Email Elizabethsacramento real estate
The Difference Between a Challenge and a PITA for a Sacramento REALTOR
There is a big difference between a challenge and a pain-in-the-ass (PITA) when it comes to Sacramento real estate for a REALTOR. A challenge presents obstacles that beg to be overcome and resolved, whereas a PITA just gets worse and nothing will fix those problems. It’s sometimes difficult to figure out which is which when they first appear in front of me. I like to try to help every buyer and seller who contact this Sacramento REALTOR. But when I start to question why-oh-why am I working on a house, that’s a definite clue that I should not.
I am not afraid of hard work. I don’t care how complicated a situation presents, I am confident that I will find a way to make it work out. It’s why I am successful. In fact, it’s how I sell hundreds of homes. It’s how, for example, that since 2006 I’ve sold more short sales than any other agent in town. So many agents would not touch those houses with a 10-feet pole. But not this agent. I welcome challenges. It’s how I turned into an exceptional Sacramento REALTOR.
If you have a difficult to home to sell, I’m your agent. I’ll do it. I gain deep satisfaction by successfully closing the seemingly impossible. By the same token, I welcome the easy-to-sell homes and I do a bang-up job selling homes in Land Park, East Sacramento and Elk Grove, all the way in some cases to Lincoln. The really nice homes in Sacramento owned by trouble-free sellers balances out the problematic sales. I take the good with the bad.
So, when a seller called, wiping away tears through our discussion about selling a certain home in Elk Grove, I decided to help her. Yes, I can be a sucker for a sob story. I sometimes feel as though if I don’t do it, who will? Many agents don’t like problems and they won’t work on situations fraught with difficulties. She faces an extremely complicated situation, made ten-fold by a super hard-to-sell property. Whatever pushed her to the edge meant she had to take action, pronto. I stopped what I was doing and jumped on this for her. Took copious notes. Shot photos. Inspected. Qualified. Put together a game plan, gathered required documents.
This went on for a two-week period. Finally, we were ready to go on the market. No more frantic text messages. No more interpreters. We were set. This seller’s 3-year battle was about to come to an end. Then, the seller emailed to say the timing wasn’t quite right. Maybe some other time? I guess there is a reason this has been going on for three years. It has nothing to do with me. It will never get resolved through a real estate agent. That nagging thought about why was I doing this vanished, because I’m not doing it. Not now, not ever.
It’s not a challenge. It’s a PITA. In those situations, a Sacramento REALTOR has to say no.
Thoughts of an Elk Grove Listing Gets an Agent Through an MRI
Who would have thought that thinking about Elk Grove listings could help an agent get through an MRI? If the MRI technician at UC Davis had never mentioned anything about breathing to me, I probably would have been OK, but he had to tell me. It was just a small rotator cuff tear I was there for. I’ve had a bunch of MRIs over the years, and I had never before been informed about the breathing. I’m not sure if that was an oversight or maybe I just looked like a person who would do a lot of heavy breathing inside the machine. Perhaps it was my Dry Tortugas t-shirt, which the technician also commented on because he used to live in Key West.
That boat trip to Dry Tortugas is now firmly embedded in my brain as an experience for which I am extremely grateful that it now belongs in my past and not in my future.
The problem breathing causes inside the MRI machine, he said, is if your breaths are too deep and big it will make the image bounce. Ditto if your breaths are short, fast and choppy. There is also the claustrophobia some people experience inside an MRI but probably would not happen if nobody ever mentioned it. Not only am I lying quietly and still, but I’m wondering why I’m not feeling claustrophobic. Plus, I am paying special attention to my breathing. Not too slow, not too fast.
Uh, oh, it feels like my breathing is suppressed. I wonder if it’s too slow? Relax, relax, in and out, in and out. How many breaths is that per minute? Too many? Aaaahhh. See, there is nothing else to do while the machine is doing its thing: DING DING DING DING, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. It’s not like you can sleep.
What is that on the side of my face? It feels like a tear. Why do I have a tear rolling down my cheek, ever so slowly? I can’t wipe it or touch it. What is making my eyes water? Uh, oh, how many breaths is that per minute? BOING BOING BOING BOING BOING BOING. Speaking of moisture, now I have to swallow. I definitely feel a big lump sitting there ready to go down my throat. If I swallow, will it interfere with the imaging? Probably. Just like the breathing. I have to lie perfectly still.
What the hell! My nose feels like it’s going to drip. It’s not like I can snort, which is so unladylike anyway, much less blow my nose, even if I had a Kleenix, which I don’t. What is building in my nasal passages — a master suite with its very own waterfall? Gah. Breathe slowly and steadily. Perhaps I should think about something other than what’s happening at the moment. I could think about any of my present escrows and upcoming new listings. Maybe that burned-out house in Elk Grove I have to list next week? Yeah, that will do the trick. Focus on my new listings in Elk Grove.
How Do You Know if the Sacramento Home Buyer is in Love?
Because it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings in Sacramento real estate — meaning home buyers basically make a zero commitment during the first several weeks of escrow — it’s not unusual for a seller to worry about the buyer’s intentions. Is the buyer serious? Is the home buyer in love with your home? An offer means little, believe it or not. The offers I receive from buyer’s agents on behalf of my sellers generally provide very little insight. I’m lucky if the agent manages to tell me anything tangible about the buyer. It’s not unusual for an agent to scan the offer to my email without so much as an introduction or greeting.
You remember the components of a letter, right? Well, if you’re of a certain age and dig way back in your attic, you’ll recall the salutation, body and closing. Nobody bothers with that formality today. In fact, I’m grateful if an agent says, “Hey, here is my buyer’s offer.” Or, maybe they send a link so I can retrieve the offer myself from ZIPforms or Dropbox.
There is no interaction. No discussion, usually, unless I generate it. The bulk of emails with offers attached that share any insight whatsoever about the buyer will commonly note: The buyer is in love with the home. They better be in love with the home; I don’t know any buyer who isn’t in love with the home — except the buyers who swear on their grandmother’s grave they are so in love with the home and then won’t pony up an extra thousand or two to meet the seller’s counter offer.
They’re in love to a point. Don’t tell us how much a buyer is in love with the home, show us. Put your money where the agent’s fingertips have traveled on that keyboard: present that huge honkin’ earnest money deposit and make a few concessions.
A seller asked this morning how we can tell if a buyer is serious. That’s a tough one because we are forced to rely on the documents before us and veteran agents with a few decades behind our big fat butts, well, we partly rely on intuition. Gut instincts is a collective intangible asset developed over years. Listing agents like me will draw attention to any item that could cause a problem in the purchase offer as a reason to disqualify a buyer when helping the seller to choose between two or more buyers. Anything that makes a buyer appear less qualified or uncommitted, pffft, out of the running.
Choosing between offers can result in assigning negative points to certain things such as type of financing, credits, length of escrow, repair demands, mortgage lender, agent experience, inspection periods, among other aspects of the purchase contract. Too many negative points and your offer won’t get accepted. In this market, sometimes one negative point is enough to make a buyer lose a home.
Tip: If you’re a buyer who is trying to buy a home in Sacramento, figure that you have competition for every home you want and ask your agent to perform accordingly. Agents, take a few minutes to share the strong points of your offer / buyer qualifications with the seller. Don’t just email an offer and skidaddle off to your lake house for the weekend. Tell us why the seller should take your buyer’s offer over another.
How Being a Bad Influence Pays Off in Sacramento Real Estate
Bucking the trend, being a maverick or rebel, is often frowned upon in society because it could mean a person is not a team player, doesn’t fit the norm, but in Sacramento real estate those traits in a real estate agent are very helpful. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard as a kid some parent warn my parents: that Elizabeth is a bad influence. Up yours is what I thought when I heard that crap. I’m not making your kid do anything that kid doesn’t wanna do.
I’ve realized from a young age that a person can pretty much do whatever a person can dream up. I’ve always thought: what if we do it this way instead? Or, how about this idea? And they weren’t always popular ideas or necessarily the best ways to do things, just different. Yet they worked. I’ve never thought of myself as a trendsetter or a person with followers, no entourage, I don’t care how many people read my prattle on Twitter and, quite frankly, if you’d have me in your organization, I’m not so sure I want to belong there; yet I know people still gravitate to stuff I write.
I don’t have anything out of the ordinary to say. I call it like I see it. This is a reason why people trust me, and why my clients can rely on my advice. I don’t generally say stupid things.
But there’s always tomorrow.
Being a bad influence means people often do what I want. I just give them permission to do what they already want to do.
When I met with sellers earlier this week, they asked why the price I suggested for their home was so much higher than the agent they had already dumped. Well, my price suggestion had nothing to do with the fired agent. It was based on the pending sales, peppered with the sold comps. I wet my finger and stuck it in the air to see which way the wind was blowing. It’s OK that people ask how I arrived at a conclusion. It’s OK if they ignore it, too. It’s not my house. These people took my advice, though.
I met with another seller and mentioned the smoke alarms needed to be installed in the sleeping areas. Lenders require it. She had installed a smoke alarm in the hallway and felt that was sufficient. Then she argued about it and told me I was wrong. Over and over. That she is a homeowner, so she knows the laws, and just because my profession depends on complying with regulations to close escrow, well, what would I know? She’s a maverick and I kinda like her. And she can find out the hard way. It’s not my house. This one, I’m not gonna argue with.
For a person who is a bad influence on others, real estate is the perfect place to be. If you want to know why my sellers typically get top dollar over other listings in the area, it’s because they listen to this bad influence. Call me at 916.233.6759.
How a Sacramento Agent Stays on Course
In a conversation with my sister in Minneapolis this weekend, we discussed how as we get older it becomes easier to understand how a person can mistake her husband for a hat or an umbrella. We have so much overload in our lives today as compared to a few years ago. Especially as an agent selling real estate in Sacramento in the month of May. This is why as a busy agent I often feel the need to take breaks now and then, but even while I’m riding my bicycle around Land Park in the afternoons, I can spot weird things out of the corner of my eye that can morph into, oh, I dunno, imaginary animated objects, for example. I’m not going bonkers. I’m sure of it.
But listen . . .
In the newest version of Plants vs. Zombies, the game board uses triangles and other traffic zone images that impart super powers to the plants. If a person’s brain is otherwise engaged, like mine often is when I’m riding my bike (because I’m listening to music on my wireless headphones, interrupted only when I answer a real estate call — hey, why did the music stop? — Oh, yeah, I’m getting a phone call), it’s easy to zip past a triangle in the road and perhaps picture a double-fisted bok choy nestled securely behind a boosted walnut. I can see how people lose their minds. And you know what? It’s not all that frightening.
I’m here to tell ya that if you’re gonna turn into a vegetable in your old age, there are probably worse things.
Like many top producer Sacramento agents, we keep a lot of information categorized in our heads, and it’s a balancing act much of the time, especially when an escrow has a contingency to sell. I noticed yesterday as I filed away closed escrows that I am often lately helping sellers to buy homes at the same time they are selling. Even so, these escrows don’t last anywhere nearly as long as the short sales used to several years ago. During that time period, it was not unusual to work on a file for 4 to 6 months or longer. In fact, during that particular ice age, I usually got to know my sellers fairly well and their home inside out, with every single detail embedded in my brain.
When we got to closing, it was sometimes a bitter sweet farewell. I often felt like I was parting with an old friend, because I was intimately familiar with each facet of the transaction. Nowadays, I take a listing, it sells, it quickly closes, and that lengthy interaction is often shortened. I feel like, hey, we just met, and now you’re going into the closed box under my desk. Wha? Come back!
But it’s all for the best. At least this Sacramento real estate agent is not losing her mind. Not yet, anyway.
