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The Unique Difference an Experienced Sacramento Listing Agent Makes
These tips for choosing a Sacramento listing agent can make your life easier.
From many home sellers’ point of view, they really don’t know what a Sacramento listing agent does to sell a home because all they see is the peripheral stuff. When the home first goes on the market, they see the for sale sign in the yard, maybe open house activity on Sunday, strange business cards showing up on the kitchen counter, ripe for drawing mustaches on. After an offer is accepted, there is an escrow, disclosure paperwork, an appraiser, and some guy who doesn’t wear booties and tracks mud everywhere traipsing through tearing the house apart. Maybe a pest inspector who might cause you to run screaming into the yard with a baseball bat: hey, moron, stop poking holes in my house!
The sellers might even believe they are doing all of the work because they have to pack up the house and move. Their Sacramento listing agent is not in the dining room helping them to roll crystal stemware in bubble wrap. They don’t see what is really happening, but if their transaction closes smoothly, it’s most likely due to the efforts of their listing agent.
My clients generally know exactly what I do as their listing agent because I tell them as we go along. I try to keep them informed of my activities. There are some Sacramento listing agents, for example, who won’t tell a seller that an offer is about arrive for fear that the seller will build expectations and be disappointed if the buyer later changes her mind. I try to put myself in the sellers’ shoes, and I would want to know this information. It doesn’t mean I email a seller with the good news that an offer is in the works, but I let them know it’s a possibility and why it might not happen.
My sellers know I’m on their side and say it the way it is. Which is why I actually told a seller yesterday that I am sorry to see their home sell. OK, I was half kidding. They laughed because they understood. I’ve been working on it for a long time and have become intimately familiar with the property, am used to checking on the stats daily in my MLS reports, drumming up feedback from buyer’s agents’ showings, taking photos out of order to tweak and rearranging the order, lining up open houses, moving up the ranking on other websites by publishing more data, blogging about the home and its features, checking the comparable sales and new listings every week and working other angles to sell the home, relentlessly searching for untapped strategies.
Now the home has left my active inventory and moved into pending status. I’ve already anticipated all the ways things can go wrong in underwriting, the possible challenges of inspections and handled them in advance. Smoothed out almost every possible wrinkle because that’s what 40 years of real estate experience from this Sacramento listing agent buys my clients. I take the hell out of the transaction for them. Of course, they don’t realize this when they choose me to be their Sacramento listing agent, and they might never know what hell could happen because it generally doesn’t.
My continual goal is to find a way to convey this to a seller who is on the fence about whom to choose as a Sacramento listing agent. I am fiercely dedicated 100% to my clients. It shows in the work I do and the delighted reviews I receive. There is a difference among Realtors.
When Is a Good Time to Reduce the Sales Price in Sacramento?
The best time to reduce the sales price in Sacramento is pretty much never.
An agent from a real estate website asked when is it a good time to reduce the sales price, meaning if a home doesn’t sell within a certain time period, at which point should a seller drop the price. Trying to establish set guidelines is pretty much impossible because every home is different and the temperature of your local real estate market varies with the seasons, among other criteria.
For example, some homes are simply more difficult to sell than others. Sacramento homes in challenging locations are hard to sell, like homes that back up to a school or a basketball court. Sacramento homes without updates in an area of remodeled homes makes them difficult to sell. Sacramento homes with weird layouts, white appliances, old carpeting, no first-floor bedroom or full bath, tiny yards, deferred maintenance . . . you get the idea. And let’s not even talk about short sales in Sacramento, which fall to the bottom of a buyer’s wish list since most need to sell at market value but take 3 times as long to close.
I’ve sold homes that have been on the market for 90 days at list price, and we never reduced. Sometimes it takes the right buyer. I never discard a home as “impossible to sell” especially when the seller loves the home because it means there is another person somewhere else who will also love it. I just need to find that person and appeal to that buyer. Nobody is that unique.
However, in today’s Sacramento real estate market at this particular period of the year, a good time to reduce the sales price is NEVER. When buyers see a price reduction, the immediate thought that pops into buyers’ heads is “how much lower will they go?” They think a seller is desperate and maybe the seller is. They show no mercy and head straight for the jugular with a sharp knife.
The best way to reduce the price is to take the home off the market and put it back as a brand new listing. You hit the market just right, at the right time with a new set of buyers, and BINGO. The home sells. It’s a bit more work for this Sacramento Realtor, transferring documents, photographs, lockbox settings, so forth, but it works. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t advise my sellers to do it.
Perhaps a better question to ask is not when do you reduce the sales price but when do you reassess the marketing, the length of time on the market and make adjustments? At least monthly. Certainly, initially, at the 21-day mark. Some homes just take longer to sell.
Hawaii Over Labor Day 2015 is a Perfect Quick Trip from Sacramento
There is nothing like lounging on a secluded Hawaiian beach.
One of the really good things a person learns when she grows older is to seize an opportunity when it is presented. I started out thinking it would be fun to take a last-minute trip somewhere over Labor Day 2015. It’s not like I don’t know that Labor Day comes every year, but I didn’t make any plans for this one because I’ve been too busy selling real estate. Days flow into other days, and weeks fly by when you’re having fun selling homes.
At first I tried to find a flight to Mexico that leaves in the evening on Friday and would return Monday night, but there was none. Not out of Sacramento nor San Francisco, nor even Los Angeles. My husband was just appointed by the Governor to a new position at the State, and it’s difficult now for him to take time off. When I couldn’t find a flight that worked, I turned to a new destination, figuring I could just go by myself. Simply because my husband wasn’t available didn’t mean I couldn’t go.
It was just a question of where. Didn’t want to fly too far. So, that narrowed it down to Hawaii. See how my mind works? Yet I don’t have to leave on a Friday night and come back on a Monday evening because I have the magic of technology. Labor Day 2015 rules don’t apply to me. You betcha, I can sell real estate just about anywhere in the world and, in fact, I have. Yes, I am that crazy woman you feel sorry for who is lying on the beach with her cellphone and iPad. Poor miserable workaholic, you mutter under your breath.
Yet, you tend to stop feeling pity when you see me retreat to my 1,200 square-foot corner oceanfront suite or watch me emerge from the spa glowing from head-to-toe or catch me dipping crab legs into butter and washing it down with chilled French champagne.
Nobody is complaining about the trade-offs. Least of all me. I love my job, I find my work extremely fulfilling, and I adore my clients.
My next blog will come to you from the shores near Waimea on the Big Island for Labor Day 2015. Aloha! Remember, if you need to professionally sell a home, call this Sacramento Realtor in Hawaii. I’d love to hear from you. 916.233.6759.
The Sacramento Real Estate Market in August 2015
There are no glasses on the table because this family finished their Jell-o shots in the kitchen.
The Sacramento real estate market in August tends to slow down a little bit in all of this end-of-summer heat and stays fairly quiet until the weekend after Labor Day. Part of the reason is it’s fairly hectic getting kids back in school in August, which seems almost sacrilegious to old geezer, watching your summer cut so short like that. The other is families tend to travel over Labor Day or attend family celebrations, and they’re generally not out looking at homes to buy.
Not even on their computers or phones, unless they’re a bored 19-year-old at a family reunion, oh, wait, that was me. And I didn’t have any stinkin’ computer or cellphone to waste time on. No sirree. I was forced to come up with other creative ideas, like how many bottles of beer could we stuff in the trunk of my ’65 Mustang before anybody noticed. Yeah, people might talk about Sacramento real estate in August while chomping on a brat and dribbling mustard on a shirt that won’t wash out the stain, but they are not looking at real estate and nobody, really, is holding any open houses.
The buyers who are out now looking at homes, though, seem to be driving their agents crazy. I say this because of the types of calls I’ve been receiving from buyer’s agents on my listings. The fact that they are calling this Sacramento Realtor generally means trouble. Because if the agent’s buyer likes the home and wants to make an offer, usually agents are writing the purchase offer and not calling the listing agent. They would call to say they are sending the offer or they have sent the offer but not just to chat.
Calling just to chat tends to mean one of three things. Either the agent doesn’t know how to write the purchase offer (which is not all that uncommon in this industry), or the buyer’s agent wants an edge in a multiple-offer situation (which is not happening on a large scale right now), or the buyer wants to lowball. If the buyer wants to offer considerably less, the buyer’s agent sometimes wants to discuss this and get a feeling of whether the offer will be rejected or if the listing agent will forever hold the act against them. There are listing agents who blame the buyer’s agent for sending goofy offers but I am not one of those.
I received a call from an agent yesterday while I was driving back to Sacramento from a weekend in Anderson, California. She was incredibly difficult to understand, but I made out the key words. She called on a home in Elk Grove, and when I figured out the address, I asked if she was calling because the buyer wants to know if he can offer $10,000 less than list price due to “all the work” the home needs, even though those inspection reports are attached to MLS and the home is already priced 50,000 under the comparable sales, because also we don’t have eyeballs and we have no idea how much work the home needs. The agent laughed hysterically. That was my answer.
My passenger asked how I could understand what the agent was saying during our conversation, because my phone was on speaker in the car, and it was garbled going down I-5 in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t make out half of what the agent said, but I did understand. It’s the time of year. Just wait until after Labor Day weekend. Normal lull to the Sacramento real estate market in August.
Why TSA Precheck is the Only Way to Fly Out of Sacramento
The red rabbit at the new terminal at Sacramento International Airport.
Honestly, I was not really sure how TSA Precheck happened to apply to me out of the clear blue for I surely was not about to question my good fortune. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, my mother used to say. Until the day the thought hit that I should probably bring it up because not only did it NOT happen on that particular trip, but what if the system was flawed, and airlines were granting TSA Precheck boarding passes in error, perhaps to terrorists? You know how government things often work.
It was probably my civic duty to bring to the official’s attention the fact that I did not receive a TSA Precheck boarding pass and disclose that I had been granted those privileges for several years without applying for it. I suppose part of me was hoping they would say, “Oh, terribly sorry for the oversight, Ms. Weintraub; I can see you are a Sacramento Realtor, let us revise that boarding pass for you immediately.” But that scenario is locked away in the part of my brain where I store other unfulfilled wishes, accompanied by scenes of gratitude and humility, which I will display with immense conviction should those things ever be granted.
Instead, TSA officials said that sometimes airlines hand out TSA Precheck boarding passes at random. I don’t know about you, but THAT makes me feel better about flying with terrorists. What is the criteria, do you suppose? An innocent looking face? Friendly demeanor? Flip-flops? Because no terrorist would be caught dead trying to run in flip flops? No idea. But I do know that after experiencing travel with TSA Precheck, I no longer wanted to fly without it. They drew me in like a fly to honey and sucked my brain cells dry.
I was now addicted to the TSA process of not removing my shoes, not stripping half-naked, nor yanking my laptop out of my luggage, sending cords and plugs flying, and not waiting in long lines, just zipping through security like I was passing through the automatic doors of Neiman Marcus, which is sort of my definition of heaven. This was probably TSA’s sneaky little plan all along. To hand over nirvana and then yank out the needle, to leave us yearning.
Which is precisely why my husband and I went to IdentoGo in West Sacramento yesterday to go through the process of fingerprinting, verification, videotaping or whatever that camera was doing there, to obtain our official TSA Precheck travel identification number. It was a fairly simple and easy process. You can sign up online, make an appointment, bring your passport and go. $85 and it’s good for 5 years. It doesn’t work in other countries, and not all airlines use TSA Precheck, but it’s worth having it.
As long as everybody else in the universe doesn’t have it. Oh, why-oh-why did I write this blog?
