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What Daylight Saving Means to This Sacramento Realtor
The one thing that happens twice a year whether we like it or not is not going to the dentist to get your teeth cleaned, it is when we lose an hour of sleep or gain an hour of sleep. We’re all in the same boat in California. Not that boat which is sinking because there are too many people living in this state using up precious resources but the boat from which zombies embark, wandering aimlessly, bumping into things, because our sleep is robbed and messed up. I intensely dislike adjusting to daylight saving time. It’s like living in Colorado smack dab in the middle of Sacramento without the jet lag.
My mother used to say daylight saving time is the fault of the farmers. Back when we had no electricity and farmers got up with the chickens to till the land. Yet, today, we have electricity. We have lights. Sure, our small family farms are vanishing, and our food supply is in jeopardy, but we have electricity. When you’ve got corporate drones tilling the fields, they can supply their own electricity and work at night if it increases bottom-line profits, so why do we need daylight saving time?
For a Sacramento REALTOR, it means she can show homes after dinner and work longer hours. Because I still rise at the same time every morning, whether it’s spring or fall. The only thing daylight savings does is make my days longer. I force my body rhythms to adjust because there is no other choice. Everything is disrupted, especially meals. Noon is too early for lunch when it’s really 11 AM.
I say this as a person who used to sleep in until noon when she was younger. My first book of poetry, for example, was titled, Obnoxious is the Morning Sun. But today, with my Sacramento real estate business, I have to be out of bed and working before everybody else hits the streets.
Why can’t we adjust to these things over Christmas week, when much of the world is on vacation? Or just stop doing it? You know, like pick one time you like and stick with it? Like your spouse or a cellphone carrier. The best thing about today is it is Sunday, so there is still time for an after-breakfast nap.
This is a perfect day for open houses in Sacramento, though. The sun is out, temperatures are creeping into the high 70s, and spring is upon us. I sold my listing in Land Park last Sunday and expect to sell another home in Land Park today. No time left to gripe about daylight saving.
Alternative to Short Sale to Sell an Underwater Home in Sacramento
Be aware that not every underwater home is a short sale.
When a seller deposits cash to close an underwater home, that’s what makes a short sale not a short sale. I realize this can baffle some real estate agents in Sacramento because an anonymous agent attempted to file a complaint about my listing to Metrolist, claiming it was disguised as an equity sale. This confused MetroList as well because they could clearly see that my listing was an active listing and not a short sale. Everybody understood except the anonymous agent who apparently could not fathom how a seller could bring in money to close a transaction.
When is a short sale not a short sale? I guess in that agent’s mind if the home was underwater it had to be a short sale; but from where I sit, sellers bring in cash to close more often than you would think. Not every seller of an underwater home wants to do a short sale. Some wish to avoid a short sale and the accompanying derogatory credit by bridging the gap in cash.
This is how it works. Say we have a home that is worth $300,000 but the seller owes $330,000. If the home sells for $300,000, the seller is $30,000 short, plus the seller is short another $21,000 to $22,000 for closing costs and commissions. In this example, a seller can deposit about $52,000 into escrow, which pays all of the costs of sale, including the mortgage payoff, and it is not a short sale.
It is an alternative to a short sale. It is called a regular sale. The seller is adding cash in-lieu-of requesting a short sale. It will not affect the seller’s credit rating, and the seller can buy a new home the same day. Some sellers choose to sell a home in this manner. So, agents should not automatically assume that when a mortgage balance in the tax rolls seems larger than the sales price that the home is a short sale — and don’t rush to file reports with MetroList because it makes the reporting agent look like an idiot.
Trust that many of us in Sacramento real estate really do know what we are doing when we list a home and sell it. Thank goodness this home closed escrow this week. Both of the sellers appear relieved to have unloaded the property without resorting to a short sale. This alternative to a short sale does not fit everybody but for some sellers, it’s the perfect choice.
A Land Park Agent Says Leave the Tenant in the Home for Sale
One of the really good things about a Land Park agent like me listing a home in Land Park is that I am very close and available in case of emergencies. We had one such emergency last night. An agent called me to say a brand new lockbox was flashing red and behaving badly. I dropped what I was doing, backed into the recycling can with my car because my husband left it in the driveway in an attempt to dissuade garbage pickers from tearing it apart, and dashed over to my listing to give that lockbox a good talking to.
Turns out it was as I had anticipated, and there was something wrong with the buyer’s agent’s display key. It would not read the lockbox. It was also dark, so she could been putting in the wrong code or even pointing at the wrong spot on the lockbox. Whatever the problem was, I was glad to be there to solve it. Doubly glad I live nearby. Why, if that seller had listed with some other agent who didn’t live in Land Park and was not a Land Park agent that home might not have been shown last night.
I always drop what I’m doing to take care of more important matters. Of course, if I was in the middle of driving somebody to the hospital, I probably would let my phone ring through to voice mail, but otherwise I tend to try to answer it.
I have another home to list in Land Park shortly. I’m going over today to meet with the owners and do a walkthrough to help them decide how to stage the home. Staging is so crucially important. For my other listing, I suggested to the seller that he go on the market immediately rather than wait for the tenant to move in a couple of weeks. That is contrary to most general advice, but then every real estate listing is different. In this particular listing, the tenant has the home decorated and staged beautifully, that it will look more empty and lonely without her stuff in it than it does now.
It’s rare that I ever suggest that a tenant stay in the home. But every so often, a tenant’s touch is so magical, it makes a world of difference. If you’re looking for a top producer Land Park agent, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Why There is No Such Thing as a Favorite Color
During a chat with my manicurist Rosa at Galaxy Nails in Land Park yesterday, Rosa asked me to name my favorite color. Perhaps it’s because I tend to pick a wild assortment of colors for my nails, depending on my present mood, and it rarely includes any association to my previous manicure color. Which means my toe color doesn’t always match my fingertips but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore in 2015. We no longer are forced to be matchy-matchy. We can wear plaids with stripes if we like. Dots with squares. Shave half of our heads and paint green-like-a-lawn the mowed half. Who cares?
I stared at Rosa, hard. I have no favorite color. There is no such thing as a favorite color. It does not exist. There might be colors I favor, which is just about all of them, but there is no favorite color because it’s impossible and a ridiculous thing to ask. It’s like somebody made up that question so now everybody asks it, and we’re expected to have an answer. Some people, I imagine, feel badly if they don’t have an answer so they create a mythical color and attach themselves to it, never giving the selection a second thought.
Like Rosa.
She responded that purple was her favorite color. No, it’s not, I laughed. Oh yes, says, Rosa: I like a purple dress, and I love purple flowers! There, evidence.
I could see she had fallen into that trap many years ago when somebody asked her for a favorite color and she probably felt forced to choose. There’s a certain amount of chutzpah to choose purple because purple is a regal color, a color of power, and a color of mystical insight. If you asked Oprah, she’d probably say purple is her favorite color, too. But Oprah, I hate to say, is wrapped up in her own reality. She is not a goddess, people. Purple is a shy-away-from color for most people. It’s also a secondary color, not primary, and most people tend to select primary colors for favorite colors, or shades of a primary like pink.
To say you love a certain color above any other color is to reduce all of the other colors in the world to a devalued state. All colors are beautiful. Even cat-puke green.
Would you buy a purple car? I asked. Well, no, she admitted. OK, would you paint your house purple? No. Definitely not.
I think the light was beginning to dawn.
Then we had a long discussion about sellers who refuse to paint the interior of their homes to get rid of bright colors and make their homes more saleable. They say things like, oh, the buyer can paint the room whatever color the buyer wants. That’s an excuse for laziness on the seller’s part. Own it. It’s also ignorant, because the buyer might not buy the home. If the buyer does make an offer, that paint job will turn into thousands of dollars of a discount.
It’s like saying a seller will give a buyer a carpet allowance. They don’t think through this idiotic statement. They don’t think about the buyer moving in and then moving all of the furniture into the garage when the carpeting arrives. We live in Sacramento, it’s not like you can waltz into a carpet store and have new carpet installed that afternoon. On top of that, the buyer will need to make choices in color, texture, pattern, material, not to mention padding. Measure the rooms, too. Fork out extra cash or run up a credit card. It’s a huge hassle.
And after the carpeting is installed, the seams will be visible, the house will smell, the workmanship sloppy, and then the buyer’s tempers will flare. It’s all way too much work. Home sellers should install new carpeting, if the home needs it. Problem solved.
But don’t tell me you have a favorite color because you don’t. Let’s reverse this trend. Put a stop to this nonsense.
Story of Selling a Damaged House in Elk Grove
The damaged house in Elk Grove was not this bad.
There seems to be a lot of rehab investors, both in town and outside of Sacramento, who expect advance phone calls from listing agents, because they email me all the time about buying a damaged house. The worse, the better, they say. I wonder if they haven’t heard about MLS? You know, that place where all the listings go? Or, maybe they haven’t noticed that Zillow and Trulia are also pulling listings from MLS? Or, perhaps they think my supposed greedy little heart will seize the chance to smash my seller’s hopes and I’ll engage in some secret, behind-the-scenes deal with them to be the only buyer because all agents are money-grubbing fools? I’d say gag me but I’m recovering from the flu and don’t want to think about that reflex.
Take this damaged house in Elk Grove, for example. This was a short sale home that had been abandoned for a while — what we call a fixer. There were no utilities and, in fact, there were utility liens recorded against the property. It needed flooring, paint, a new roof, pest work, stucco repair and there was a minor plumbing leak in one of the upstairs’ bathrooms. The home was located in a popular neighborhood in Elk Grove. Even though it needed work, which meant few owner occupants would make an offer, it should have sold sooner than it did. The reason it didn’t is many rehab investors don’t want to go back to the old market of years gone by, it seems, they expect higher profit margins. Higher profit margins are typically not available in a short sale. Short sale banks typically won’t fund an investor’s bank account.
We put this on the market last May, and it sat for 3 months without a viable offer. We received a number of lowball offers but none high enough to where the comparable sales suggested the bank would accept the offer. See, guys don’t understand why we won’t take a low offer and send it to the bank. That’s because they’re not on the listing side, doing possibly a ton of work for zero results. I’m not completely alien to fixing up homes and flipping, as I did it myself for 10 years. I also know how to compute comparable sales and deduct for repairs.
Come August, we decided to take the highest offer we could get, which wasn’t enough to satisfy what we felt the bank would want, but since it involved a 203K loan, the buyer had room to move up, if necessary. It’s one thing if they pay cash and the bank wants more money. It’s quite another if the buyer plans to live there and is obtaining financing, so a $10,000 increase could mean a difference of only fifty bucks in a mortgage payment. Not surprising, the bank asked for a higher price, it demanded our original list price. See, I’m often right on the nose with how they think because I’ve been doing this for so long.
The buyer bailed. Fortunately, we found other buyers, several at one time. The seller chose the most committed buyer. I went back to the bank and negotiated a price somewhere between the lowball offer and the original list price. I know these are trouble, walking into these listings. It’s hard to show homes without electricity. It’s hard to get a loan without utilities. It’s almost impossible to get the bank to agree to allow payment of utility liens. And people are often afraid of abandoned homes with damage. These homes appeal to a small majority. Not to mention, the lowballers come crawling out of the woodwork looking for a steal, and it makes me feel like I should put on white socks so I can see the fleas jumping on me.
Throw on top of these situations, other individuals in title who won’t cooperate with a short sale, and a seller whose second mortgage was charged off but not reconveyed and therefore included in the short sale, all of which makes it a recipe for a whopping fun time.
Yet, it closed. They all eventually close. Because this Sacramento Realtor does not give up. If I can close a horrendous situation like this, imagine what I do with a beautiful home in Elk Grove that’s in pristine condition.
