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Not Every Sacramento Home Seller Wants to Deal With a Counter Offer
When an agent says to me, you can always issue a counter offer to my buyer, that sounds like code for: the buyer is unreasonable, because I don’t think an agent is trying to tell a veteran how to sell real estate. But you never know in this market. We have a very weird market in Sacramento right now made up of serious buyers and squirrelly buyers and lowballing investors. I never know on which the roulette ball will land, as it is like a roulette wheel.
I can share with an agent that we have multiple offers, and yet the buyer’s agent will send me an offer that is contingent on selling the buyer’s home without a Contingency of Purchase addendum, much less a pre-approval letter. You can’t make this stuff up. Oh, and on top of it, maybe the agent hasn’t shown the home. It makes you wonder if buyers aren’t thumbing through MLS listings like a Neiman Marcus catalog and saying when I win the lottery, I’ll buy this house and that house and that house. And agents are writing offers for these guys. Blows my mind.
Most sellers in Sacramento do not enjoy bidding wars, believe it or not. They hope that a nice family will purchase their home at a fair price and close escrow — live there happily ever after. That’s what sellers want. Not every seller will want to deal with a counter offer. It’s stressful for many sellers. Negotiating does not come as easily to some of us as it does to others.
Myself, as a top-producing Sacramento real estate agent, I negotiate daily for a living, and I love to negotiate. But I’m also sensitive enough to realize that many of my sellers do not want to negotiate. They don’t want to deal with counter offers and all that they imply. They just want to sell their home.
If we receive 5 offers, the sellers, more likely than not, will take the path of least resistance and choose the best offer for them. Especially if it doesn’t involve a counter offer. If you’re thinking about writing an offer for a home in Sacramento, you should ask your buyer’s agent to call the listing agent to discuss what you might want to do. Although a listing agent cannot and should not ever speak for the seller, a listing agent can help to guide. You might have to write your best offer and stop trying to ding around.
On top of all of this, no offer should ever land on a listing agent’s computer without an advance call from a buyer’s agent. Not in this Sacramento real estate market.
Sacramento Real Estate and Yoda: Times They are a Changin’
Sacramento River in South Land Park Hills
As I look over my listings and escrows in Sacramento this morning, I see a pattern. I’m not talking about those free flashbacks we were promised and never received — what a rip. No swirls and dots nor peacock feather trails. Nope, the pattern I see is every single one of these listings and escrows has a challenge, for lack of a better term. All of the challenges are different, but they are challenges just the same. Not insurmountable, either, but it’s not the same for a Sacramento real estate agent in 2014 as in previous years. Selling real estate the last half of 2013 and early 2014 is harder. The times they are a changin’. You wonder where Yoda got his manner of speaking? I tell ya, he stole it from Dylan. But I digress.
For example, one Sacramento short sale presents a peculiar difficulty with Chase Bank. To provide you with further clarity, consider the fact that every short sale agent probably felt like that Meg Ryan scene in When Harry Met Sally when Chase Bank last year began using Equator. However, this year, its HELOC department is stuck in bureaucracy and over the course of two months can’t seem to open the file. I kick, I nudge, I push, I sweet-talk, I escalate; I set that Chase short sale underwriting department on fire and run out the back door, and they aren’t budging. Feet glued to the floor. It’s as though they are lobotomized. But eventually, Chase will get it together; it’s the Peter Principle in action.
Another escrow is stuck in limbo until the bankruptcy court releases the home or authorizes the sale. The court date has been pushed forward, just when I had hoped it would be resolved. Are you involved in bankruptcy proceedings is not usually a question I ask a seller when I accept an equity listing. I imagine in this economy the bankruptcy lawyers are doing a ton of business, though.
The ripples of the past are still present. We Sacramentans haven’t completely emerged from the sea like Bo Derek: all cornrows and smiles and tan. Nope, we’re more like Tank Girl coming home to discover the earth looks like steaming lava fields on Big Island and treasuring that baby tree sprout, straining toward the sun from a sidewalk crack.
I have another escrow that’s nearing 45 days and the buyer’s loan is still not approved. That’s because the buyer wasn’t actually approved by the bank at the inception — like most of the bogus crap passed off as meaning something, the pre-approval letters make better paper airplanes. The buyer also could not satisfy loan conditions for the longest time, and it seems like nobody really pushed the buyer to perform, except for my sellers. Hello? Clock ticking.
Experience has taught me that these issues will get worked out, and we will close. Moreover, eventually the overpriced listings will be reduced or we’ll find one of those tasty Bay area buyers. Sacramento real estate is a fairly tight market that often moves in circles, it can be like a roulette wheel. Make sure you have a good real estate agent at your side. Sellers today need a smart agent who can offer sensible advice on such matters like always double your odds on craps and let’s not overlook Kenny Rogers: know when to fold ’em and back off. This is a great time to sell if you know what you’re doing!
Punxsutawny Phil Predicts 2014 Sacramento Real Estate
Punxsutawny Phil says this is the week in Sacramento real estate in which the rubber meets the road. When the market starts to hop like mad. Because finally, all of those winter vacations are pretty much over, the holidays are gone, the Super Bowl is finished — well, I heard it was finished in the first 12 seconds of the game, but I don’t follow football so I would not really know. But I do know almost everything there is to know about Sacramento real estate. Not ashamed to admit that.
2014 Winter Carnival in downtown St. Paul, MN
We can now freely hold open houses and not be freaking out over which football teams are playing, and whether visitors will come to the open house. The weather will begin to warm up a little bit, although we still desperately need rain, and I don’t care if it rains during an open house because people will still go out to look at homes in the rain. We are not wimps in Sacramento. We don’t cower in a little rain. Look at these photos of the Winter Carnival in St. Paul yesterday shot by my sister, Margie. It was 8 below zero.
2014 Winter Carnival Como Park, St, Paul, MN
On top of this, new listings are coming on the market. This Sacramento real estate agent has got about a dozen in the pipeline that I’m working on, and it’s these listings that will make up some of the March to May closed sales. You might think that May is a good time to go on the market, but actually May is a good time to close escrow. All of the activity for the next 3 months mostly originates in February. Think about that if you’re considering selling your home this spring. And be happy you don’t live in St. Paul, Minnesota where, dare I say once again just to remind you, it was 8 below zero yesterday.
Sure, we’ve got holidays this month but they’re not the type of holidays to interfere with real estate. I’ve got news for you: Punxsutawny Phil, the groundhog who saw his shadow yesterday, he wants you to buy a house. So do Presidents Lincoln and Washington and Obama. It’s the American thing to do, to own your own little piece of real estate, your own heavenly spot on earth.
Call Elizabeth Weintraub, your Sacramento real estate agent, at 916 233 6759. I answer my phone.
Photos: Margie Burgard, St. Paul Winter Carnival 2014
Super Bowl Sunday 2014 and Sacramento Open Houses
Home buyers in Sacramento were out in droves over the weekend, attending open houses, touring new listings and writing offers. This was the one weekend in January to do it because we got a break in those football games. Granted, I am not a person who watches football. I am probably in the minority but football doesn’t interest me. Not even if I imagine the team players as short sale negotiators at various banks — oh look, Bank of America just swiped the ball from Green Tree, and Wells Fargo bashed PNC in the head. Nope, still doesn’t do it for me.
Next weekend, of course, will be Super Bowl Sunday 2014, and it’s just not a good weekend for an open house. Oh, sure, there are Super Bowl widows and widowers who will be out and about, but the bulk of Americans will be focused on who will win the Super Bowl. Big Super Bowl parties everywhere except at my house. I’m not even sure who is playing, I think Denver and . . . After we get past this next weekend, it should be clear sailing through spring into summer for Sacramento real estate.
A negotiator at SLS called me this morning to ask when we would record on a short sale scheduled for closing. I told her it would be tomorrow. But what TIME, she persisted, almost in a whiny voice. Well, Sacramento has 5 recording times — it will be one of those, I offered. One of those 5 times. Don’t know which one. She probably would have smacked me if we were sitting across the table from each other.
But then I’d throw a football into her face and break her nose.
About Southwest Pilots Who Landed at the Wrong Missouri Airport
Do you think the public is being a little hard on those poor Southwest pilots who landed at the wrong airport in Missouri? OK, granted, the captain almost ran off the runway, but the fact is he didn’t. Why are people talking about all the things he didn’t do? Maybe he forgot to comb his hair that day but if he looks like George Clooney, who cares?
Sure, there was a little bit of rubber burning and hand clenching upon landing, no doubt, but at least the brakes were applied with force. We all make mistakes. And let’s face it, Missouri is the kind of place where it might be easy to get lost, what with people whose motto is show me. Don’t they know where they are going? It’s just a big ol’ square with a tail in the middle of the United States.
Haven’t you even gotten into your car to, say, drive to a friend’s house and wondered why you were instead headed off to work? Be honest. We all do it. OK, maybe I am only the driver in Sacramento who speeds up to shoot way over across all of those lanes on the W/X freeway from Riverside and, before she realizes it, discovers she is heading out I-80 instead of Highway 50, or vice versa.
When you list homes all over Sacramento like this real estate agent, it can happen. Which is why I have a new system that prevents it. I repeat to myself which freeway I need to travel before I embark on the journey. Interstate 80 or Highway 50? I know the answer when I leave my office.
Sometimes, though, our cars just take the path of least resistance, the path most often traveled, and there’s not a lot we can do about it, especially if we’re yakking away on our Bluetooth device about Sacramento real estate. I might initially intend, for example, to go to PetCo, which is east of me, and find myself driving north to my office. It happens when our minds are preoccupied, and it’s not necessarily an age-related thing.
Maybe those Southwest pilots were playing Angry Birds when they landed at the wrong airport. It can happen, just saying. Of course, I am not a passenger on Southwest who expected to arrive at a different destination. It would be like expecting to land in Sacramento but finding myself in San Diego. But both cities start with an S. I suppose that I can see the similarities if I squint really hard and sing at the top of my voice Leaving on a Jet Plane.
