Email Elizabethsacramento real estate
Reservations for Dining in Midtown Sacramento for Friday Night
Elizabeth Weintraub in Midtown, Sacramento
The only time I ever watch trashy daytime TV is when I’m getting a manicure over at Galaxy Nails in Land Park. Can’t help it. It’s right there in front of you, and I admit to getting sucked in to view some of the most ridiculous stuff I’ve ever witnessed in my life. Don’t get me started on Dr. Oz, either. The show yesterday was Steve Harvey promoting crowdsourcing dating, and some woman who claimed to have her life booked out 4 months in advance, which means she has no time to date.
I cannot in a million years imagine booking my schedule so heavily that I couldn’t turn around for 4 months without bumping into my next appointment. That seems insane. But that’s how people are today. As I drove past Crocker Elementary School on Riverside, a person could not help but notice the number of parents standing on the sidewalk and meandering about the grounds with their children.
No comparison to my past — just saying if my parents had come to my grade school to pick me up, that would have been because President Eisenhower had just blown up the world and we were in the middle of a nuclear holocaust.
You can’t even get a dinner reservation on a Friday night at a decent restaurant in Midtown Sacramento if you suddenly decide on a whim, like I generally do, that an evening out dining would be a spectacular way to spend some quality time with your husband. It’s difficult to go dining in Midtown because most of the top spots require dinner reservations a week in advance. Now, one can go to Ella Dining Room and Bar and sit at the bar without a reservation or dine outside, but it’s too cold outside.
Through Open Table, I was lucky to snatch a reservation at the Waterboy. Every other restaurant I desired for dining in Midtown was booked solid through my preferred dining hours, and by all rights, Waterboy should have been as well. It was a fluke.
I remember the old adage about living in California: the only place where people stand in line at midnight at 7-11.
Still, I wouldn’t trade living in California and selling Sacramento real estate for anything. Well, maybe a house on the ocean in Maui — when I make my next $5 million.
Prioritize to Just Sell Homes in Sacramento
Some people find it very difficult, almost impossible in some cases, to prioritize. Now that I am in my 60s, I’d like to believe that I have a pretty good handle on prioritization, especially for my Sacramento real estate business. There are days when I’ve got a ton of information coming at me from all directions: emails from buyer’s agents asking questions about listings, voice mails from a person who called at the same time I was on the phone, media desiring interviews, potential sellers, sellers whose homes are listed but not yet sold, sellers in escrow, buyers who want to purchase homes in Sacramento, and this doesn’t count my support team or escrow much less the time-waster sales guys.
What does one do first in any given day? Chase the new business, handle the existing business, process purchase offers, negotiate counters, suppress those Request for Repairs, what? I look to sell homes in Sacramento. This Sacramento REALTOR handles her existing business always foremost. It’s simple for me that way. Existing clients get priority.
Sometimes I’ll answer the phone and a person will introduce himself, state his company affiliation and before he gets another word out of his mouth, I find myself explaining that I am on the Do Not Call list and please honor it and don’t continue to call me. Then I hang up before he get can slip another word in edgewise. I’m lucky that reporters don’t sound like salespeople on the phone. Nope, salespeople are far too chipper and perky. They shouldn’t be calling me anyway, and if I needed a particular product, I’m not buying it over the phone or from an email or from some dude standing on my front steps because nothing good has ever come from that for anybody in the world.
I know some Sacramento REALTORS who wish that a few of their listings would go away. Especially if the days on market begin to linger, and they face more exhaustion trying to sell the home. This REALTOR, on the other hand, always figure if I went to the trouble to obtain the listing, then I need to focus on my objective to sell homes in Sacramento. Why go out and look for another listing to sell when I have an existing listing right under my very nose waiting for me to sell it? All I need to do is try a different approach if my existing plan doesn’t work.
That listing is already there. Just sell it. Hey, yeah, that should be my new motto: Just Sell It. So, that’s my focus and prioritization regardless of how long it takes. Because it’s not up to me how long it takes to just sell homes in Sacramento. It can be the market conditions or seller pricing or a bazillion other forces out of my control. Right now is a good time to be on the market, though, because we’ve passed Winterfell and are moving into a new year; bring on the dragons.
Back to the Real World of Sacramento Real Estate
View from oceanfront room at Hotel Molokai
Everybody in my cabin on the plane home groaned when the pilot said we were leaving Hawaii. It’s a completely different atmosphere inside the cabin going home than it was on the flight out to Hawaii, and then eventually later on to Vanuatu. I guess even if you were going to the islands for work and not pleasure, people are in a better mood than they are returning to the mainland. Nobody wants to go back to reality, especially not me, although returning to Sacramento real estate is my job, and it’s a job I love.
Part of it I suppose is the fact when you’re on vacation, you don’t have to allocate much time to taking care of yourself because somebody else does it for you. They make your bed, pick up your wet towels from the floor and empty your waste-paper baskets. They knock gently on your door, bringing you muffins and hot coffee. All of your meals are catered and made for you. Your laundry arrives, folded.
My last day at Hotel Molokai
Come to think of it now, that’s not much different than my life at home. Well, the difference is it is foggy and cold outside in Sacramento this morning. My view is not that of palm trees and the ocean. And I was so discombobulated last night that when a seller called me to say she had locked herself out of her house, and I drove over to help her out, I managed to drive all the way back to Land Park without my lights turned on.
Nobody honked at me or waved or yelled to let me know that I didn’t have my lights on. Fortunately, it was just down Broadway a little bit, but still. I noticed it when I passed Target, that it was fairly dark. Oh, duh. That’s because my lights weren’t on. See, it’s been a long time since I’ve driven in the dark. Longer than the month I had been gone on my winter vacation. I turned on my lights at my garage when I pulled out, but turned them off when I pulled into my seller’s driveway. It wasn’t an autopilot thing to turn them back on as I fumbled for my bluetooth device to stick back into my ear.
Well, tomorrow it is back to work in full force and back to Sacramento real estate for this traveler. I’ve been halfway around the world and back over the last 30 days. Hope you’ve enjoyed the photos and stories.
The Consequences of Our Decisions
Coconut tree at Eratap Resort, Vanuatu
With every decision we make in life — or the decision is made for us, without our consent — there are consequences. I’ve learned from that over the years. It’s one of the reasons that I try to stay one step ahead of myself. Or, I could run with this explanation: it’s not a quirk, it’s a personality trait that’s a bit off center. I suspect we all harbor those kinds of thoughts from time to time about ourselves.
For example, during my flight from Honolulu to Brisbane, enroute to Vanuatu, I pawed through an “emergency kit” of sorts, a convenience package they call it. The name made me admire marketing. It’s how Larry Ellison got away with rehabbing an entire island and calling it a “Lanai beautification project.” This convenience package includes toothpaste, a toothbrush, earplugs in case you didn’t bring your own, and other niceties such as socks and a blindfold mask.
Eratap Resort pool at Honeymoon Beach, Vanuatu
I removed my sandals, put on my socks, and was about to dose off when I noticed a dip due to air pressure. We were over the ocean. OK, if the plane were to crash into the water, and I somehow managed to survive, would I be better off with socks on my feet or barefoot? I was thinking probably barefoot was the better option, anything to help keep me from sinking and drowning. On the other hand, socks would provide an insulating layer between me and the %$#* freezing waters, as I frantically paddled about because I could not remember how to pull the stinkin’ cord or blow into the tube, on top of which I was wearing the lifejacket around my ankles.
If only I hadn’t put on those socks.
See, consequences.
This is the type of stuff I think about. Well, that and imagining Captain Kirk out on the wing. Can’t help myself.
Reef at Eratap, Vanuatu
I try to be proactive and think about consequences before I do anything. And I pass that kind of protection along to my clients when I sell Sacramento real estate. I’m always trying to think ahead, about what could go wrong and to prevent it. The thing I would hate most to hear from a client is “Why didn’t you tell me this could happen?”
In some cases, unfortunately, an agent may get accused anyway. The problem is I can’t always predict what could happen and, if you want to know the truth, there are a bazillion things that could go haywire in any given transaction at any given time. A veteran agent, an experienced Sacramento Realtor, knows this and takes steps to stop it from occurring. But I can’t read crystal balls. I can’t always know exactly what kind of “left turn without signaling” a buyer might decide to take.
I can’t predict that a buyer in good health will die in the middle of a transaction in a horrific car accident on the way to work. I can’t predict that a mortgage company will go belly-up. I can’t predict that a tree will fall on the house during a Sacramento rainstorm. Stuff happens. But I do believe it happens much less in my escrows because I try to anticipate the consequences of subsequent decisions for my clients.
I can predict that if I try to enter the ocean by swimming past a reef at low tide coupled with high current, I could get slammed face first into the reef by the waves. Coral is sharp. It’s probably not a good idea to run out my front door and jump in the water. Two weeks at a South Pacific paradise helps to prepare me to handle any kind of consequences.
Photos: Eratap Resort, Efate Island, Vanuatu, by Elizabeth Weintraub
An Approach to Sacramento Home Buyer’s Earnest Money Deposit
Attitudes toward buyers’ earnest money deposits in California have changed over the years. It’s no secret that the purchase contract in California is tilted a bit more in the buyer’s favor than the seller’s but that’s probably because the party most likely to call a lawyer is the buyer. After the escrow closes, generally the sellers have their money — which can make almost anybody, except Donald Trump, a satisfied party. The buyers, on the other hand, are stuck with this monstrosity and screwed 12 ways from Sunday.
But in the beginning, in the dawn of mankind and womankind, when the sun is barely breaking over the horizon, is the earnest money deposit: the money the buyer puts into escrow to show good faith. That money is at risk, and buyer’s worry mostly about losing it. They want to protect their earnest money deposit and get it back if the transaction goes south. They ask what happens if the offer is not accepted or what happens if they can’t get a loan. Pre-approvals are pretty much worthless, btw.
Buyer’s agents, in an attempt to help protect their buyers, will typically include a handful of contingencies in the purchase contract. A contingency means the buyer has the right to demand the deposit back and cancel. Until those contingencies are released, the buyer typically can cancel the contract, depending on the type of contingency.
With the new C.A.R. forms of November 2014, the buyer’s contingency period for the loan has been extended from a default period of 17 days to 21 days. If the buyer releases the loan contingency and cannot close, that puts the buyer’s earnest money deposit at risk — it lets the seller try to claim it as damages. And therein lies the difficult situation.
Sellers might read the purchase contract and conclude that they are automatically entitled to the earnest money deposit in the event of the buyer’s default. But in the real world, if the buyer refuses to release it, they are at a standstill. If there is no mutual agreement regarding the release, the seller might need to seek satisfaction through a Small Claim’s Court action. Plus, the seller is not really free to sell the home to anybody else until this situation is resolved. In many cases, it’s just not worth the expense and effort to pursue the earnest money deposit.
There is also hope now with the Seller Demand to Release Deposit, that came out in November of 2014. If the escrow company agrees, and the seller is entitled to the deposit, the seller can sign this form, which allows the escrow company to disperse the funds on deposit, subject to certain terms.
Disclaimer: All parties should obtain legal advice regarding disputes over the earnest money deposit.
