your selected foreign language, however; it also speaks aloud in the foreign language. If you have your phone set to speaker, the caller can hear you speak and your voice is translated instantly to a different language.
When the buyer speaks, it translates onto the screen in English for me to read but does not speak English out loud. This is the perfect approach for language translation on a cell phone. Additionally, if we were communicating in person, it would work the same way.
This call, however, made me wonder if she had read my previous article or if someone who spoke Mandarin had told her about it? How did she find me? How did she know to ask immediately when I said hello, “You speak Chinese?” I’m going to call her back today using this app. The hope is I can leave her a voice mail message in her language, as there are always more translation app tricks to apply in Real Estate.
As a top Sacramento Realtor, I look forward to extending help to many clients who speak other languages. I am planning to work with our exclusive buyer’s agent, Josh Amolsch, who is very tech savvy. He can help perfect the use of this app for our entire team. We can help so many people that ordinarily we would not be able to understand us or visa-versa.
If I lived in China, I would want to work with a very experienced local top producer Realtor and, if that person knew how to apply translation app tricks to help me, I would hire that agent in a Shanghai minute!
If you would like to work with a real estate team that uses technology to overcome any obstacles in the homebuying or selling process, call the Weintraub & Wallace team today! 916-233-6759.
— Jaci Wallace
Wondering About Full-Service Realtors vs Self-Help Real Estate?
Wondering about Sacramento full-service Realtors vs self-help real estate? Listen to this, I had been running hard all week and decided to quickly dash into the Ulta Store near one of my favorite pocket of homes in Elk Grove to buy makeup. Dashed in, grabbed my mesh bag, and headed for the face makeup.
Too many choices at the Clinique counter. There are so many types: sheer coverage, full coverage, matt, bronzers, different skin types, Yikes! So, of course, I take samples and brush them onto my hands like a real pro, NOT! My hands are now covered with 5 different kinds colors of face makeup. I wipe it all off. As I was about to start on the other hand with samples, I decided ok, this is crazy. I don’t have time for this, why did I even come into this store?
Then I approached another cosmetic counter. A very nice makeup artist in a white coat asks, May I help you? No, thank you. We are so trained to say: no, I can do it on my own. All of a sudden I realized I do need help or I will be here all day and I need to get back to selling Sacramento real estate.
Changed my tune: excuse me, I’m so sorry for being rude, I really do need help. She says ok let’s get to it, with a big smile. A few questions and she comes back with a pretty bottle. She puts my makeup on and it looks great, a perfect match!
Then I realize, ok, I need several other products and with her efficient and knowledgeable help, I can get in and out in 20 minutes. Sure enough, she soon had a bagful of items and I left looking like a million bucks, at least I like to think so, LOL …
She wrote it all down and said next time you come, I have your list. I can pull your items have them ready and waiting for you … I thought wow, full-service is the only way to go! Why do we feel we have to do it all ourselves?
This got me to thinking. People sometimes think a full-service Realtors vs self-help real estate services may not matter. After all, why do we need a Realtor to help? Think twice, as that’s what a couple I talked to recently believed. We can Google anything, they said, we do not need professional help.
I explained just a few reasons why hiring a Sacramento top producer is so fundamentally important. Further, Realtors have access to information they do not and years of dissemination training. Soon enough they changed their tune: Well, I guess we really do need your help,
After carefully listening to their goals and objectives, we set up a custom plan and began to execute it immediately. These people no longer seem confused about full-service Realtors vs self-help real estate services. They became our clients and value working with a full-service real estate team. If you desire top producers and professional representation to achieve your real estate objectives, call Weintraub & Wallace Realtors 916-233-6759, partnered with RE/MAX Gold.
— JaCi Wallace
RE/MAX Gold
A Behind the Scenes Peek at the Best Real Estate Team in Sacramento
The best real estate team in Sacramento in our clients’ minds is the Elizabeth Weintraub Team.
If you ask me, I will tell you the Elizabeth Weintraub Team is the best real estate team in Sacramento, because that’s what I believe and how our clients brag about us to their friends. We are not the biggest by any stretch but we close a large number of transactions every year, enough to surpass the dollar volume of many of the luxury agents selling $25 million or more — who also close fewer transactions than us. We buck the norm and accept everybody, small condo buyers to million-plus home sellers. There are only four of us, plus a transaction coordinator; we are all Realtors.
Our clients truly receive the most incredible service available. Our real estate practice is specialized and each client receives individual attention. I suspect there are a lot of agents who don’t really understand how a real estate team in Sacramento works, and that would include consumers as well. That’s probably because many teams work differently than the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. We are unique. Efficient. Competent. Professional. Experienced.
It was clear to me when I visited with a seller in Curtis Park a few days ago. The seller is also a buyer, presently in escrow to buy a home by utilizing the services of a team member on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. That team member is Josh Amolsch, an agent who specializes in offering exclusive buyer’s agent services to our clients. The client gushed on and on about how fantastic Josh is, his steadfast dedication and humble approach, which obviously our clients find endearing.
Josh, I should add, is a genuine person, which is a requirement to be on our team. We share progressive values; it’s the best way to work together. We have each other’s backs and it shows in our interaction. He is extremely conscientious and always puts his client’s needs first, above his own — even when he might prefer to be snowboarding or playing lead guitar in his band, he loves real estate and takes his role seriously.
I also listened to the seller complain about the agent he used when he bought his present home in Curtis Park. He said the agent had a team and passed off all the work to the team, and did nothing to help him to buy the home and ignored all of his requests. I could not imagine running a team in that manner. This happened years ago and the guy is still ticked off at that agent. Can’t say I harbor much respect for the fellow, either. I last worked with that agent on a transaction and never once received any communication. But not every agent, even agents who spend thousands on billboards and bus bench advertising, care about client satisfaction.
The way our team works, I handle all of the listings. Listings are my specialty. I represent only sellers. I do not personally work with buyers. I am a listing specialist. Although I’ve been in the business for more than 40 years, it’s really been the last 10 years that have brought crystal clarity to how well I perform listing homes. That job as a Sacramento listing agent plays to all of my strengths, and I thoroughly enjoy representing sellers.
Working in real estate in one capacity as a listing agent or the other as a buyer’s agent is what many agents aspire to become but never quite reach that pinnacle, so I feel pretty special. I’d say fortunate but I’m not really lucky when I worked hard to achieve this status. This is how many agents dream real estate should be. When a seller needs to buy a home, I pair the client with the team member best suited for the seller’s personality and targeted area.
My team members work exclusively with buyers, as a buyer’s specialist. We have no conflicts of interest, unlike many other agents who practice dual representation, which we do not. When you perform a job over and over, you become pretty darn good at it, when you’re not trying to be all things to all people. Their sole job, day in and day out, is to show homes, write offers, negotiate repairs and close escrow. I could not be prouder of my affiliation with each.
I saw something some agent had written recently that implied she was “old school” because she gave individual attention to her clients, “unlike a team,” and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Her “old school” is trying to be both a listing agent and a buyer’s agent at the same time, and probably double-ending the transaction by representing both the buyer and seller as well. Offering watered-down diluted services and bringing conflict of interests to the forefront, I imagine.
A real estate team in Sacramento like the Elizabeth Weintraub Team flourishes by concentrating entirely on the client and providing specialized services that few other teams provide in this manner. We run like a well-oiled machine. Clients would be hard pressed to find another listing agent who only works only with sellers or a group of buyer’s agents dedicated only to the buying end. It takes completely different approaches, skill sets and experience to do each of those jobs, which is why I predict we’re probably the wave of the future.
Years from now you probably won’t see individual agents trying to wear multiple hats in the real estate business. No jack of all trades in the business. Clients will become more sophisticated and demand separate services. You’ll have mainly only real estate teams, and we will still be here, striving continually to earn the trust and great reviews from our clients as the best real estate team in Sacramento.
I was one of the early adopters and pioneers of buyer broker agreements in the early 1980s when nobody knew what it was. Who knew back then buyers deserved to reserve services? I’m often ahead of the curve. If you’d like to hear more, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Sacramento Real Estate Team Celebrates Friday at the Riverside Clubhouse
Clockwise, Dan Tharp, Shaundra Bradley, Elizabeth Weintraub, Josh Amolsch, Amy McMullan and Kim Hedges.
Before I left for my Minneapolis trip last week, all of my Team Weintraub members got together for a Friday happy hour at Riverside Clubhouse in Land Park. The only thing I regret from the experience is that Barbara had to leave early and, as a result, was not included in the photographs we later shot. But what a blast for this Sacramento real estate team to meet for a couple of cocktails and dinner on a Friday. We often talk by phone, email and communicate through text, but meeting up with each other is a rare occurrence, to get us all together in one place.
The problem was the engagement was too rich, too full of laughter and sharing with each other that we didn’t think to take a photo earlier. I did that last week in Minneapolis. I was sitting in a bakery cafe at Bachman’s on Lyndale, visiting with Gary Lee Joyner, an old friend, extremely talented musician / artist. We had hitchhiked to Washington D.C. together in 1969, along with my girlfriend from Wayzata, to march against the war in Vietnam. I thought to shoot a picture of the Christmas decorations in the lobby of Bachman’s, but I never got a photo of the two of us, much less of him, even though it had momentarily crossed my mind. I was too focused on the conversation. The moment at hand.
Your work family is like family when you’re in Sacramento real estate. We all support each other and I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I can go anywhere in the world and my Sacramento real estate team members will take care of business, and vice versa. We are not Paul Simon; we are not an island. We’re a group of veteran professionals committed to the core philosophy that our clients are the focus. We don’t want simply “satisfied” clients, we want our clients to be ecstatic and to find comfort in the fact that we will always go that extra mile for them.
Our Sacramento real estate team work does not fall through the cracks. We rarely make a mistake, probably because we’ve made so many decades ago as we learned the Sacramento real estate business, and we learn from our own mistakes. We don’t want to repeat a mistake twice because that’s idiotic.
I hand-picked the members of my team because they show the same work ethic and dedication to excellence that I see in myself. We are similar stock, although we come from all walks of life and bridge generations. If you are hoping to buy or sell a home in the four-county area of Sacramento, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. You’ll get a Sacramento real estate team to support your transaction, along with a top ranking Sacramento Realtor.
