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Lockboxes, Taxes, Lawyers, and Sacramento Realtors at Ella Dining
Efficiency in real estate means spending the limited amount of time available in any given day in a productive manner, with the goal in mind that those efforts will benefit all of those involved. I’m just the kind of Sacramento Realtor who tries to be as efficient as possible. It could mean I spend 3 hours at a lunch at Ella Dining downtown catching up with another Realtor, an old friend and, when she is late, texting her explicit directions about where to meet the Valet and which one-way street to use as an approach.
This is one of the reasons I love going to Ella Dining for lunch. Yeah, drawback, it is downtown Sacramento, land of the one-way streets with the Capitol smack dab in the middle cutting off access to many east-west streets, but I don’t rely on Siri to get me there because, believe it or not, Siri doesn’t know where to find Valet. Apart from the food, which is spectacular, and the ambiance, which is captivating, and the service, which is unprecedented, I don’t have to figure out where to park, nor spend time driving in circles searching for a darn parking spot. I can run late, zoom up to Valet, hand over the keys and be done with it.
A 3-hour lunch gives the Valet plenty of time to make copies of all of my house keys, run over to my house and burglarize it, snatch all of the quarters from my parking meter tray, and be back in time to deliver the vehicle after dessert. I don’t care; life is short and then you die. Enjoy the time you have.
After driving to Vineyard to pick up a lockbox, I pulled up yesterday with one minute to spare to meet my reservation time at Ella Dining. My Vineyard clients seemed very happy after closing and said they received the absolute highest price possible for their home. Their escrow was smooth without hiccups. They had selected me in the first place among a plethora of Sacramento Realtors and they also are fans of my articles on About.com. There are no better sellers to work with in the world than sellers who intentionally weed through the inventory of agents in Sacramento and carefully and thoughtfully choose a listing agent. Many of those types of sellers are lawyers, too, and I love them to pieces, love working with lawyers. My favorite kind of client is a lawyer.
Since I was out in Vineyard to pick up a lockbox, it seemed best to use that time of travel to stop by my CPA’s home office, which is also in Vineyard, and deliver our tax folder in person. It beats photocopying all of the documents, finding a large envelope, weighing the contents, calculating postage and taking it to the post office. My CPA is one big joker. When he’s not tweaking digits, he’s joking around. His answer to almost every question is a one-liner, bada bing. I couldn’t help but wonder how my clients would view me if I acted like that. Good thing I don’t.
ABC News Good Morning America and a Sacramento REALTOR
A producer from ABC News Good Morning America called yesterday to talk about the hatchet job from Consumer Reports last month: Real Estate Agents Confess Their Dirty Little Secrets. With a headline like that, whose eyeballs would wander elsewhere when those eyeballs can fall upon real estate porn? How stupid does Consumer Reports think its subscribers are? Oh, wait. Consumer Reports just told you.
This producer said she was having difficulty finding real estate agents to appear on the show to back-up the silly-ass headline grabber punched out by Consumer Reports. She said ABC News Good Morning America offered to film real estate agents in the shadows, anonymously, but nobody was jumping at the opportunity. No shit, Sherlock. Agents won’t do it because first of all, the “facts” are not true, second the statements are the results of a tiny sampling of agents, which stated they once witnessed or heard of another agent doing (nothing first hand) and, third, agents crave publicity, for crying out loud. Real estate agents are publicity hounds.
I wouldn’t go so far as to propose that agents might pull that “Jimmy McGill publicity stunt” as in episode 104 on Better Call Saul — faking a guy falling off a billboard so Jimmy could come to the rescue — but agents are not above standing on a street corner dressed like a clown and waving a Sacramento homes for sale sign if they thought it would bring in the business.
The crap that Consumer Reports spewed forth was stuff that probably grew out of a committee meeting with everybody slouched around a conference table, munching on stale doughnuts. What crappy things do you think agents do, one of the suits asked. I think they tell sellers to sell for too little and they make buyers pay too much, answered some minion who, because he overslept, arrived with his shirt on backwards.
That kind of nonsense is idiotic. We live in a fast-paced digital world, and market movement tends to dictate. No agent cares about squeezing a client because clients can’t be squeezed.
I would be remiss if I didn’t note how quickly my husband zeroed in on the story when I shared it with him last night. A large grin crossed his face. He offered up the reason I am willing to help out ABC News Good Morning America. It’s because I live very close to an ABC affiliate, Channel 10, so I could dash over to Broadway in an instant to be filmed for the Good Morning America via satellite — which would give me access to that damn inaccessible and private Ingress portal. Yes, I could claim the portal, deploy all of my resonators, set up my mods and walk out of that Channel 10 studio a satisfied Sacramento Realtor.
Are You Working With a Sacramento Realtor?
That is such a simple question, are you working with a Sacramento Realtor, but it is extremely difficult for some buyers to answer. I can see why, too. Because what does it mean? They don’t know. Does it mean they know a Sacramento Realtor? Everybody knows somebody who works in real estate in Sacramento, you can’t turn around in a crowded Midtown bar or slam a grocery cart into the checkout counter at Safeway without stumbling into a real estate agent these days.
Does it mean that you have a relative in the real estate business whom you might call to represent you to buy a home? Does “are you working with a Sacramento Realtor” mean you are beginning to dislike your real estate agent who has been sending listings but never calls or follows up to see if you’re ready to look at homes or offers any other kind of assistance to you? Maybe not. It’s complicated.
Basically, when an agent asks a home buyer are you working with a Sacramento Realtor, it means are you presently working with an agent or about to work with another agent who will write the offer for you? It could also mean have you signed a buyer broker agreement, in which case, even if you’ve changed your mind about working with that agent, you’re probably stuck with that agent and can’t choose somebody else.
When an agent asks if you are working with another real estate agent, just be honest. Explain your situation. Because the agent is asking in a roundabout way if he or she can write the offer for you. If he or she cannot write the offer for you and represent you, then the answer is yes, you are working with another agent. Be aware that Realtors are prevented from interfering with another Realtor’s client.
Sometimes buyers want to work directly with the listing agent because they wrongly believe they’ll get some kind of break or preferential treatment. Not much we can do about those disillusioned people. They tend to get what they deserve, which is not necessarily excellent representation. Don’t go that route. It doesn’t mean, however, that if a listing agent shows you the property that the listing agent won’t want to write the offer because the agent most likely will.
My team members are upfront when they talk to buyers. They say, if we show the home, we will represent you. Do you understand and agree to it? Or, are you working with another Sacramento Realtor? It’s OK, to talk about this, and it is imperative. Otherwise, you might end up in trouble over procuring cause. You can save yourself a lot of time and trouble if the agent who shows you the home is the agent who will represent you.
Fired Up: Sacramento Real Estate Market and Ticketmaster
Call it March Madness if you like, but the Sacramento real estate market is on fire. It’s a seller’s market in full swing, especially in areas where demand is high and homes are in good condition. Certain homes that a year ago might have taken 6 months to sell are attracting dozens and dozens of open house guests, and multiple offers are the norm. Our pending sales are about to exceed the number of active listings, so if you’re on the fence about selling, let me assure you that today, right NOW, you should be on the market.
I observe stuff going on even when I’m horribly busy as a Sacramento REALTOR. For example, in the middle of talking to a buyer yesterday about making an offer on another home, I received an email from Ticketmaster. Didn’t look at the email until I hung up the phone and yowza, the email started out about inclement weather back East slowing response times for them, yet I realized that I have not recently bought any tickets through Ticketmaster. But I do have an account at Ticketmaster.
Reading further, I noticed that Ticketmaster had mixed up my account with a person who lived in Texas, and this woman was trying to buy Cirque du Soleil tickets. She had emailed Ticketmaster about a problem with her account, and Ticketmaster responded, along with her name, her phone number, the last four digits of her credit card number, the name of her credit card company, its toll-free phone number, and they mixed up all of this with my email account. They responded to me and not to her.
That’s pretty scary. I wonder how many other customers have mixed-up accounts at Ticketmaster.
The first thing I did was call the woman in Texas to let her know what happened on her voice mail and mentioned that I hoped nobody was stealing her identity. Next, I called Ticketmaster to report the problem. After running through an asinine system in which the automated operator can’t understand anything and placed on hold for 18 minutes, I finally got through to a person who could escalate this situation to a supervisor.
If you’ve recently ordered tickets through Ticketmaster, you might want to make sure you have actually received those tickets and all of the information is your account is accurate. Be on the lookout for anything suspicious.
Sacramento County, February 2015, Real Estate Market Trends
Moreover, if you’re thinking about selling your home in Sacramento or anywhere in our region, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I ranked in?the Top 3 Producers?at Lyon Real Estate for last month, even in a market of limited inventory and closed 9 listings. My listings sell and my sellers are ecstatic. Don’t go on the market in May or June when inventory is high and buyers might pass on your home, put your home on the market today! You can afford to hire the best, so don’t settle for less.
Trendgraphics for Sacramento County, February 2015
Sacramento Realtors Owe a Fiduciary Relationship to Clients
Protecting a client’s privacy and maintaining a fiduciary relationship are things some Sacramento Realtors most likely never think about but are necessary to do. As a Sacramento REALTOR we have to be continually “on guard” about questions we receive and how we respond to demands made by other people. Just because somebody asks a question does not mean we are required to answer it. I imagine the shared comradery and cooperation among real estate agents blurs certain lines that others may unknowingly cross, but I certainly try not to do it.
Every so often, though, we run across an agent with an agenda to supposedly protect her buyer that can be way out of line, and those agents can make demands that are unreasonable. For example, last year I sold a townhome for a seller near American River and helped her to buy a new home in Elk Grove. She is a professional who travels all over the world, and a very sweet, honest individual.
The buyer’s agent demanded a receipt for repairs that her buyer had requested, and the seller, out of the goodness of her heart, had agreed to undertake. My advice had been to reject the request for repairs, but the seller wanted to do it. We gave the buyer’s agent a copy of the receipt. The agent said she could not read it, even though the rest of us could. The buyer’s agent raised a tremendous ruckus over it and threatened to cancel the escrow while the seller was in Hong Kong and completely unavailable.
Honestly, part of me wanted to say go ahead and let your buyer cancel, you jerk, but, no, I owed a fiduciary to the seller to close. I take very seriously my fiduciary relationship with my sellers. Eventually, we were able to produce the original document for the buyer’s agent who, much to our dismay, was still unhappy with the receipt and continued to yelp she could not read it. At that point, the only thing we could advise the agent to do was to buy a pair of reading glasses.
The transaction closed.
In the spirit of cooperation, I often go out of my way to accommodate a buyer’s agent’s request; however, if that request is not in the contract and not in the seller’s best interest, the agent ain’t gonna get it. The agent can stomp his feet and parade up and down in front of my house carrying picket signs for all I care. Sometimes the answer is no, you are not entitled to know the answer. Giving parties to a real estate transaction answers to questions they are not entitled to know can lead to a potential lawsuit, especially if there is an adverse reaction. A Sacramento REALTOR should think before she speaks.
Practicing risk adversity is a good thing. It might not win popularity contests, but it elicits respect. And my clients love me for it.
