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Fixer Rosemont Home Pending in Four Days With 10 Offers
People see how fast an agent can put a home pending (into escrow) in Sacramento and they often make the mistake of thinking that selling Sacramento real estate must be a piece of cake, when little is further from the truth. I’ve been working on this listing for the past 6 1/2 weeks. There were a lot of moving parts, many circumstances and unforeseen situations, some out-of-state, some in the city, and it all had to come together. On top of this, I revised my comparative market analysis almost daily to arrive at the perfect listing price.
The listing price is not the selling price. The listing price is the value at which it would make sense to buy quickly and would attract buyers to tour the home. It has to be “just right” like Goldilocks. In our present Sacramento real estate market, it means to put a home pending quickly, the price can be overtly aggressive and it’s OK. Not out of whack.
To keep the peace among many people living in one house and to offer maximum exposure to potential buyers, we elected to set up showings on Friday night from 6 PM to 7 PM and during an open house on Sunday from 2 to 4 PM. The home went on the market Friday morning. I heard there were almost 100 buyers though the home Friday evening. Another 50 or so came by on Sunday. That’s how high our demand. We asked every potential buyer to please submit an offer by 6 PM on Sunday.
The results of showings and efforts to put this home pending
Some agents called to ask if they could show the home next week.
Although the listing expressly stated no FHA or VA, agents still called to ask if their buyer could get an FHA loan.
Another agent begged for a fast reply on Friday, threatening to buy something else on Saturday if his offer was not accepted. Hey, go buy that other nonexistent house. Be our guest.
An agent submitted a contingent offer at list price, as if either wasn’t bad enough.
Quite a few agents submitted at list price, even when informed we had multiple offers.
One guy texted me over and over to ask if he had to submit an offer by 6 PM, to explain to him precisely what I meant by that. Did I mean to say 6 PM? Or was it really 6 PM?
An agent who wanted to send a lowball but I told him not to then whined that we were not allowing him to meet his 40% profit margin. I suggested perhaps his inherent difficulty was his not being able to hire cheap labor and buy wholesale materials, but he was hellbent on complaining that his inability to meet my seller’s terms was somehow our fault.
One agent showed the property on Friday and got around to submitting her lowball offer after we put the home pending in MLS on Monday.
But interestingly enough, some agents were right on the money. They removed all contingencies upfront and provided proof of funds for cash offers. They offered to close quickly, giving the occupants a free rent-back to the end of May. I worked through dinner last night to put this together. And let me tell you, my efforts earned every penny.
If you want to sell a home in Sacramento, please call Elizabeth Weintraub and put 43 years of experience to work for you at 916.233.6759. I maximize profit potential.
What Does An Agent Do When a Buyer Freaks Out?
An agent has options when a buyer freaks out, and the best is often to release the buyer.
Such a relief that I am not on the receiving end anymore when a buyer freaks out, but I do feel the ramifications when it’s the buyer in my transaction with cold feet and it’s my seller who is affected. In this instance, it’s neither of those situations, which is why I can tell you what happened. Because it’s not my transaction. But it is a transaction that almost happened, then didn’t, then got yanked out of the fire and resurrected.
Say an agent has a home listed in Fair Oaks. Along comes a buyer, the offer is accepted and escrow is opened. Then the buyer’s appraisal comes in for less than list price, and the seller decides to let that buyer go along his or her merry little way. New buyer pops into the picture. Writes an offer agreeing to bridge any difference in appraised value, but whoa! The appraisal comes in not at the previous appraised price like expected but another $30K less.
To put this into more clarity, let’s reiterate with numbers. Let’s say, just theoretically speaking, that the first offer was $350K. The appraisal came in at $330K so the seller canceled. Then the new buyer agrees he will bridge the gap, pay the $20K difference in cash if it comes down to it and offers $350K. Except his new appraisal is $300K. To bridge THAT gap, it would cost the buyer $50K. Yikes. What do you do? Could be a potential situation in which a buyer freaks out.
The agent, being a creative genius, says let’s go with the first appraisal from the first buyer. She calls that lender for whom the appraisal was completed and switches her buyer to that lender. The lender pulls a bunch of rabbits out of hats and gets the loan approved for the second buyer in record time. Loan docs are delivered to escrow. Everybody is ready to sign.
What are the odds that the second buyer freaks out? Why would the buyer get cold feet? I guess nobody has the answer to those questions. The only thing everybody in this situation knows for certain is the second buyer has decided to cancel at the 11th hour.
There is only one thing an agent can do. Send the cancellation to the listing agent, along with an offer from a third buyer (in the wings) at $330K, and an approval letter from that lender who prepared the first appraisal, plus include a contingency release for inspections based on existing reports. You can’t stop an existing buyer from getting cold feet. You can’t talk the buyer out of canceling, nor should you. The buyer will learn soon enough he is not buying a house, no matter what.
What an agent can do is focus on the new buyer who suddenly has become an extremely lucky person.
Selling Homes in Bad Locations: SOLD 7511 Georgica Way in Sacramento
7511 Georgica Way, Sacramento, CA 95822 SOLD at $315,000 by Elizabeth Weintraub.
Selling homes in bad locations is one of my specialities as a Sacramento Realtor. Probably because almost every home, when you get right down to it, has a drawback of some sort, and a good sales person finds a way to make that drawback not look so terrible. I always look for the worst thing about a house so I can downplay it. If I don’t know what the worst thing is, believe you me, a buyer will undoubtedly find it and focus on it, and I’d rather beat the buyer to that punchline.
Address it head on and then draw attention elsewhere. Really accentuate the positive aspects. It’s not really that different of a strategy when selling homes in bad locations. Now, everybody has their own idea about what constitutes a bad location. Some sellers are surprised to hear they live in a bad location because they don’t see it that way. After living in the same place for years, the badness seems to become invisible. They become so used to it that it doesn’t exist anymore.
When I initially studied this new listing online, I could see it backed directly to the train tracks. Not only did the train pass by, but high tension power lines were in the back yard, too. The yard itself was fairly small and a large wall loomed as the barrier between the tracks and the house. Not really an attractive setting. The subdivision itself of Hampton Station was created about 10 years ago in the middle of a lower-income neighborhood, and I’m not sure the builders even finished construction. This was at the second wave of the market crash in 2007, just before the big collapse in the market.
The seller bought this home because she moved to Sacramento from out of the area. She wanted an affordable home that was newer with all of the bells and whistles. The lure of the community being brand new and a home nobody else had ever lived in sounded luxurious. She loved the granite counters, wood floors, stainless appliances, formal dining area, all of that space! A train was not important in the overall scheme of things. It was a trade-off.
A tradeoff our new buyer accepted as well. Where in Sacramento can you buy a 10-year old house for $315,000? Especially in a newer community like this close to downtown? I will admit I was getting a little bit nervous because it took me 9 days to sell this house. Most of my listings this year sell in less than a week. But because I am accustomed to occasionally selling homes in bad locations, this one went off without a hitch.
7511 Georgica Way, Sacramento, CA 95822 sold at $315,000 on March 29, 2017. If you’re looking to sell a home in Sacramento, give yourself the edge of hiring a Realtor with more than 40 years of experience by calling Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Perseverance Means No Cricket Sounds Allowed in Sacramento Real Estate
No Sacramento Realtor wants to hear cricket sounds when calling a mortgage lender.
Mortgage lenders in Sacramento are a crucial element to a transaction but they can also be a total bear to deal with. That’s because they tend to either over communicate or under communicate. Now, I suppose they can say the same thing about many Sacramento Realtors, and that might hold some truth as well, but I suspect agents are more likely just not to communicate at all than communicate too much. Cricket sounds are common.
Seems lately either I can’t get mortgage lenders to stop sending me all of their spammy emails or they simply ignore urgent questions. It’s one irritant or the other. Some guy called last week to say he noticed I am closing a lot of sales, so he must have just gotten his license. He wanted to know if I could meet with him because he believes he should acquire more friends. Bully for him. No. Then he asked if he could buy me coffee. No, again. He didn’t have a script for what happens when his target just says no. Not gonna happen, guy.
Dude, I flaked is the usual excuse in Sacramento real estate. Agents drop out of sight, stop communicating on a whim, and when they do pop back into the picture, it’s sorry, I was out of town for several days or wherever. Maybe I’m a bit jealous that I can’t just vanish and skip out of town for a weekend, leaving all of my business hanging, because I’m too damned conscientious. I couldn’t do that to people.
Like the other day I needed an update on a loan to keep my seller from teetering on the brink of insanity due to cricket sounds from the buyer’s lender. The poor buyer’s agent had called the mortgage lender over and over, no response. The buyer’s agent had texted, left voice mails, nuttin’, just crickets. So I thought, well, I’ll give it a shot. I called the phone number, which seemed to be the main line to this particular business, but the phone rang and rang. Then it abruptly disconnected. Cricket sounds.
I sent an email. No response. I called again and this time got dumped into voice mail, so I left an urgent message. Hey, bet this company has a website. I clicked on the page and it bought up names and phone numbers of other people who work at that company. I started calling them one by one, voice mail, voice mail, voice mail and then voila, a person answered. I shared my dilemma that the mortgage lender has not called the buyer’s agent despite repeated attempts, and I couldn’t seem to get through, either. I asked if there was some magical way I could talk to this individual.
Three minutes later, the lender was on the line. See, I have learned to never give up. Perseverance. There is always a way to accomplish your goal. I’ve never been one of those people who says, well, I called but nobody answered. That’s a loser excuse. I stay on it until I get a response. If you’re on the other side of this, you do NOT want Elizabeth Weintraub on a mission. You do NOT want to give a Realtor who thrives on challenges this task. Just return my call is all I ask. Cricket sounds are unacceptable.
Who Are the Three Best Rated Real Estate Agents in Sacramento?
Elizabeth Weintraub is named one of the three best rated real estate agents in Sacramento.
This new website sent me an email yesterday completely out of the blue to say they had selected me as one of the Three Best Rated real estate agents in Sacramento. My radar went up, because even though people tell me I have a golden touch and am showered with luck in all that I do, I know it’s not always that way. Nobody ever gives you something for nothing. There is no free lunch. There are always strings.
Yet, I went to the website and I couldn’t find the strings. There is a little bit of advertising on it, so the owner of the website is monetizing it. There are no referral fees to pay or listing fees. In fact, I can’t even access my information on that site. It is all set up by the website owners. They claim to personally select each best-rated company or best-rated professional that they recommend, using a 50-point system.
When I look at the other two agents, I’ve certainly got more experience, and my sales are higher, so I imagine anybody who goes to this site will call me. I have closed twice the dollar volume of one agent and four times the dollar volume of the other agent over the past 18 months. That’s good news. I like being named to the Three Best Rated real estate agents in Sacramento. Especially when, modesty aside, I clearly stand out as the best choice.
It’s not always that clear when clients who want to buy or sell a home in Sacramento start looking for an agent. Although, I will say that I talked to a seller in Nevada the other day who had researched and read many of my online real estate articles / Weintraub blogs and does not want to list solely with an agent in Nevada. She is insisting that an agent in Nevada co-list her property with me in California, which I guess I can do. I would prefer to just refer her to the agent, but that is not what she wants.
If you’re looking for one of the Three Best Rated real estate agents in Sacramento, I hope you’ll check out the website and find other professionals you might be just as happy with in other professions. Go to the Best Rated website and check it out for yourself. Pick Sacramento as your city and knock yourself out.
