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Expert House Hunting Tips Serve Sacramento Home Buyers
Elizabeth Weintraub’s house hunting tips leave no stone unturned.
Below are a few house hunting tips that I developed for use when working with Sacramento home buyers, but they can apply to most home searching efforts in California and probably outside of the state as well. The first tip is to know what the buyer would like to buy and needs to buy. Likes and needs are two different things but if we can accomplish both, then buyers have found the perfect home.
Little is worse than managing an irritated buyer, I imagine, who might say something like: the house is a total disaster — because the agent showed her relocation buyer the wrong home. Yet, that seems to happen on a regular basis around Sacramento. It is as common as a summer day in Sacramento topping 100 degrees; I often receive feedback on my listings from agents that indicate the agent should never have showed that home to that particular buyer.
Some of the reasons agents show homes that do not fit their buyer’s requirements are:
- The agent does not know the neighborhood and therefore does not know what to expect from certain price points. For example, if an agent spots a 3,000 square foot home in Midtown that is, oh, let’s say priced at $525,000, that’s because the home is a fixer.
- The agent does not read the marketing comments in MLS nor the confidential agent remarks in the listing, which typically set forth expectations and provide a wealth of information.
- The agent does not understand the buyer’s wants and needs.
- There is nothing else available in the buyer’s price range. Otherwise, how does that explain an agent, say, showing a 600-square-foot home to parents with many children? Yet, that happens. And the feedback is, no surprise, oh sorry, the home is not big enough.
- The agent doesn’t have enough experience to know how to offer variables and solutions to help a buyer expand her horizons and / or parameters.
My house hunting tips are to thoroughly investigate available properties. Before showing, the professional buyer’s agents know almost everything we can possibly discover about that home. We know, for example, how long the listing agent has been in business and how many homes she typically sells, and at what percentage from list price. We know how long the seller has owned the home and the approximate unpaid mortgage balance. We know how many days on market it took to sell the home the last time it was on the market, which signifies appeal.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg; we study the photographs to look for defects and, if possible, we preview. A home buyer’s time is valuable and top agents know that maximizing showing times is paramount. One of my best house hunting tips is for the buyer’s agent to call the Sacramento listing agent. Yes, phone to ear. Call. Old fashioned stuff that still works.
And let’s not forget our party girlfriend: Google.
If one can find the seller on Facebook, often an agent can read all about his plans to sell and hopes for a new home or whether he has been transferred out of state, getting divorced or, say, borrowing to meet the demands of a bail bond. It’s amazing what people disclose through social media. If you need a professional buyer’s agent, call the Elizabeth Weintraub Team at 916.233.6759.
The Art of Communication in Sacramento Real Estate
Diplomacy goes a long way in the art of communication.
The art of communication requires finesse. You can say the worst sort of things to people and they won’t take offense, depending on the way the news is delivered and the tone of your voice. Just ask me, your Sacramento Realtor, because I’ve been managing the expectations of home sellers and buyers for many decades. In fact, I was absorbing my natural influences the other night during Game of Thrones — that any types of demands or threats sound pretty darned harmless when you add “your grace” to the sentences. You can say anything.
Like, “Your Grace, the buyers have burned down your house during the home inspection; Your Grace, I’m so sorry, Your Grace.”
“Eh, I’ve got insurance; let’s go to lunch!”
In fact, I’d be a lot more willing to help a person I did not much like if that person referred to me as Your Grace during conversations. It seems to soften everything. Turn dismal gray days bright and sunny. Tiny beady eyes into big eye pop art. May you be rewarded by seven Gods, Your Holiness, I’d reply, and then I would wonder like I’m wondering right now whether holiness is spelled with a Y or an I, but I’m going with an I. It’s all in the art of communication.
Like Hillary Clinton telling Donald Trump to delete your account on Twitter. Although I admit that I enjoyed it, she could have accomplished the same thing through: Put a sock in it. More direct. More punch. And a bit of humor. Actually, I would not have commented to the Trumpster at all because there is no upside and plenty of downside when you engage with a racist, homophobe, misogynist lunatic. Sometimes you can practice the art of communication by not talking at all. But the a-hole is right there, in your face. You can’t sit on the fence.
Bottomline, the best way to practice the art of communication is by thinking before parting your lips and allowing unfettered words to escape. Consider how the recipient will receive the information. Try to make the delivery a welcome experience for a worthy recipient and a punch in the gut to the nasty guys, but in such a way it is enjoyable. Determine whether it’s best to pick up the phone and call instead of typing an email or sending a text. I have noticed that people who talk to their phone say things differently than those who type an email. And even emails can be impersonal. The art of communication. Try it. Fewer apologies. Better results.
If you’re looking for a top-rated and experienced Sacramento Realtor, call Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916.233.6759.
Is the Client Always Right About Real Estate in Sacramento?
Selling real estate in Sacramento involves more than knowledge about real estate.
What does a Realtor say when others ask if the client is always right about real estate in Sacramento when it seems they are not. It’s sort of a tricky question because the answer, of course, is in the affirmative. Even if the clients are wrong. Like when a buyer decides, for example, that they should ask a listing agent to represent them, in hopes the agent will be greedy enough and unethical to do whatever it takes to shove her seller into escrow. Except a dual agency action with that type of agent can open the door for both parties to get thrown under the bus. You let them make their own mistakes.
Way before I became involved in real estate in Sacramento, I recall an interview process in the early 1970s, at the electric company in Minneapolis, just before I moved out of town and went into real estate myself. My interviewer asked how would I handle a situation with a customer who was clearly in the wrong. My answer was something about educating the customer, and I didn’t get the job. Because the customer is always right.
There are certainly conflicts in dealing with people involved in real estate in Sacramento. It’s a people business. It is not really a real estate business, although understanding real estate, how it works, and possessing an analytical ability to negotiate are all strong positives, it still boils down to the people involved and managing expectations.
This doesn’t meant that I don’t educate my clients, because I do. If they tell me, for example, that they do NOT want an open house held for any reason because they believe open houses only benefit the agent and not the client — which is totally incorrect, btw — I don’t do it. I might explain to them that buyers see homes in all sorts of different ways, and stopping at an open house is one of those ways that generates buyer motivation. The buyer might view the home, call an agent and write an offer a day or so later. It happens all the time. I know this because I am heavily involved in real estate in Sacramento.
But if the client, who maybe sells a home once every 10 years insists on no open houses, that’s what I do. It might take longer to sell the home; it won’t be exposed to the widest pool of buyers available, but that is not my call. It’s my seller’s right to choose. I would feel guilty if I didn’t explain my reasons, but I would never demand a seller do things my way, if my way makes them unhappy. The client might not always be right about real estate in Sacramento, but they are right because they chose me to be their Realtor.
How Sacramento Realtors Find Home Sellers and Buyers
Sacramento Realtors often turn to technology to find clients.
Sacramento Realtors, especially those just starting out, often struggle mightily to find clients. If a Realtor knows a lot of people in Sacramento, it helps. My standing joke is I moved here in 2002 and I still don’t know anybody, and I do very well, typically ranking in the top 10 agents in town. It’s true, though, I work with people I do not know. But if you have connections through school, work, church, friends and family, you’re pretty much golden to make a successful career in the Sacramento real estate business, even if you’re a lousy agent. That’s because people think every agent is competent when they obviously are not. People presume that merely possessing a real estate license somehow magically imparts years of knowledge when it does not.
I spoke with an agent this morning who has been knocking on doors. To each his own in this business, and I’m sure some agents find success doing that, but it seems rather creepy to me. To wander the streets, knocking on doors of strangers to ask if they want to sell their home. I just couldn’t do it. And you’re reading the words of a woman who, in 1970, scampered door-to-door in Colorado selling encyclopedias. I had memorized my 90-minute speech and delivered my one-act play with enormous enthusiasm. I made a few sales and realized that was not a career for me. I refused to become a Fuller Brush guy. Back to college. Yet, some agents enjoy knocking on the doors of strangers, and I don’t begrudge them that. Seems like a really hard way to find clients.
Sometimes agents look at Sacramento Realtors like me and believe we’ve earned our spot of glory because we’ve been in the business for so long that all of our clients are referrals. Maybe that’s true for some Realtors. Many of my clients are referrals but many are complete strangers who found me online. Remember, I’ve only been in Sacramento for 14 years. I jumped to the top of the charts by embracing the internet and I’ve remained at the top by performance. I keep my promises and I deliver.
My 40-some years in the business benefit my clients in ways they don’t even imagine.
In the early days, I handled a lot of “Floor Time,” meaning I went into the office, sat at a desk and answered calls from buyers who wanted to look at homes in Sacramento. We used to call that the “up desk” when I sold real estate in the late ’70s, early ’80s in Newport Beach. I also held open houses every single weekend. I answered my phone whenever it rang. But I also shared my vast real estate knowledge that I’ve acquired over the past four decades by writing articles and blogs and posting that information online. From those efforts I built and adore my Elizabeth Weintraub Team of smart, friendly and assertive agents who work with me and support our buyers while I focus on sellers.
Today, when my phone rings, it’s no different than a “floor” call in my early office days. It’s a person on the other end who needs information and assistance, and it’s my job to deliver it. I still answer my phone. It’s an opportunity. I don’t send people to voice mail and haughtily announce I’ll get back to them at a certain hour of the day. I take on new business as I drive, shop for cat food or pull weeds in the garden. Experienced and well known Sacramento Realtors like me still work 7 days a week. We just don’t walk the streets knocking on the doors of strangers.
Similarities Between Hospice and Sacramento Real Estate
Elizabeth Weintraub and Barbara Dow at the Sacramento Cemetery playing an Ingress game.
If you think there are no similarities between hospice and Sacramento real estate, then you are not a real estate agent in Sacramento. Which is sort of surprising when you realize that one out of every 35 people in the state of California has a real estate license; yet we all painfully know, too, that simply possessing a real estate license does not make a person a real estate agent, but still. Busy agents who work in real estate day-in and day-out will readily spot the shared common denominators.
My brother who is dying from sarcoma cancer has taken a turn for the worse. He got to see Bruce Springsteen in St. Paul last year, though, as at the last minute a fellow Minnesotan told me how to get tickets for him. I also realize that he will not be using the tickets to see Don Henley from the Eagles at the Minnesota State Fair this August, a show for which I had optimistically managed to snag premium seating. The sad news from back home means I am making a trip to Minneapolis next week. In my multi-tasking world, is best for me to focus on several things at once: to visit my brother at his in-home hospice and Sacramento real estate.
Because there is always something horrible going on in Sacramento real estate to divert my attention. Some fresh new hell. To snap my head like a dog toward a squirrel. My goal is the same as most real estate agents, and that is to keep our clients happy by managing expectations and delivering results. If anything goes wrong, any little thing outside of our immediate control, many times the client will blame us. I hear agents talk about clients who scream bloody murder at their agent and blame agents for things that the agents are not responsible for, making them suffer the brunt of an explosion simply because they are the client’s main point of contact.
One can be defensive or proactive in these situations, and defensiveness loses: it loses in hospice and Sacramento real estate.
My brother was estranged for 20 years at his own choosing. When his end of life was imminent, he changed his mind and reached out. I’ll never get the answer out of him as to why he stopped communicating with me and my sister. I can’t make him divulge. No reason to even hold out hope for it. I can just be there to help him make the transition out of this world. To lend support. The older we get, the better we get at it. Just like I help sellers leave behind homes filled with memories of joy, sadness, pain and love.
Hospice and Sacramento real estate are more like close sisters at times than you might imagine.
