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First Bloom in Land Park Sacramento Always Delights
Julie Elizabeth rose is a peachy yellow with impressive blooms.
Year after year, the first bloom in Land Park never fails to engage the senses. One day the weather is drab, dull and rainy, and the next, all of a sudden, it’s spring-time and everything is in bloom. We’ve had so much rain earlier this year that builders are falling behind with new construction, but our flowers and vegetation are thriving. I notice this because we need to hire a full-time weeder now. The onion weeds are taking over the back gardens, and it’s not like I will do it. Our gardener won’t do it. Where does one find a professional weeder?
Because I sell Sacramento real estate, I don’t even have time to care for a fish tank, how can I garden? Perennials are the answer. So, last summer I bought flowers for one of our new garden beds. These occupy the space where our spa used to live, the spa nobody used anymore. Over the winter, I never touched the beds, did not prune nor cut back anything. Then, this spring, flowers like the verbena continued to grow from the existing stalks. Now they are 8-feet high and tower over our garage!
If you’d like to take a peek at the first bloom in Land Park, here are a few photos I thought you might enjoy. I must add that I’m grateful to be living in a place where I don’t have to worry about whether it will snow by the end of the month, like people in Minneapolis do. I’m 99.9% certain it’s not gonna snow on our first bloom in Land Park.
Pink and cream carnations are a vintage variety
Red and white Asian Lily produces a sweet scent.
Star Jasmine reminds me of a Dutch windmill more than a star.
The first Shasta Daisy to pop up in our Land Park garden.
These tri-colored Gerbera multiplied like crazy this May.
The verbena consist of hundreds of itty bitty purple 5-point flowers.
These verbena are 8- to 9-feet tall and have grown over our garage!
Our purple crest aeonium are taller than me and produce enormous groups of star-shaped yellow flowers.
Coral aloe makes me wonder if I could make mescal from the succulent.
Photos: iPhone 7 Plus (pretty good for a cellphone), by Elizabeth Weintraub. Not that I would EVER shoot property photos with a cellphone. No reputable Sacramento Realtor would ever do that.
How to Customize Sacramento Listings to Reach Targeted Buyers
The Weintraub cats snoozing on a Sunday afternoon, Jackson, Tessa and Horatio.
To customize a Sacramento listing, especially to target certain buyers, you’ve got to know your audience. That’s the first rule of listing customization. When I walk into a home for a listing presentation, I pay close attention to the way the home is decorated and to the people who live in it. I am replacing the people who live in it with new people. And for most practical purposes, the new people generally tend to share things in common with the existing homeowners. People who are alike gravitate toward certain products.
Once you know your audience, that is the buyers you want to target, you can design a marketing campaign to reach those people. It can be simple things from the way the home is presented in MLS, to the words chosen to describe it and the places where buyers find the home. Or, it can be more complicated and marketed to specific mailing lists. Each listing I take is different because the people and the homes are different. I think about the preferences in music, books, TV Shows, extracurricular activities of my targeted buyers.
I would like to believe that all Realtors will customize Sacramento listings, but I know they do not. Some walk through the home and shoot vertical cellphone pictures. I don’t know how they sleep with themselves at night. As hokey as it sounds, each home has a certain feel to it. My plan is to turn that emotion into buying verbiage. To present the benefits in such a way my targeted buyers feel they absolutely must go see the home. I stand in the home and absorb it.
The second way to customize Sacramento listings is to find that one thing that propels purchasing buyer. There is always something. For example, it’s a known fact that buyers generally know whether they want to buy a home within the first 3 seconds of entering the home. It’s my job to find what they spot or feel during that first 3 seconds and transform that energy into clarity for them. I don’t want buyers to second guess. It should be right in front of them. Easily understandable.
There is always a way to make things work. The third way to customize Sacramento listings is to get rid of the things that interfere with the first two rules. When we decided to adopt a third cat in our household, we needed the perfect cat that would blend in with our existing two cats. Our adoption wasn’t just about Horatio, we had to take Tessa and Jackson into consideration. But, hey, that thought process paid off. Look at how well those three cats sleep together now.
If you’re looking to sell a home in Sacramento, why not call a Sacramento Realtor who treats each listing as a precious commodity that deserves her 100% attention? Put 43 years of experience to work for you. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Buying a Sacramento Home Subject to a Sunday Open House
Sunday open houses tend to attract buyers in Sacramento.
Dear Sacramento Buyer’s Agent:
Thank you for showing my listing and asking about how the seller will handle offers with a Sunday Open House on the horizon. Oh, and thank you for sharing your buyer is fully qualified through The Internet Lender. I would be remiss if I didn’t share my opinion of The Internet Lender. It doesn’t necessarily mean your buyer is qualified. We’ve all had transactions with internet lenders fall apart because the monkey, excuse me, I meant monkeyfied mortgage loan officer, did not take the time to thoroughly scrutinize the loan application.
Further, these types of internet lenders often end up with out-of-area, and by that definition, non-qualified, appraisers. We all know where the rabbit hole that leads, but I’ll spell it out. Low appraisals. Unhappy sellers. Kicked out into the street buyers. Your buyer might get an edge if she were to get qualified with a local lender, which tends to carry a lot more weight with experienced listing agents and their sellers than an internet company. This is just a suggestion, not a requirement. Unless it is, and we’re just not telling you.
We also expect to receive multiple offers, so a list price offer probably won’t get her the house. We are holding the home open on Sunday, and there is no guarantee the seller will take an offer before the open house, although I will send an offer immediately upon receipt. You never know, the seller might take it. Then again, maybe not. I may advise against it.
My suggestion is you write the offer as though it is already Sunday afternoon, and we’ve held the Sunday Open House. You may want to advise your buyer to put her best foot forward in that offer because she might not get a second chance. There is no guarantee a seller will consider a counter offer. Much of the time in these situations, I see sellers just take the best offer. On page 9 for acceptance of offer, you might give us until after the Sunday Open House for a decision . . . so your offer doesn’t expire, of course.
Moreover, the home is sold AS IS. Although we are not aware of anything wrong with it, you and I both know a home inspection will reveal a bunch of defects. Please be advised the seller will not issue a credit, renegotiate the sales price nor make repairs. It is best if the buyer is prepared in advance to accept the fact there might be a few things he or she will need to later on fix. That is an ongoing fact of life, btw, whether it’s a house or yourself.
Why Don’t All Realtors Use Professional Photography for Sacramento Listings?
Professional photography for Sacramento listings should not be a choice for a professional Realtor.
A while back I read an article about the reasons to use professional photography for Sacramento listings, for all Sacramento listings, and not just high-end listings. The author was a photographer, of course. But what he said struck home. Why do Realtors discriminate against their clients by shooting the low-end listings with a cellphone and hiring a professional photographer on the high-end? Is a $100,000 condo homeowner less deserving of beautiful photos than a luxury waterfront home seller? I don’t believe so. We provide a service to our clients. Why should that service differ based on the sales price of the property or on the seller’s income? We don’t charge a lower percentage of commission for a low-end than a high-end.
A guy with an entry-level home in Oak Park deserves the same quality of photography as the guy in Granite Bay.
Because I sell all types of properties in the Sacramento area, from $30,000 condos to $1 million+ luxury homes in Sacramento, I would often over the years shoot my own photos. I’m a decent photographer with a Nikon 7200, and I have a good eye; I’ve been a Photoshop user for decades and am adept with the software. But slowly I’ve been converting to hiring professional photography that better showcases my listings. As such, I had to face that inevitable question.
Should I use professional photography in Sacramento for all of my listings or just the upper end? I pondered the question for about all of 3 seconds before I realized what a stupid question it was. OK, maybe I would not use professional photography for a short sale that needs a ton of work because the bank would be confused and demand a higher price. Every other listing, yes, absolutely. Because every seller who is not in a distressed sale situation, and that accounts for 95% of all home sellers in Sacramento, deserve the same stellar service regardless of income, status or price of their home.
I don’t even care if it’s a fixer home with carpet beetles hanging from the ceiling, I hire professional photography in Sacramento. The photos are clear, sharp, focused, and my photographers use high-definition technology. There is no fish-eye in those pictures. I saw a set of photos in MLS shot with a cellphone recently and the agent’s thumb was in one of the pictures. Cellphones cannot shoot interiors, people. The depth is too short to showcase an entire room.
You may wonder don’t sellers ever look at their listings online and get angry that their agent shot such horrible photos? Toilet seats up (you can guess the gender), vertical shots, upside-down photos, dark rooms without flash. Why do the listing agents do that to their sellers? Because they don’t give a crap. And it shows. On top of this, they are cheap. These cheap agents who discriminate do not want to spend a hundred bucks.
Well, I do give a crap. I don’t discriminate against my sellers. Each listing is precious and deserves my best effort. If an agent is not willing to spend $100 or so on professional photography for Sacramento listings, perhaps that seller should hire a different Realtor whose brand reflects better service? There is no place for discrimination in Sacramento real estate, yet you and I both know it exists. At least you won’t find that attitude with the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. I can’t vouch for everybody else, but I sure would like to see the bar raised.
46 Days to Close Escrow With This Sacramento Mortgage Broker
If you choose the wrong Sacramento mortgage broker to do your loan, you’ll get delays.
There is a reason we refer only the top guys as a Sacramento mortgage broker to our buyers. They perform. They do what they say they will do. There are no excuses offered up because they don’t screw up. Our preferred mortgage brokers return phone calls. When everybody’s bag o’ money is pretty much the same, a Sacramento home buyer would have to be a bit nuts not to want to work with our preferred mortgage broker. The guys who make sure to close early or right on time are a precious commodity in Sacramento real estate.
We just closed an escrow that took the buyer’s mortgage broker 46 days to close. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I had to sell this particular home twice and get paid only once, we also had to deal with not one, not two, but three extensions, and they were all mortgage related. The buyer told his agent he pretty much regretted choosing HomeStreet, but he was so far down that rabbit hole he had to stick with them. Hopefully our bad experience is not a reflection on the entire company but isolated to that one loan rep.
The agent said the Sacramento mortgage broker shared conflicting stories that didn’t add up when he talked to the buyer. But I don’t have any direct knowledge of that stuff. I do know that I never once heard from the mortgage broker all through escrow until the second extension was about to expire and I called the dude myself. As the listing agent, I had received zero updates.
When I didn’t receive a response to my voice mail, I pulled up the roster to see who else worked at the company, called one of the other reps and begged him to please get in touch with our rep and ask our rep to call us. That did the trick. Dude called. He said he had also responded to my email but I did not get it. The reason I did not get his email is because a long time ago this particular person evidently did something to cause me to blacklist him, as I later discovered this guy’s email was indeed blocked, LOL. But that didn’t explain why hours passed without a call.
We never got a straight answer as to why the file was delayed. Whatever the reason, experienced mortgage lenders typically look for red flags upon loan inception. The lenders with foresight, the lenders who care take care of issues before it gets into underwriting. The buyer promised us he always returned documents immediately, so who knows. We just know it took this Sacramento mortgage broker 46 days to close escrow, and communication was fairly nonexistent.
It was getting to the point that the seller and I were close to taking bets as to when it would close. I’ll see you a 5th of bourbon and raise you a case of Ghost Block Cabernet, we joked. I couldn’t guarantee a closing date for my seller until the day before, which is not the way I prefer to do business.
