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Breaking Bad News to Sacramento Real Estate Clients
Not every real estate client is prepared to hear his agent breaking bad news.
Most of the time a Sacramento Realtor can bounce along with her sunny disposition always looking at the bright side of things, except when it comes time for breaking bad news to Sacramento real estate clients. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often. Generally, everything moves smoothly according to plan, but every so often we face disappointing news. It’s at those moments, I believe, that we Realtors are handed an opportunity to make our clients feel better, even though we’ve got to deliver news they might not want to hear.
I was reminded of this yesterday when I stopped at the Sacramento Co-Op to pick up a case of wine. The Co-Op’s customer service department made it slightly difficult to order the case. After listening to me explain what I wanted to buy, the customer service desk sent me to the Cheese and Wine desk. The Cheese and Wine desk said they were not authorized to take my order and sent the call back to the Customer Service, which then accepted my order and credit card number and promised to call when the order arrived.
All excited that my order had come in, I decided I could squeeze in a 20-minute stop at the Co-Op to pick up my order, just before an 11 AM appointment a few blocks away. Dude at Customer Service, disheveled, like he had just rolled out of bed, asked for my name. He misspelled it but people often do. I spelled it for him. Three times. He could not find my order. He called the Cheese and Wine desk. Messed around on the computer some more and then asked for my first name, and lo and behold, he discovered my order.
I watched customers check out. Kids bouncing oranges in the produce aisle. Eavesdropped on conversations. Waited through 3 ATM transactions and then decided I may as well withdraw cash, too. Cheese and Wine suddenly appeared to present a single oversized bottle of wine. Where was the case? She did not know. Cheese and Wine vanished. I waited a while longer and then realized I would be late for my appointment. When you figure this out, please call me, I said, and left. This was fairly irritating, and I’m at the point now where I don’t really care if they ever find my order.
How quickly my moods shifted during those 20 minutes, from anticipation to disappointment to irritation to a cavalier attitude.
Our real estate clients are no different. There were many things Customer Service could have done but did not. I suspect they bank on forgiving customers, capitulated by a strong desire for organic.
First and foremost to me is how my clients will feel when I am in the awful position of breaking bad news. I try to make sure they understand that if I can do anything about it, I will. Occasionally I can make them feel better by offering a partial solution to what often appears to be a dead-end street or another alternative.
The point is I try to find solutions. I apologize for the problem, even when it’s not my fault. I don’t get angry because they may want to assign blame in my direction, as that kind of response is human nature. No defensiveness. People always want to find the individual responsible for the difficult spot they might find themselves in, and I’m a buffer for that. It’s OK.
Mostly people want information when you’re breaking bad news. They want to know how and why it happened and what can be done about it. They want options. They prefer to be in the decision-making position, if at all possible, and they expect their Realtor to respect their opinions. If it’s within my power, I try to deliver that.
Reasons to Go the Extra Mile for California Real Estate Disclosures
Home sellers are required to disclose defects through the California real estate disclosures.
Most home sellers with a lick of common sense moan about California real estate disclosures. The home sellers’ state and federal-mandated disclosures are a pain to fill out, but the ramifications of incomplete or inaccurate disclosures are potentially enormous. We had a closing temporarily held up yesterday when the underwriter suddenly requested a more thorough explanation, which I was able to immediately supply and avert the crisis, concerning a note the seller included on a loan document.
As part of my full-service listing job duties, I try to prepare my sellers prior to completing disclosures. I offer to review the disclosures with my sellers as they complete them; I guide, although I do not write the responses. One of my clients told me yesterday that I must have been a trial lawyer in another life. I hear that a lot but I am not a lawyer, I am a Sacramento REALTOR®. Further, like Joni Mitchell, I see things from both sides. Take the case of a home in which the seller has not lived, briefly toured when she initially bought it and now, some almost 10 years later, is selling. That seller still needs to disclose everything she knows or should know, which can often be nebulous, about that rental home.
This seller had the ability to obtain a list of repairs from the property manager to give to the buyers as part of her California real estate disclosures, so we obtained that list for the buyer. Because she made a brief mention about former repairs in a loan document, we also had to send the lender a copy of that list. If she had signed closing documents in an escrow office, that blip would not have happened but she signed with a mobile signer out-of-state. I had her so ingrained to disclose, disclose, that she wrote it right on a lender document! Fortunately, I had that repair list in my files and sent it directly to escrow.
It’s often not so much what you say in the California real estate disclosures as how you say it. You can tell buyers anything, and they will still buy that home. It’s when you don’t disclose or when future problems pop up down the road that all holy hell breaks loose. Take that poor guy from San Francisco who had the worst luck ever. First, the city red-tagged the home on his birthday. The next day, while the guy was still in Ohio at his father’s funeral, city workers demolished his $2.1 million cliff-side home with panoramic ocean views, deeming it suddenly unsafe.
The culprit was most likely either groundwater or an 8-inch water line that broke or both. How would you like to come home and find your house gone? Especially after such a personal tragedy? I predict lawyers will probably find plenty of plaintiffs. If you’d like a top producer Realtor to represent you, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Tips for Hiring a Sacramento Agent on Zillow
Finding an agent on Zillow in Sacramento with 40 years of experience is an isolated situation.
When home buyers look for homes in Zillow, they often check out the profile for The Elizabeth Weintraub Team and call me — probably because I’ve yet to meet another agent on Zillow who has more experience in real estate. Lots of agents on Zillow, typically the “featured agents,” have very little experience and might even be brand new to the business, so I am unique in many ways compared to them. I adopted Zillow when it first hit the internet 10 years ago. It is doubtful that you will find a Sacramento agent with more than 40 years of experience in real estate like Elizabeth Weintraub on Zillow.
I am also finding that clients might stop to look at an agent on Zillow while doing an internet search for a Sacramento real estate agent, but the final decision is not made among the agents at Zillow. The decision to search for an agent might start with a recommendation from a friend or coworker. It could begin from a listing in Sacramento, and my listings are pretty much everywhere. They might find this agent on another website or from an article online. I have written more than 1,000 articles online about real estate. Keyword searches are also likely candidates that drive traffic to my own website.
Sometimes, believe it or not, people choose to work this Sacramento Realtor because they like my “kind” eyes. I hear that a lot. Although, I am not kind to everybody. I am not that kind to a buyer’s agent who insists on reading out loud every repair listed on a home inspection report like it’s written in gold by Buddha in a feeble attempt to build a flimsy case because she can’t control her buyers’ whimsical desires.
I suspect most people choose to work with me not because I am an agent on Zillow but because I am analytical and always focused on them. They like the individual attention and my attention to detail. Those two things are hard to come by in Sacramento real estate. They appreciate my experience level because I tend to avoid mistakes. I’ve done mortgages, been a title searcher and a certified escrow officer, so I know many aspects of the business that other Zillow agents do not.
Before you choose an agent from Zillow, you might want to go to the California Bureau of Real Estate and check the salesperson license. The records aren’t that accurate when they go back as far as mine, because I was first licensed in the 1970s. But for those who have been licensed only a few years, it’s easy to spot the newer agents. A license is only the first step. Experience is what separates the top 1% of agents from the masses.
Sacramento Housing Report for 2016
October 2014 to December 2015 Sacramento Housing Report, Trendgraphix
Even a busy Sacramento Realtor has to stop every now and then and look at the Sacramento Housing Report. This report includes the last 15 months of sales. It shows the number of homes for sale in Sacramento County, the number of homes that are pending and the number that closed for each of the last 15 months. Bear in mind that the pending sales in a previous month could very well be the sold sales in the following month, which means there could be a 30-day or so lag.
For example, this past December, we saw an uptick in sold sales but December pendings had fallen. That’s because many loans were delayed due to the new government TRID guidelines put in place last October. The homes that closed in December most likely rolled over from the pendings in October. I know I had four closings in December that were delayed yet managed to close in 2015, thank goodness.
The bottom line, no matter how you look the numbers, and I have laid them out below for you, we have little inventory in Sacramento. Not very many homes for sale. Which makes this a seller’s market. And prices are going up. The sold prices have appreciated 10.2% over the past year. Our median sales price, one of the best indicators of market movement, has shot to $297,000 from a low of $255,000 a year ago.
If you’re thinking about selling your home, you might want to call top producer who will pull out all the stops to market your home everywhere possible in the Internet world and real-life world — a veteran broker with 40 years in the business — Elizabeth Weintraub at Lyon RE. Call 916.233.6759. California BRE # 00697006.
Check out Elizabeth Weintraub’s client reviews.
Sacramento Housing snapshot from Oct 2014 through December 2015, Trendgraphix
Reasons to Validate Overpriced Listings in Sacramento
A luxury home on the water in Sacramento, by Elizabeth Weintraub.
A pile of newsletters travel through my email each week, many of which I do not open. I just look at the headlines. I send out my own newsletter every week to thousands and thousands of subscribers. About.com will not let me tell you how many subscribe to my homebuying newsletter, but it’s an astonishing number. I don’t know why people care what I have to say or why they even read it. Some send me emails that say they have no interest in real estate at all, they just want to see what I write. Which floors me.
Lately, the sentiment I see throughout the real estate industry appears centered on overpriced listings. Much of it is giving advice to sellers but mostly to their agents. This advice is do not overprice and do not take an overpriced listing. In some ways, this is very insulting, and I’m gonna tell you why.
The notion that we as real estate agents, for example, are the Know-all and Be-all in real estate is absurd. You heard me. Yes, we are real estate professionals but that doesn’t mean we know exactly how much a home should sell for. Because we don’t. We know the price that is likely to attract a potential buyer; we know how much previous buyers have paid for similar homes. We know what is in pending status and the inventory on the market now, but we do not have a crystal ball. We are also not appraisers, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
As a listing agent, I can help a seller to choose a sales price, but I do not choose the price for them. I am a Sacramento listing agent who works at the discretion of the seller. The seller has a very high percentage stake in the sales price, more than 90%. My stake is a relatively small slice of the pie. My job is to sell the property. I market real estate to buyers. I am a salesperson. The day a listing agent forgets that is the day an agent should quit.
Agents: I say who died and made you ruler of the universe? I want to grab these people by their shoulders and shake sense into them. It is silly to proclaim to the world that you and only you know the magical list price number for a seller. You don’t. You don’t really know how much a buyer will pay until you try to get it. You don’t really know how much a home will appraise for until an appraiser appraises it.
I have sold homes in my life that never in a million years should have sold at some of the prices they sold at, according to regular comps. There are many ways to evaluate a sales price. I tend to get the price the seller expects. Because that is my job. My job is to sell real estate in Sacramento. I am very clear and focused on that job. If I believe I can sell it, I’ll take the listing.
I recently had another home in Sacramento appraise at a value that astounds the neighbors. It astounded me that a buyer was willing to purchase the home under the terms and conditions it required, including price. Not only was the buyer willing to pay that price, but the home appraised at that price. I listen to my gut instincts, but I also listen to the seller. Then I formulate a marketing plan, and I sell that home. Real estate is not a black-and-white business. It’s a moving business. Constantly in motion. Like the Everglades.
While Elizabeth is in Cuba, please enjoy this previously published elsewhere blog.
