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The Difference Between a Challenge and a PITA for a Sacramento REALTOR
There is a big difference between a challenge and a pain-in-the-ass (PITA) when it comes to Sacramento real estate for a REALTOR. A challenge presents obstacles that beg to be overcome and resolved, whereas a PITA just gets worse and nothing will fix those problems. It’s sometimes difficult to figure out which is which when they first appear in front of me. I like to try to help every buyer and seller who contact this Sacramento REALTOR. But when I start to question why-oh-why am I working on a house, that’s a definite clue that I should not.
I am not afraid of hard work. I don’t care how complicated a situation presents, I am confident that I will find a way to make it work out. It’s why I am successful. In fact, it’s how I sell hundreds of homes. It’s how, for example, that since 2006 I’ve sold more short sales than any other agent in town. So many agents would not touch those houses with a 10-feet pole. But not this agent. I welcome challenges. It’s how I turned into an exceptional Sacramento REALTOR.
If you have a difficult to home to sell, I’m your agent. I’ll do it. I gain deep satisfaction by successfully closing the seemingly impossible. By the same token, I welcome the easy-to-sell homes and I do a bang-up job selling homes in Land Park, East Sacramento and Elk Grove, all the way in some cases to Lincoln. The really nice homes in Sacramento owned by trouble-free sellers balances out the problematic sales. I take the good with the bad.
So, when a seller called, wiping away tears through our discussion about selling a certain home in Elk Grove, I decided to help her. Yes, I can be a sucker for a sob story. I sometimes feel as though if I don’t do it, who will? Many agents don’t like problems and they won’t work on situations fraught with difficulties. She faces an extremely complicated situation, made ten-fold by a super hard-to-sell property. Whatever pushed her to the edge meant she had to take action, pronto. I stopped what I was doing and jumped on this for her. Took copious notes. Shot photos. Inspected. Qualified. Put together a game plan, gathered required documents.
This went on for a two-week period. Finally, we were ready to go on the market. No more frantic text messages. No more interpreters. We were set. This seller’s 3-year battle was about to come to an end. Then, the seller emailed to say the timing wasn’t quite right. Maybe some other time? I guess there is a reason this has been going on for three years. It has nothing to do with me. It will never get resolved through a real estate agent. That nagging thought about why was I doing this vanished, because I’m not doing it. Not now, not ever.
It’s not a challenge. It’s a PITA. In those situations, a Sacramento REALTOR has to say no.
An Accepted Purchase Offer in Sacramento is Only the Beginning
When buying or selling a home in Sacramento, the parties often don’t realize that it’s hardly over when both sides sign an accepted purchase offer; in fact, the process is just beginning and anything can go wrong. This is where FSBOs (For Sale By Owners) tend to struggle and where real estate agents with less experience can mess up as well.
Think of this point in time as that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy, all freshly scrubbed and sporting her sparkly ruby slippers, is merrily laughing and singing with her gangly companions, setting out from Munchkin Land to skip down the Yellow Brick Road, just before Glinda vanishes in a puff of twinkly fairy dust. Everybody is happy and excited, looking forward to arriving in the magical Emerald City. They have no idea what lies in store for them.
And neither do most Sacramento home sellers and buyers.
This is when your Sacramento real estate agent can make a world of difference to you. Selling a home in Sacramento is a lot more than just finding a buyer. It means qualifying the buyer, thinking ahead and predicting what could happen, and taking steps to prevent the trees from strangling you and throwing apples at your face. It means fighting off the winged monkeys.
And, if it’s necessary, making it snow.
Keeping everybody on the path to closing. And happy. It’s not the money, either, because a commission check can lose its luster fast if the seller or buyers are unhappy when it’s all over. This is no easy feat. But it’s what I do every day, and I believe I do it well. Going into escrow is just the beginning. If you’re looking for a veteran Sacramento real estate agent, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759.
When a Sacramento Real Estate Agent’s Reputation is All That Remains
It wasn’t that the buyer’s agent forced me to open Microsoft Word — which takes so much longer than any of my other applications to load, patience, patience, to find the document in which I record decades of unpleasant transaction notes — it was that many real estate professionals may now associate this particular agent’s name with unethical real estate practices. After the day is said and done and the years are over, and all the crazy people have crawled back into their caves, the reputation of a Sacramento real estate agent might be all that lingers.
An agent’s reputation should be fiercely maintained.
Successful agents, for example, are often slid under a microscope to study. Sometimes these agents are unjustly attacked by other real estate agents for stupid reasons, mostly because competitors become jealous. It’s the nasty underbelly of the real estate business and a silent consequence of success. Aspiring agents admire success but it can also be a tug-of-war internally for them. Regardless, we all need to treat each other with respect. As REALTORS, we must adhere to the Code of Ethics.
To be kind, some agents can experience, let’s say, a lapse of better judgment.
For me, I don’t look so much at what other people say when they screw up, I look at what they do. If a buyer’s agent calls me to talk about a client’s offer, spends a long time discussing the buyers’ love affair with the home but fails to mention that the agent has written a second offer for that buyer, well, not only is it considered unethical, but that kind of practice could be against the law. Buyers can’t buy two homes if they can’t afford to buy both. Lawyers can scream this until the cows come home and agents don’t listen.
As what happens in these types of problematic situations is both offers tend to get accepted. At that point, the buyer’s agent had another open window to say, hey, I have something to disclose. But no, the agent’s lips are zipped until the buyer bails on both accepted offers. Ordinarily, a listing agent wouldn’t even know this has happened, but when she discovers it — and the truth often manages to come out — she’s not the only person. Both sets of sellers know, and so do all of their friends. The people at title and escrow know. The other agent whose seller received a cancellation knows. All the people that agent knows know. And so on.
This is how a buyer’s agent’s reputation can turn into mud.
And for what? A pair of buyers who bailed on the buyer’s agent and decided not to even to move to Sacramento after all?
Jealousy Can Lead Real Estate Agents to Badmouth Other Agents
Real estate agents who badmouth often feel the need to discredit another Sacramento real estate agent and can end up sabotaging their own career without realizing it. Before you can ask: how stupid are they, let me remind you that badmouthing another agent is stupid to begin with. There’s just no upside potential to it. It makes the agent who is doing it look horrible, not to mention small, petty, jealous and well, stupid.
I am often called to a listing presentation in which a seller who is hoping to choose a Sacramento listing agent has interviewed 2 other agents. I say, hey, good agents you called. But you would be amazed at some of the stuff I hear other agents tell the seller. Because the sellers tell me what they say when the agents learn that Elizabeth Weintraub is the competition to their presentation. First, I imagine the agents feel a bit intimidated when they look at my sales production and how much I sell. It can be 10 times the number of homes they sell, or more. This is intimidating because these agents can’t fathom how in the world I do it and remain competitive, because they can’t do it.
So they say stuff like, oh, Elizabeth Weintraub is too busy for you and won’t give you personal service. These agents should be shot and stuffed with mouse poop for allowing lies like that to leave their lips. You want something done right, you give it to a busy person, that’s what I have to say. Clients tell me that I treat them like they are my only client. I respond immediately to their concerns and address all of their questions, sometimes before the questions are even asked. I make them feel special because they are. Nothing should lead a real estate agent to badmouth. They should be better than that.
In my world, every client is important. Every situation is different. Another agent told a seller that I don’t negotiate my own transactions because, how could I? Yet, I do. It’s a fat lie to say I don’t. I personally handle every single listing myself. I shoot professional photography; I write copy and prepare the paperwork; I tweak my photos in Photoshop; I manage all of my listings; I collect feedback and deliver, provide suggestions, negotiate multiple offers, and there is no pawning off — I do it myself. Just because another agent can’t do what I do is no reason to make up crap about my real estate practice. You know what they call that? They call that attitude sour grapes. The Code of Ethics calls it unethical. I call it idiot real estate agents who badmouth.
A new client I’m meeting with this weekend asked me why none of the other agents she talked to didn’t tell her the things I suggested she do to get started. Well, I don’t know why. It makes sense to me that I bring up potential problems and solve them before we go on the market. I have no idea why other agents do what they do; I know only what I do, and that is I perform to high standards built on my decades of experience. When the only bad thing another agent can makeup is I must be too busy or I must not do the work myself, well, that tells you more about those agents than about me.
I’m not too busy. I do the work myself. If you expect excellence, you will get it. That’s how an ethical Sacramento real estate agent stays in business and gets referrals year after year after year. Sellers can hire a not-so-successful agent for the same amount of money, but why?
When It is Time to Downsize Your Home in Sacramento
Home sellers nearing retirement age across the country will soon get a chance to hear this Sacramento REALTOR‘s personal views about downsizing, i.e. moving into smaller quarters. Of course, you won’t hear all of it, like you would in my blog, because most reporters don’t send interview subjects a draft for approval prior to publishing — because that would not be called journalism — unless maybe they were writing for an online newspaper or a national magazine pandering to a subscriber base.
Although this particular reporter did sent me a draft of his article for approval and asked a few more questions he forgot to cover. He mentioned that in his review, it seemed his article wasn’t quite balanced enough and he wanted to cover a few more points about the downside to downsizing and discuss why a person might not want to downsize. He could not print the additional comments I sent in their entirety because his editor would most likely edit them, he explained. His reasoning was their readership has about $35,000 tucked away for retirement, and he didn’t want to offend their readers.
I can see that. I can see that they have far more problems than my comments about a mobile home if all they have is $35,000 in the bank. What I said was not everybody needs to consider downsizing: People who are already living that dream, even if it’s living in a broken-down old tin-roof mobile home on the side of a river bank, should stay put. If you’re happy catching catfish off that dock, who’s to say you need to move? But apparently the aforementioned comments, which I pulled outta thin air, were too close to home, and will never see the light of day except for here.
This is what I get for watching that last episode of HBO’s True Detective — with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey down in Louisiana.
For others, those who can see the future and want to change that vision, downsizing is the way to go. When I retire, I plan to downsize as well. I don’t need all that space I have now. Personally, I believe most people have too much crap and need to get rid of it, and downsizing gives you a reason to dump much of it.
A potential seller in West Sacramento called a few days ago to talk about her own downsizing situation and that of her mother, who lives in Greenhaven. She wants her mother to move and her mother wants to stay put. Turns out her mom is 79 and has lived in that home for more than 3 decades. You know what? She ain’t moving. See, now I saved this daughter all of that grief of pleading and begging. Ain’t gonna happen.
