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Sacramento Real Estate Agents: Ramp Up
I love waking up in the wee hours of the morning to find a bunch of purchase offers in my email. Well, it beats stepping into cat puke. I don’t know why cats seem to wait until 4 AM to chew on houseplants as a new fun-filled activity and run around the bedroom horking when they should be sound asleep. Anybody who shares a home with cats knows exactly what I mean. As I sit here wiping my toes and scrolling through my email, I can overlook a bad start to my Sunday because little is as exciting as receiving purchase offers. If I’m thrilled, imagine how my sellers feel!
This is the best market ever for Sacramento area listing agents and sellers. After years and years of begging on my knees for a buyer to write an offer, the tide has changed. Flipped overnight. It used to be I would not dream of putting a home on the market if it wasn’t staged to perfection, shining from top to bottom and ready for foot traffic. I would be on hands and knees licking the floor looking for dirt. Now, when tenants whine at me me that they don’t have time to pick up the empty beer bottles, toss the half-eaten pizza in the trash, much less make the beds, they think I won’t show the house. Ha, I can shrug my shoulders because the home will still sell. It will sell fast. It will sell for top dollar.
The truth is this Sacramento real estate market is so burning hot at the moment a listing agent can sell even the worst property in a heartbeat. Buyers are making offers on homes sight unseen. I have to check my SUPRA stats to find out if agents have shown the property before sending me an offer because I need something to help us determine the strongest buyer. Believe me, if I have 5 identical offers from 5 buyers but only one of those buyers has looked at the home, guess which offer this Sacramento real estate agent is advising her seller to accept?
Agents complain that they can’t submit offers fast enough so they have to submit without showing. No, they don’t. They just need to get their act together. An agent lamented that he could not show a home yesterday during the time period it was convenient for the tenants to show it. He asked if he could send his buyers over to the home without an agent escort. No, he can’t. But I heard that some buyers were wandering around the home by themselves. Just because we’re in the middle of a home buying frenzy in Sacramento does not mean it’s OK to set aside standards of practice. If anything, we, as Sacramento real estate agents, need to ramp up our professionalism to ensure quality service to our clients.
And stay out of the cat puke. You know what they say. When the market gets tough, the tough Sacramento real estate agents get going.
Can a Sacramento Short Sale Agent Give Legal Advice?
Not only am a top producer who sells Sacramento real estate, but I also have a second job. I just returned from an About.com conference in San Francisco over the weekend. Some of you may not know that I write for About.com as its Guide to Home Buying, and I’ve been building and maintaining that website for 6 1/2 years. Whenever About.com hosts a conference west of the Mississippi, I try to attend. I always learn something new. One of the new things I learned at the About.com conference is Google no longer rewards SEO efforts in the same manner that it used to. Now, rankings are based more closely on authority. Which is excellent news for me. I’m not a big keyword stuffer.
But I am consistent. I write every day no matter what. I write about real estate in Sacramento and mostly about short sale transactions because short sales are what’s selling in Sacramento. I rank in the top 1% of agents at Lyon Real Estate, which is the largest independently owned real estate company in Sacramento. If I lose a ranking spot in Google to, say, HUD, it’s not that important to me. I am still found in the top 10 results on page 1 for hundreds and hundreds of real estate searches and real estate questions. To my readers, that makes me a real estate authority.
The problem with this is I am easily locatable. Thousands of people across the United States annually write to me and ask questions about short sales and real estate. I am a Sacramento real estate broker, so my phone number and email is in plain view. However, I am not a lawyer. I don’t practice law. I don’t give legal advice. Even if I know the answer, I can’t tell anybody. I sell real estate. I am paid a commission to sell houses, one by one. If I am selling a short sale, I am still paid a commission from the proceeds of sale. The law is very clear about what a real estate agent can and cannot do, and we can’t talk about legal matters with authority.
When I explain this to clients, they nod, say they understand, and then they ask me a legal question. Hypothetically speaking, you understand. Nope, still can’t answer it. If you need legal advice about a real estate matter, you absolutely, positively, without question, need to obtain that advice from an entity capable of giving it to you. That entity is not a Sacramento REALTOR. That entity is a real estate lawyer.
Will the bank release me from liability? Legal question. Does this short sale approval letter contain verbiage that protects me from a deficiency judgment? Legal question. Will doing a short sale stop the foreclosure process; how does SB 458 apply to me? Legal questions. If you don’t know the answers, you need a lawyer, not a REALTOR.
When I go to a client’s house, it’s to put that home on the market. I shoot professional photographs. I prepare my agent visual inspection. If there are ways to improve the showing condition, I share those thoughts with the sellers. Perhaps we want to do a bit of home staging or prepping. I generally find a good spot for the lockbox. We sign listing paperwork. We don’t discuss the legal aspects of the real estate transaction because I am not a lawyer. I suggest to all clients that they obtain legal and tax advice. Do they need it? I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. That’s for each client to determine.
If they need a terrific Sacramento real estate agent, they’ve come to the right place. I’ll get that home sold, and I guarantee my performance. Have over 30 years in the business. But I do not give legal advice. No reputable real estate agent would ever try to perform a service that she is not licensed to perform.
Elizabeth Weintraub Earns Top Agent at Lyon Real Estate
The managing broker of Lyon’s downtown office called me yesterday to report the Elizabeth Weintraub Team is #1 in the company for August. That makes me the top agent at Lyon Real Estate, number one. I can’t believe it. She says my production is over $5.3 million for last month. That’s a lot for 30 days of work. That’s especially a lot when my average sales price is less than $300,000. Sometimes, I sell condos for $50,000. I can’t verify that number because, to be honest, I’m too busy and it’s not a top priority. Who has time to count pennies?
I figure August must be a good month for everybody in Sacramento real estate. I know August is the month that all the agents at Lyon Real Estate have to pay for Errors and Omissions insurance, plus legal representation, and those fees are pretty hefty. So, if I was the head of Lyon Real Estate — which I need to point out I am not — I would probably charge agent’s statements in the month that agents are likely to have the most closings. That would ensure a more likely payment.
Squeezing money out of agents is probably harder than it sounds, knowing agents like I know real estate agents. So, that would mean the month of August is probably the biggest month of production for most agents in Sacramento.
If that’s the case, then it’s pretty cool to earn status as the top agent at Lyon Real Estate for August. I don’t know how many agents work at Lyon. I’d guess it’s around 1,000. I have to give the credit to my Elizabeth Weintraub Team members, though, and I’m not just saying that because that’s what you’re supposed to say. The truth is I could not do what I do without Barbara Dow, Linda Swanson and Shaundra Bradley. Not to mention, my escrow officer, Dawn Herlache and her assistant Jennifer Baranoff, at Placer Title. And of course the guy who closes mortgages for our buyers, Dan Tharp, at Comstock Mortgage, is incredible, and I often receive glowing reviews of him. There are also behind-the-scenes players, the office assistants and managers who cover my butt every single day. I suspect they also take care of crap that I never even hear about.
Funny thing yesterday an agent whose offer was accepted on one of my Sacramento short sales called me the No Drama Agent. That’s his nickname for me. We closed a transaction a few years ago, and I guess my demeanor struck a chord with him. I don’t have any respect for drama, and drama is unproductive and a stupid waste of time. Maybe that will be my new motto: the No Drama Agent.?
A Tip for Getting the Edge When Buying Homes in Sacramento
In this Sacramento real estate market, it doesn’t matter how many offers the seller has received. Yet, agents continue to call and ask that question. Why doesn’t it matter? Because any well priced home will be sold within hours if not within days of hitting the market. If a listing agent doesn’t have an offer when the buyer’s agent calls, you can bet an offer is on its way. Maybe 10 or 20 offers are in the works. It just doesn’t matter.
What does matter is how strong is your purchase offer? How well written is your offer? Have you included any special conditions to make your offer stand out among other offers?
I have empathy for buyer’s agents in this market. It’s very tough. A buyer’s agent is but one of many pigeons in the park scrambling for tossed bread crumbs. Sacramento is a seller’s market. Limited inventory. Want to know how many homes are available for sale in the entire county of Sacramento today? I just ran an MLS search and the answer is 1,831 homes. Of those, only 407 are short sales. To put this into perspective for you, in August of 2007, the number of our available homes for sale in Sacramento County was 10,521. Five years ago we had almost 6 times the inventory! Buying homes in Sacramento is very difficult today.
This is a huge drop in the number of homes for sale in Sacramento County. It’s gigantic. It’s like King Kong and Jessica Lange.
It must be even tougher to be a buyer’s agent who doesn’t want to tick off a buyer when the buyer insists on offering less than list price. It’s amusing to receive a low offer accompanied by a note telling us how much the buyer loves the home. They adore this home so much that they want to negotiate on the price. I don’t know where some buyers get the idea that making their offer even less attractive gives them a fighting chance or that a seller would be willing to issue a counter offer. When a seller has received a dozen offers — some cash and above list — the seller tosses lowball offers in the circular bin.
It’s difficult to get your head around the fact that a less-than-list price offer could be considered a lowball in today’s market. For all the home buyers buying homes in Sacramento, do yourself a favor and hire a buyer’s agent who will present the true picture and guide you in the right direction. Otherwise, you may as well go to the park and feed the birds.
Sacramento is in a Real Estate Drought with Active Short Contingent Sales
An agent called Sunday afternoon to complain that a seller told him it was OK to show a home. This is a short sale in Carmichael. It is listed in MLS as an active short contingent. My seller recently moved, and the buyer’s agent has been watering the lawn in the back because there is no automatic sprinkler. (Water is rationed this time of year in Sacramento as we’re in our dry season with hot weather.)
Far as I’m concerned, watering a lawn is going above and beyond the call of duty for this buyer’s agent. That’s a job for the seller, and it’s the seller’s responsibility to maintain the lawn during escrow. Even if the seller vacates the property, it doesn’t mean the seller is no longer responsible for the home. But this buyer’s agent offered to do it, and the seller accepted. I suspect the agent didn’t want to take a chance on her buyers’ dissatisfaction with the condition at closing. That’s a really smart real estate agent.
Here, I was in the middle of kicking back in my air-conditioned home reading Tina Fey’s Bossypants yesterday when my cell rang. I made the mistake of answering it. The caller was a buyer’s agent, and he was pretty irate. He demanded to know whether this particular short sale in Carmichael was available. Well, it’s listed as “active short contingent” in MLS, which means the seller has accepted an offer. I explained that to the agent, adding that we recently received approval from the first lender and are waiting for approval from the second.
He screamed at me: Why did the seller tell me he had moved out and it was OK to show it? I don’t know why this guy didn’t call the listing agent first. That’s what I would have done in his shoes. But agents don’t always do what I would do. I didn’t know what to say to him because as a practice I don’t show Active Short Contingent listings to prospective buyers. It’s generally pointless. But every real estate agent is different. So, I said the only thing I could think of that moment, which was, “I guess the seller thought it was OK for you to show his home.” How do I know what the seller thought? I imagine that the seller was as astonished as I that an agent would want to show an active short contingent home.
Was it the heat? It was almost 100 yesterday in Sacramento. The agent slammed down the phone. Then a few minutes later, the buyer’s agent (who was over at the home watering the lawn) called. She said this particular agent left all the doors open, the windows open and had stormed up to her as she was putting away the garden hose to berate her in front of his client. Turns out this buyer’s agent is from San Francisco. Different MLS, different systems. Still, the agent is required to know the meaning of ASC.
Unfortunately, it’s about to get more complicated in Sacramento with short sales, too. Our MetroList, which is the MLS for our four-county area, is changing the status for short sales with offers. These listings will no longer automatically be placed into Active Short Contingent status come July 31. We will now implement a new status called Pending Short Lender Approval (PSLA). This status change will mean an offer has been accepted by the seller and the seller no longer desires showings.
If a seller is willing to accept a backup offer, then the status can revert to Active Short Contingent. Agents who put a listing into Active Short Contingent status when the seller is no longer willing to show nor receive backups offers will be fined $200 or $250 per day, I guess they haven’t yet worked this part out.
Will this solve the problem we are experiencing in Sacramento? Well, it will if agents read MLS. But, seriously guys, how likely is that?
On the other hand, this upcoming MLS change will remove from inventory on certain online websites all the active short contingent listings. We will drop to less than 30 days of inventory. It will present a true picture of how little real estate is for sale in Sacramento. The Sacramento real estate market is in jeopardy until we bump up that inventory. As a Sacramento real estate agent, I’m doing my part. Watch for new listings this week on my website.
Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub
