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Why Sacramento Seller Inspections Are Unnecessary Today
Very little reason for Sacramento home sellers to provide seller inspections.
There are plenty of old school agents wandering about Sacramento whose practice is to always order home seller inspections upon listing a home. That’s not my practice. I find it completely unnecessary. I am an old-school agent myself, having started in this business in the 1970s. But I really see little reason for the seller to provide seller inspections to the buyer. Let buyers do their own due diligence.
I’ve had buyer’s agents yell at me, very angry that we did not provide them with a pest report. Why should the seller give seller disclosures that are not required to the buyer? Sellers are required to disclose what they know. They are not required to dig up more defects and present them for consideration, like, here, Mr. Buyer, take a look at all of this crap that’s wrong with my house. I’m doing full disclosure.
I would say, no, you’re stabbing yourself in the eye with a sharp object. You’re handing over opinions of defects, which you’re not required to do and paying for that mistake in more ways than one. In case a seller believes these reports do not need to be given to the buyer, think again. There are no reports for seller edification only. Once sellers receive a report, it becomes a document of knowledge you must deliver to the buyer.
Some agents tell their sellers to obtain a home inspection, too. They do this under the guise of then the seller will know what is wrong and can fix or disclose it. On the surface, this sounds almost reasonable until you dig below. For starters, the alleged defect might not be a defect and the home inspector could be wrong. Second, the buyer will still obtain a home inspection and that report could contain even MORE defects. Some of the defects that are noted on your report might not even appear on the buyer’s. Talk about a can o’ worms.
Other agents claim that a bad pest inspection can happen if you leave it up to the buyer to order it, meaning buyers can hire an inept company, and then the seller is stuck with that report. If the seller objects, the seller can then hire a different pest company and argue the results. Also, most buyer’s agents want to hire the best pest company, not the worst.
Home buyers are all over the board about things they would like fixed from inspections. It’s pretty much useless to try to pinpoint everything a buyer would like repaired or updated. Sellers certainly should not go out of their way to find things wrong with their house by obtaining seller inspections. That’s the buyer’s job.
I suppose the rationale of agents who like to order seller inspections on behalf of their sellers is the agents are unlikely to be held responsible for condition. Agents are only responsible to disclose what they see and what they know. Obtaining seller inspections seems overkill risk management to me, and exposes my sellers to a potential loss of profit.
If you’re looking for a strong listing agent who will work solely on your behalf, then call Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub, a top Lyon broker-associate, at 916.233.6759. Weintraub will try to protect you from these disasters.
Another Seller Learned Not to List with a Discount Agent
Maintenance free front yard is unusual for Tahoe Park real estate.
There are many people in the world who try to save money in all sorts of ways but hiring a discount agent is often not the way to go when it comes to Sacramento real estate. It is common knowledge among the top achievers in the industry that sellers who focus on the commission can get taken to the cleaners in the middle and on the back end. They are penny wise and pound foolish.
If they save $5,000 on the commission, they’ll give it away in home repairs, credits to the buyer and further price reductions after the buyers try to renegotiate. And it might not close on time or blow up. On the other hand, when sellers pay full commissions to the top producers, they often sell the home for more than list price and make even more money, even though they are paying more in commission.
Full service Sacramento real estate brokers cost more than a discount agent for a reason. Because they tend to make their sellers more money than a discount agent would do. I pound this into my seller’s heads over and over, but some either don’t believe me, because they are not in the business 24 /7 or they have to find out for themselves before they will trust.
Some just get fed up and decide that trying squeeze a nickel here and there is hurting them more than it is helping. Such was the case with the seller of this home in Tahoe Park. They had it listed for 6 months with a discount agent. The list price was lower than my contract. That agent could not sell it. The owners finally contacted me, and I sold it in 4 days for more money. At the worst time of the year, too, early December.
The discount agent did not do these people any favors. That’s a polite statement. We just closed escrow yesterday. A clean straight forward transaction. The sellers are thrilled with me. And to top it off, I sold this house from my wor-cation in Hawaii. I wasn’t even in Sacramento at this time of year. I’m as remote as you can get from California.
If you’re thinking about selling a home in Sacramento, you might ask yourself how does a Sacramento Realtor who is full service sell a home in Sacramento when she is on vacation in Hawaii that a discount agent could not sell for 6 months no matter how hard he tried? Then call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. No matter where I am, I will list and sell your home.
The Fastest Draw Often Wins the Sacramento Listing
This is a gecko in Kailua-Kona, and nobody seems to like the critters except the teeny ones.
Apart from yours truly who likes to win the Sacramento listing, you know who is really fast? Geckos. I opened my door in the rain too fast and caught a gecko about to slip into the house. I slammed the front door so quickly I almost sliced it in two. Geckos are not my favorite thing. In fact, in my list of favorite things, geckos are not on it. They don’t rank down by the bottom. Except for that cute gecko selling insurance. But that is not a real gecko. That’s a cartoon gecko, I hate to point out.
So now when I open my front door, I run my nails over the security screen to warn geckos to get the hell outta the way. They are more afraid of me than anything. I’m not telling them how terrified they make me. And don’t you go telling them, either. Keep your lips zipped.
I think of geckos now because they are all around me at my house in Hawaii. They spend lazy afternoons lounging on MY leaves in the yard. I’m not sure what or how to send them elsewhere. The previous owners said the little ones are OK but they kill the big ones because the big geckos eat the brown geckos or maybe it’s the other way around.
In any case, I am still working while I am in Hawaii, this is my wor-cation. My Sacramento listing inventory has tripled over the past few days. Just yesterday I received a referral lead from a popular website. I immediately called the seller. She was pretty much taken a back. Wow, she said, 20 seconds and you were on the phone. Well, I ‘ve learned a thing or two during my 40+ years in real estate and that thing or two is RESPOND NOW, people! I can’t impress it on my own Elizabeth Weintraub team members enough, and they’re probably tired of hearing me say it.
When I shared with the seller I am in Hawaii, she wondered how I could sell her home. I explained it to her. I don’t live in Hawaii all the time. She wanted to see my face. No problem, you can see my face, I offered, have you an Apple product? Voila, in like Flint. Well, a team member is also going by in a few days to take me on a FaceTime tour. All of this technology lying at our fingertips and yet the most important thing is to respond. Right away.
That’s how you get a Sacramento listing. And I’m like those geckos. Too fast for many other agents. Further, I don’t stop there. You won’t get terrific service upfront only to be disappointed later by a lack of enthusiasm, oh, no, no, no, no. I continue the thread, my communication skills continue to exceed expectations. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. You’ll be so thrilled!!
Working Sacramento Real Estate in the Cloud Means Hello Hawaii
Working on Sacramento real estate in the cloud can give you this view in Hawaii.
Many Sacramento Realtors nowadays work real estate in the cloud and they don’t even realize what they can actually do. When you look at my background, the fact I started in real estate in the 1970s, you would not think that I might readily adapt to working real estate in the cloud, but then you might not know me. I might be an old fart, yet I adapt to technology easily. I’ve been online since 1991. My entire Sacramento real estate business is pretty much handled not person-to-person but computer-to-computer.
If a client needs to see my cheerful face, I can use FaceTime. I work with many people I’ve never met. Some of my clients I’ve never talked to, never heard their voices. I manage my files and tend to exceed the expectations of my clients without ever shaking hands. My team members can carry me through a home via an iPad, showing me the big picture and the small details, if I need it. So, it’s no small miracle that as I’m about to take off for our house in Hawaii, the day before I ended up taking several listings.
That’s all it takes, you know, it’s the forces of nature. Soon as I haul out a suitcase, sellers who want to sell their homes are dinging my email and ringing my cell. That’s OK. I handle it. Like the sellers who emailed me late Tuesday night to say they wanted me to list their home in Tahoe Park. Said they had been trying to sell it for 6 months and the listing expired. Wha? In this market? Turns out it was previously listed by the same discount agent my Curtis Park seller fired before hiring me. What are the odds of THAT? I squeezed an inspection into my day before leaving and got all the paperwork signed within 24 hours.
Most agents would not list several homes the day before a 6-week getaway to Hawaii. They would be stressed out packing, making sure they didn’t forget anything. If I forget an item, I’ll buy it in Hawaii. My clients come first. In fact, I am betting my clientele won’t even know where I am, unless they are reading this blog. Because they’ll get the same expedient service whether I am in Sacramento in front of my desktop or whether I am lounging on my lanai staring out at the ocean with a laptop in my lap. I love my job.
This is one of the best perks of investing 40+ years in a real estate career and working real estate in the cloud. An organized Realtor can do it from anywhere. Given a choice between 6 weeks of rain and fog in Sacramento or warm ocean breezes, with all other things remaining relatively the same, I sure know which one I’ll pick.
Selling a Home in Sacramento on Thanksgiving
Selling a home in Sacramento on Thanksgiving is reason to celebrate.
Because the county assessor’s office is closed in Sacramento today and tomorrow, selling a home in Sacramento on Thanksgiving happens the day before, on the eve of Thanksgiving. The story of this sale is extraordinary, not in part because the amount of money I ended up with from the sale after taxes and overhead is barely enough to cover the cost of Thanksgiving dinner at The Firehouse today, but because the tale is really more about the seller. The 4th escrow was the charm.
I threw in that part about the commission because I happened to look at my ledger when I entered the sale as closed this morning and am astonished at how little I earned, particularly in relation to the amount of work I put into it, which was 4 times as much as any other sale. You know how they say don’t think about the money and it will come to you? Well, it’s true. Most of the time I make a good living because I am free not to care about how much I make. In comparison, though, this check was just so tiny in terms of income but it was huge, enormously so, in terms of relief for my sellers.
The sellers were nervous enough about hiring me because they erroneously believed that an agent of my caliber would not help them. They had this impression that top producers don’t work on lower priced sales, and nothing could be further from the truth. At least not for me. I work on all sales. Million dollar homes to condemned tear downs. Little did I know I would be selling a home on Thanksgiving when I started in mid September.
This property was a triplex that had been in the family for years under a trust. One of the trustees is scheduled for cancer surgery next week and might not make it. His wife spent thousands to clean up the property plus she hired a full-time security guard to patrol it. They can’t afford that kind of money. They are people of modest means. I listed the property and we received multiple offers. The sellers do not own a computer, so every time we received an offer, I drove over to their house to present it, just like in the old days.
We went into escrow 3 times, with 3 different buyers, and all 3 buyers flaked out eventually. Every week or two, a buyer canceled, and I had to start over. News at 11: Sacramento Realtor found wandering the streets naked, yelling at the sky. Who knew we would be selling a home in Sacramento on Thanksgiving to our 4th buyer?
I would tell buyer’s agents this is a teardown, buy this knowing this is a teardown, buy it for lot value and salvage, but still, their buyers would tie up the property at one price and then try in vain to renegotiate before they finally would just throw in the towel. They didn’t want to believe it was a teardown. The city was pressing my sellers about filing a lien after tearing down the structure itself, so I called the city and talked to the guy in charge. Pleaded with him to give us more time. It wasn’t my seller’s fault their family members had destroyed this property.
Finally, an agent I know came along with an offer. This was the 4th offer. How hard is it to sell a teardown in Sacramento? It’s brutal because the buyers for this are often very difficult to deal with. Every time I appeared on my seller’s doorstep, I would apologize for the bad behavior of the buyers and by extension, their agents. They would hug me, “That’s OK, honey, these things happen.” Yet I felt guilty, like I should be doing something more productive like holding the buyers hostage at gunpoint and not freeing their asses until it was time to close. I promised the couple no matter what this would close.
Last Friday, we signed the offer. By pulling strings, calling in favors, and pushing, even with our escrow officer on vacation, we closed this sale yesterday. This means my sellers can now celebrate Thanksgiving with one extra thing to be grateful for. They’ve gotten rid of the thorn in their side. The nastiness is over for them. Selling a home in Sacramento on Thanksgiving is not for everybody and rarely happens like this, but for these sellers, it was a miracle come true. Just to hear the relief in my seller’s voice and feel her joy when I called to wish her a happy Thanksgiving and confirm the sale had closed made the whole transaction worthwhile.
Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen, RIP. Here is to clinging to your own personal gratefulness this Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
