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How Many Sacramento Purchase Offers Does it Take Before an Offer Sticks?
Buyers who write purchase offers on homes they intend to buy generally close.
Even though I have been in the real estate business for 40 years, it still amazes me how buyers can be so sure one minute and so completely nuts the next. I’m wondering if there isn’t some sort of sign that buyer’s agents are overlooking, or if the agents are so completely focused on getting the paperwork signed that they forget to have a chat with the buyer. You know, something along the lines of: When you sign this contract, you have committed to buy a home, just in case they thought they were signing up for membership in Sam’s Club instead.
We have all become distracted by technology and the whirling world around us. Hey, anybody could have a temporary lapse, I suppose.
I just don’t understand how a buyer can be jumping up and down with such enthusiasm over buying a home, and not quite 2 minutes later falling into cold feet syndrome with severe regrets. Just a few days ago, an agent called to say his buyer was dedicated to purchasing a home in Sacramento. The guy was absolutely in love with this home, and his entire family was behind him. They were so obsessed with buying this home that they pulled out a wad of cash, $3,000 in all, and gave it to the buyer’s agent, begging him to obtain a cashier’s check with it on their behalf and draw a purchase offer.
Two other buyers wanted the same home in Sacramento. This was really good for my seller. She was excited and relieved to hear the news. We received two offers and waited for the purchase offer from the buyer with the $3,000 cashier’s check, too. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Then the agent called to say the buyer had a change of heart and was no longer interested in buying the home.
Doesn’t matter because we have 2 other purchase offers. It was tough initially choosing between them. They were very close to each other in terms of price, down payment and terms. The seller did an eeny, meeny, miny, moe and picked one. Signed the purchase offer. We sent it to the agent and 30 minutes later escrow shot over title information to the buyer’s agent. That’s when the agent emailed to say that after he explained the process, oh, so sorry, his buyer has flipped his gourd and will no longer be buying the home.
All this in one day. Sure hope the third time’s a charm.
How This Sacramento Realtor Uses an AT&T Go-Phone on Vacation
Elizabeth Weintraub at a phone booth in Dunsmuir, CA, before Go-Phones
How do drug addicts do it, I wonder, because somehow in their addled minds they are still capable of refilling their burner phones? Yet, I struggle with this issue. I have taken apart computers and put them back together again and I have a hard time figuring out these AT&T Go-Phones. Granted, those computers were an XT that ran on DOS — not to mention, it was the 1980s, a forgettable decade in so many ways, an astounding 25-some years ago — yet, you’d think that in 2015, stuff would be simpler and easier to operate.
Reading the directions would solve a lot of these problems, most likely, but that would involve extra time that I don’t have during my 12-hour workday. Plus, there are those stupid pictures that don’t mean anything to me. I hate the secret world of icons and don’t get me started on laundry symbols. Everybody knows what they are except me. The AT&T directions make the activation difficult and refilling almost impossible.
You might ask why would a Sacramento Realtor need a Go-Phone, and that would be a reasonable question. I use a Go-Phone when I travel to areas where I don’t get reception from my cellphone service provider. As of yet, there are still places in America that are served by only one service provider and some not at all. I have a weekend trip coming up that will take me to a remote area in the mountains northwest of Redding, and I may need to talk with clients outside of email.
Other agents might say screw it, I’m on vacation, anybody who calls can talk to one of my team members, but I feel an obligation and duty to personally stay in touch, even if it’s only for a 2-day period. I’m a nut-job that way. When I went back for a reunion several years ago in Nederland, Colorado, I bought a Go-Phone from AT&T. I tried to refill that phone this weekend, and spent more than 2 hours on the phone with AT&T to no avail. The end result — after setting up a new account at AT&T, discovering that despite what the website promised, I cannot merge all of my AT&T accounts into one account and, after wasting time with the Go-Phone department on top of it — is that my old Go-Phone cannot be refilled through the website.
I suspect AT&T doesn’t want you to refill a phone unless you do it every 30 days. So after I figure out all the nuances with my new Go-Phone, it will end up being thrown away after I leave the mountains and come back to Sacramento. I can always buy another burner phone. For next weekend, though, at least it will keep me in touch with my real estate clients. Life doesn’t stop for them just because their Sacramento Realtor is in the mountains.
A Negotiation Tactic for Sacramento Realtors Dealing With Unreasonable Demands
Sellers deserve a Sacramento Realtor who is fearless with strong negotiation skills.
Whenever I am faced with a dilemma, the way this Sacramento Realtor works her way out of it — as hokey as this might sound to some of you — is to consider my fiduciary duty to the client first. Forget what I might think or what the other parties might want, which negotiation tactic is best for my seller? The answer is almost always crystal clear at that point. That’s a little secret I pass along from me to you. It keeps things more simple when focused.
Notice I didn’t say it makes my job easier because much of the time it doesn’t. The negotiation that is best for the seller almost always involves extra work and it can be complicated. Not only that, but I can’t go around making unilateral decisions without my client’s acknowledgement and permission. It’s not my house nor my transaction. That’s a good point to remember. As a Sacramento Realtor, you can’t get too wrapped up in somebody else’s situation that you start to make decisions for them. Because that would be bad.
It can be a fine line to walk. To want to protect your client and negotiate what is best while at the same time not making the decisions for your client. It’s in the approach though. I’ll give you an example that happened a few days ago on a home that just closed escrow on Friday.
The buyer’s agent has had terrible experiences in the past with tenants, which might have clouded his judgment somewhat. Although this home was not tenant occupied, he felt the family who lived there acted like tenants, and that was enough, probably through transference, for his buyer to submit a Request for Repair asking for the squeaky front door to be unsqueaked and a minor hole in the closet patched. The buyer asked for a few other things, including shampooing the carpet, and he tried to force the family to move prior to closing.
While we were pondering how to respond to this unreasonable request at the 11th hour, the agent hit me with an email to say he also decided they would prefer to close escrow on Monday and not on Friday. Our purchase contract stipulated a closing on Friday. The seller was about ready to agree to credit a small amount of money to the buyer to compensate for his anguish over the squeaky front door until the buyer’s agent came up with an additional demand.
At that point, the seller rejected the Request for Repair outright. In addition, I mentioned to the seller we should submit a Demand to Close Escrow because the buyer appeared to require a kick in the seat of his pants. She wasn’t sure what that meant, I suspect, but she agreed to the negotiation. You really can’t renegotiate a contract, I explained to the buyer’s agent, without an agreement from the seller, and while I could not speak for the seller, I had a suspicion she would cancel the contract if they tried.
The best way to cancel a contract is to first send a Demand to Close. The buyer’s agent forced us to produce it. That negotiation tactic was the best protection for the seller. The seller has less to lose than the buyers, I pointed out. Now the home would be vacant, making it easier to show, which means we would get more showings and, in our tight market, probably a higher offer. Yeah, let’s go back on the market.
Painful to say, but the right negotiation for the seller.
We closed escrow on Friday on time. No Request for Repair, either.
When a Sacramento Realtor focuses on the negotiation that is best for her seller and takes herself out of the situation, the solution is apparent.
Realtor.Com Releases Elizabeth Banks Video About Home Buying
Elizabeth Banks delivers a stunning performance in the Realtor.com home buying video.
How cool is it that Elizabeth Banks is starring in a Realtor.com video about homebuying right on the page of my article at About.com: Trends for Home Buyers? Not just because we share a name or that she’s insanely gorgeous with a wicked sense of humor — not to mention, enormously talented — but because Elizabeth Banks delivers the hilarious truth about buying a home.
Realtor.com is definitely turning over a new leaf, I’ve got to admit. After being ignored by many in the industry and slipping further into the cracks of despair over the past decade, something happened over there and it’s like a new day, new management and a startling fresh approach — just in the nick of time, some would say. About.com and Realtor.com also created a first-time home buyer handbook, which I helped to create, btw, consisting of 5 snappy tips. That campaign is also on my Trends for Home Buyers page in the upper right-hand corner.
They were smart to bring in a top-producer Sacramento REALTOR to help with that campaign. So often these types of things are created by people who are part-time or not in the real estate business and, worse, part of a committee — oh, don’t get me started on committee compromises, the death of all that is pure and honest as we know it. I am excited to be part of this amazing new process, regardless of how small a part I may play.
You know, Trulia has a video with the guy from New Girl, Max Greenfield, cute, with slightly sexual innuendos, but it’s not nearly as enticing and amusing as Elizabeth Banks in the Realtor.com video. I’m telling ya, they outdid themselves with this promotion, and you’ve got to watch it. It’s brilliant. Take it from a person with the patience level of a termite when it comes to viewing videos. I watched all 5 of the series, and you’ll be just as hooked.
To see the series, click on this link Trends for Home Buyers.
Photo: Kathclick, Big Stock Photo
Your Sacramento Realtor Should Rise Above the Incompetency Plague
Incompetency is not a foreign concept in any profession
I am a Sacramento Realtor my clients can rely upon. That is not a statement I take lightly because, believe me, I have my share of interactions with others that seem to be plagued by incompetency, like it’s a disease that spreads. Things fall through the cracks. People don’t do their jobs or are inept at their jobs, and it can be frustrating. I never want a client to say their experience with me was frustrating or that I let them down.
It’s not uncommon to hear agents say the reason they went into Sacramento real estate was because their previous agents were idiots, and they want to protect others from their own bad experiences. I can understand that. There are times I have to do the other agent’s job in a transaction, and I just do it for them without expectation that I will receive an acknowledgment of gratitude.
I’m always looking for ways things can go wrong and trying to prevent those things from happening. I think ahead. I can’t say it’s not unnerving at times, but giving into frustration doesn’t solve the issues at hand. My sister says I have the optimistic energy level of a 5-year-old, which sort of threw me for a loop because I don’t see myself that way, but perhaps in comparison to her low-key approach, I do.
There are times I do not trust any professional’s competence. Like last Friday, I was at the hospital for a routine examination, waiting in a small room without any magazines nor cellphone reception. After 20 minutes went by, I poked my head out the door. The hall was empty. No folder was attached to my door. I roused a hospital employee to go on the hunt for my folder. She returned laughing that it had been placed on the wrong desk. I shudder to think how long I would have sat in that room if I hadn’t spoken up. Incompetency.
Or yesterday, when I came home to discover the plumber who was supposed to have installed a new control board in our Rheem tankless water heater had left, and we still had no hot water pressure and the control panel was dead. I did not want to have to figure out the problem nor read the installation manual, yet I did. I had to call the plumber back to install the programmer chip. I don’t want to know these things. I don’t want to do a plumber’s job. Incompetency.
When I spotted the plumber outside thumbing through the pages of the tankless water heater manual and looking puzzled, I went one step further and called Rheem to get a tech on the line who could walk my plumber through the installation process. Incompetency. The control panel is now working but the hot water flow fluctuates and, since it was 5 PM at Rheem, the tech claimed it was a plumbing issue not a tank issue and hung up.
I opened my mail last night to discover that Citibank has approved me for a special loan that I did not apply for. Plus, buried in its 12 pages, I see it plans to charge me an annual $50 fee for this Custom Credit Line I did not apply for nor authorize. I called customer service, some yo-yo in another state, who said I must have wandered into a branch office by mistake and opened the loan in error when I haven’t been to Citibank. Incompetency. Probably violates banking laws, too.
Given the above string of incompetencies that seem to unfold daily, you can see that I don’t mind tracking down another agent’s lender and sending the contracts she should have sent. Because it’s all around us. However, I can assure you, a client will never say these sorts of things about my services as a Sacramento Realtor.
