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When the Only Thing Left to Do is Climb the Fence
We suspect many Sacramento Realtors climb the fence when necessary.
Here is the thing, if a Sacramento Realtor does not want to climb the fence, then she should not put her lockbox on a gas meter behind the gate. Further, for sellers, if you think that by locking your gate you are keeping intruders out of your yard, think again. Maybe you’re keeping wild turkeys at bay, but if somebody really wants to get into your yard, they will. Like even a gym-challenged Realtor who is 5-feet tall. I studied the situation. Yes, anybody can probably scale that fence, if she was smart about it. Determination counts, too. I am typically a pretty determined person. Tell me I can’t do it, and I’ll do it.
A client asked if I would withdraw her listing from MLS last week. We had sold her home for $15,000 over list price because at the time we received an offer, she was ready to take her home off the market. You know human nature and how some buyers are, right? Sometimes they don’t want the home until they find out they can’t have it. Which is how this particular home ended up selling for $15,000 over the sales price. I figured the appraisal would come in low, but also believed the appraisal would at least meet list price and we could renegotiate later, if we had to.
Turns out, due to lovely HVCC, we got saddled with some yo-yo appraiser. He decided he could not figure out how to adjust the comps to allow for using updated homes that were smaller and on smaller lots. He didn’t know how much to allocate for those minor kitchen remodels, so he ignored those comparable sales. As a result, the home appraised for $50,000 less than the sales price. It was for an FHA loan, too, so it had a case number, which would be pulled for the next FHA buyer. Any new FHA buyers were stuck with the low appraisal.
The seller promised to leave the gate open so I could retrieve the lockbox. Sure enough, the gate was locked. The fence was a bit over 6 feet. Yup, a situation where I would have to climb the fence.
If you’re ever wondering about which way to nail the boards on a fence you’re building, consider this. If the vertical posts are on the outside, you would provide a stepping place for a person to put her foot before heaving herself over your fence. However, this fence had the good side facing out and the bad side on the inside. There was no place to put my foot. I don’t do pull-ups for an exercise and therefore could not pull myself up the fence. Free-weights, that’s the ticket.
I could have called the seller, but that would have entailed waiting 30 minutes or more for her to get over there. I could have gone back to my home office and come back another day, but what the hey, I was already there. My outfit consisted of sheared corduroy pants, an Eileen Fischer silk shell, topped by a Merino wool sweater. My shoes? A cranberry patent leather with heels. Did I let that unsuitable ensemble stop me? I walked around the home but found no good access points.
The fact that the neighbors might call the police did cross my mind. But like a driver who often spins U-turns in the middle of the street by offering the excuse, “Hey, I’m allowed because I’m a real estate agent,” I figured that excuse would also work for crawling over a fence. If I needed more of an explanation, I suppose I could also add that I sell a lot of Sacramento real estate. Surely, the police would have pity on me then.
I finally decided to climb a juniper tree in the corner. Put my toe on a protruded nail halfway up and literally pulled myself to the top of the fence by using a tree limb as support. The important thing here was I elected to rest after I was perched on top of the fence. I didn’t care what passersby thought. Too busy enjoying the satisfaction that I could actually climb the fence. Catching my breath, too.
Getting down was actually pretty easy, and I didn’t scratch my shoes or tear my clothes. Best of all, my display key for my lockbox was still intact in my pocket. Bonanza.
The next time this happens, I will do the smarter thing. The smarter thing, instead of trying to climb the fence, is to go to a neighbor’s house and borrow a ladder.
This blog was previously published elsewhere 7 years ago and is provided for your reading enjoyment as Elizabeth makes her way back to Kona from New Year’s in Honolulu.
Why Agents Should Explain all Home Selling Documents to Sellers
Explaining all home selling documents to sellers helps to avoid confusion later.
Home selling documents are not as simple and straight forward as some of us like to believe. Especially when you’re been in the real estate business for as many decades as I have, I have probably forgotten about more documents than the existing home selling documents we use today. We Sacramento listing agents can become complacent and assume sellers know everything when sellers usually know very little.
Even if the seller has sold homes in the past, almost every transaction is different, unique in some way. The home selling documents can also vary from transaction to transaction.
My client reminded me of this yesterday. I was working away on my computer set up out on my lanai, often pausing to look out at the white sail boats on the horizon when my phone rang with the song Sigh No More from Much Ado About Nothing. That’s my clue that I have a text. I love that melody. It makes me receptive to text messages. See how I set up those things?
My client had just arrived in Boise, Idaho, brrr. She texted me photos of the snow and remarked about the cold weather. We talked about a few things and then she said she was working on fixing an electrical problem and correcting something else in the house. I wondered why. So I asked her. She said the buyer put defects on the home selling document so she was fixing them.
Hmmm . . . I reminded her that the buyers did submit a Request for Repair, but that was for pest work, and we rejected it anyway. Her home is sold AS IS without any repairs. Certainly no electrical. My client said she found the repairs noted on the CR. That did not make sense to me. I asked for an explanation.
Well, she sent me the buyer’s agent AVID (agent visual inspection disclosure). The agent noted a few things that he knew did not work properly. This is why my client thought she needed to fix those things.
No, she doesn’t need to fix anything. I explained the home selling document is simply a disclosure. Sure, there have been times when a seller has argued with me over my listing agent AVID, demanding I change disclosures I made, and it can’t be done. Each agent makes his or her own disclosures and they stand on their own merit. It’s not a request for work. It can even be wrong. It’s just an agent’s observation.
I cannot begin to tell you how relieved my client sounded in her text message. I’m glad that I probed and discovered which of the home selling documents she misinterpreted. We Sacramento Realtors can’t take any document for granted. Sellers don’t work with these daily like we do. We need to stop and explain more. Nobody is ever offended when an agent tries to help.
How to Avoid Mistakes in Sacramento Escrows
My goal for clients is to avoid mistakes in Sacramento escrows.
When you hire a Realtor like me with 43 years in this business, you would hope to avoid mistakes in Sacramento escrows. Because experience matters. I could go crazy naming all of the ways I help my clients by heading off problems at the pass before they get down the hill. Regardless, as much as I want to predict what horrible thing can occur and stop it, sometimes, despite all caution, crap still sneaks through.
It’s like trying to keep those baby geckos out of my house in Hawaii. I can make sure the door is always closed securely, and then I come home to find my housekeeper with her head in the toilet and the front screen door wide open. No wonder I later found an adult Gold Dust Day gecko upside down on my window blind.
Gold Dust Day gecko
You would be surprised at how good I’ve gotten at using a broom like a hockey stick and sailing these guys out the front door. First I sweep the gecko off the window to the floor, and before it knows what’s happening, I swing at it with just a slight twist of my wrist to send ’em flying.
So it’s not always preventing problems as much as it is swift action to resolve the issues when, despite an agent’s best intentions and effort, they happen anyway. For example, one of my clients is in the UK. I prepped her on how to get an appointment at the Embassy to sign and notarize a deed. A seller doesn’t have to be in Sacramento to sell a house. Just like your Sacramento Realtor doesn’t need to physically be in Sacramento, either.
I asked the escrow company to please write on the FedX package a description of the legal documents to avoid a delay. The authorities in the UK can retain packages for x-ray if there is no description noted on the airbill. Escrow promised. Then the escrow officer went home sick and her assistant took over. I asked the assistant to please make sure she writes a description.
Even though I was very hopeful my client would receive the FedX package, she didn’t. I verified with the assistant that she indeed had provided a description. Yes, she had written on the package with a sharpie . . . but she did not put the description on the airbill. So you know what happened. The package is delayed and in x-ray.
No biggie. The larger issue is the appointment at the Embassy. My client wants to avoid mistakes in Sacramento escrows as much as the next person.
We are also replacing a half dozen windows in this house that failed. The windows are under warranty, and my seller is probably one of the few homeowners who has been proactive enough to get her windows replaced. None of her neighbors has been able to. But her windows were ordered and arrived at the glass company yesterday. However, one of them is the wrong size, so the installation will be delayed into mid-January while they reorder.
Our initial hope was to start the process early enough so the windows would be replaced before we closed escrow. Although we did not count on the shipper messing up and sending the wrong window, it’s a fact of life that somebody along the line will screw up. The silver lining in this situation is the buyer is getting new windows and his neighbors are not.
Despite our focus to avoid mistakes in Sacramento escrows, we cannot control third party actions. We can just clean up the debris as best we can and move forward to closing. Because there were so many other things that could have gone wrong but did not.
How to Revoke a Cancellation When Buying a Home
Sellers are not always eager to revoke a cancellation when a buyer asks.
Rarely does a buyer decide to revoke a cancellation when buying a home but it seems to happen enough lately. Makes me wonder if there is something in the water. One day the buyer is madly in love with the house; the next day, cold feet. They find some peculiar aspect of the situation to focus on, blow out of proportion, and the next thing you know, they execute a cancellation.
Always for silly insignificant things it seems. Then, for no known reason, they suddenly change their minds. Nope, they really DO want to buy the house, and they regret signing the cancellation. Fortunately, there are several ways to revoke a cancellation. The easiest solution is to sign an addendum agreeing to revoke the cancellation and pick up where the parties left off.
Usually, it is also wise to offer some kind of an incentive to the seller. Buyers need to look at the situation from the seller’s point of view to understand how upset, angry and annoyed sellers can get when buyers flip out and cancel a contract. Few sellers that I know have hearts so big they will overlook the irritation and agree to go back into contract. Especially if other buyers start to sniff around the home and make buying noises.
Sellers think: go with the devil I know, which irritated the hell outta me and whom I no longer trust? Or, go with new buyers who seem more promising?
Another way to revoke the cancellation is to write a new offer, clean and straight forward, perhaps with more favorable terms. That could restart the clock, most likely, with the loan. Whereas, with an addendum, if the cancellation was still wet, the closing period is generally shorter.
Either way, buyers may find they will need to sweeten the deal. Buyers need to persuade the seller to grant them another chance. Some of the things buyers can offer is to release the earnest money deposit to the seller. Little speaks louder than handing over non-refundable money. They can offer a higher sales price. They can release all contingencies.
Sometimes you have to make the seller an offer the seller cannot refuse.
Sacramento Housing Market Trends November 2017
Sacramento Housing Market Trends November 2017
The Sacramento housing market trends November 2017 shows the underlying story in Sacramento real estate. You have to dig around a little bit to find this chart, but this shows the last 15 months of average square-foot prices in Sacramento County. Over the past year, those prices have increased 11.4%. People are quick to jump on bubble theories, but that’s only because they don’t really understand what happened when the market crashed. They equate rising prices to the market crash, and that would be an untrue and unfair assessment.
Home prices were on the way down when the crash occurred. It was the financing free-for-all, lack of qualifications and the fast and loose Wall Street shenanigans that led to the crash. Today, most people either pay cash or are scrutinized under a microscope, plus they enjoy healthy equity positions obtained by large down payments.
Elizabeth Weintraub’s Prediction for the Future of Sacramento Real Estate
You wanna know what I think? Get ready, it’s not pretty. Here goes. Eventually, most home buyers will get priced out of the marketplace and we will return to a nation of renters. It’s already happening in many areas of the country. I’m also seeing apartment buildings going up in Elk Grove, for example, where single-family homes were originally planned.
People who call themselves a homeowner could become an oddity. Sadly, with the way things are moving, only the elite may own a home in the future. The housing market trends point to this data. In the chart below, you can see the overview of the Sacramento real estate market for November 2017. We are entering our seasonal dip in the number of available homes for sale and closed sales. This dip will probably continue through December as well, although, the month of December will probably be one of my personal best for the year.
My Elizabeth Weintraub Team this year will most likely break all records. We consistently rank in the top 10 in Sacramento. If I were thinking about buying a home right now, I’d be all over this inventory, trying to buy whatever I could. Because next year you might be priced out of the market. I don’t make up the housing market trends; I just report what I see. So, don’t yell at me about it. I didn’t do it.
Sacramento County Housing Market Trends for the past 15 months.
