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A Tip for Getting the Edge When Buying Homes in Sacramento
In this Sacramento real estate market, it doesn’t matter how many offers the seller has received. Yet, agents continue to call and ask that question. Why doesn’t it matter? Because any well priced home will be sold within hours if not within days of hitting the market. If a listing agent doesn’t have an offer when the buyer’s agent calls, you can bet an offer is on its way. Maybe 10 or 20 offers are in the works. It just doesn’t matter.
What does matter is how strong is your purchase offer? How well written is your offer? Have you included any special conditions to make your offer stand out among other offers?
I have empathy for buyer’s agents in this market. It’s very tough. A buyer’s agent is but one of many pigeons in the park scrambling for tossed bread crumbs. Sacramento is a seller’s market. Limited inventory. Want to know how many homes are available for sale in the entire county of Sacramento today? I just ran an MLS search and the answer is 1,831 homes. Of those, only 407 are short sales. To put this into perspective for you, in August of 2007, the number of our available homes for sale in Sacramento County was 10,521. Five years ago we had almost 6 times the inventory! Buying homes in Sacramento is very difficult today.
This is a huge drop in the number of homes for sale in Sacramento County. It’s gigantic. It’s like King Kong and Jessica Lange.
It must be even tougher to be a buyer’s agent who doesn’t want to tick off a buyer when the buyer insists on offering less than list price. It’s amusing to receive a low offer accompanied by a note telling us how much the buyer loves the home. They adore this home so much that they want to negotiate on the price. I don’t know where some buyers get the idea that making their offer even less attractive gives them a fighting chance or that a seller would be willing to issue a counter offer. When a seller has received a dozen offers — some cash and above list — the seller tosses lowball offers in the circular bin.
It’s difficult to get your head around the fact that a less-than-list price offer could be considered a lowball in today’s market. For all the home buyers buying homes in Sacramento, do yourself a favor and hire a buyer’s agent who will present the true picture and guide you in the right direction. Otherwise, you may as well go to the park and feed the birds.
This is the Reason to Be a Top Listing Agent in Sacramento
A fellow real estate agent in Sacramento once told me that she prefers to work with first-time home buyers because they are more grateful than sellers. She said they were totally thrilled to be handed the keys at closing, more so than those who are handing over the keys. They didn’t complain. They didn’t nag her about why isn’t their home selling. I guess she moved up a notch or two in their eyes. And that approach works for her.
I’m very much the opposite. I love working with home sellers. I am a top listing agent in Sacramento. It shows in my production and I’ve been a top listing agent in Sacramento for a long time. I love selling homes. Including homes for sellers of a short sale. I know that sellers who need to do a short sale have limited options in Sacramento. There are not very many of us short sale specialists or Certified HAFA Specialists in the area. There are hundreds, maybe thousands who have taken classes, but few agents who actually close a lot of short sales. The more short sales an agent closes, the more an agent learns about the fine nuances of a short sale. I’ve closed enough to be the #1 short sale agent over 7 counties since 2006. Today I am a top listing agent in Sacramento for all homes.
I enjoy preparing the home for sale. Setting the stage. Helping the homeowner select the correct price. Shooting photographs and tweaking in Photoshop. Receiving purchase offers, reading between the lines. Analyzing comparable sales. Negotiating with the banks. Managing the selling process. All that’s involved in home selling these days.
Making a difference in somebody’s life is the key, though. Home sellers who have equity are happy when we close, especially when I sell the home for thousands more than they would probably get otherwise. Money makes everybody happy. If somebody tells you that money can’t buy happiness, that’s a broke person speaking. There is nothing inherently evil in money. It’s the love of money that corrupts people. Not money itself.
I picked up my mail from the office on Tuesday. I don’t go into the office more than once a week. In my mail was a card from Elk Grove sellers whose home I sold as a short sale sometime last year. They said they had been meaning to write me a note for a long time. They thanked me for doing my job, for my “wisdom, advice, expertise and encouragement.” They ended the note by saying: “Thank you for helping us get a fresh start.”
On my team members’ desk was a bottle of French champagne, an orchid plant and a card from another short sale seller. She thanked us for the sale of her home. I felt it was only fair that my team member, Barbara Dow, receive the orchids, especially since she had been watering it, and our assistant, Shaundra Bradley, I knew would enjoy the champagne. They work as hard as I do. Maybe even harder. I kept the card.
And that’s the reason I am a top Sacramento listing agent. It’s more than the sale of a house.
Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub
