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About Sacramento Realtors Being on Time
Being on time is important to this Sacramento Realtor for whatever life brings.
Being on time, you’re either one of those people or you aren’t. There are some of us who are obsessive about it. Especially this Sacramento Realtor. I set high standards for myself and meet them, particularly when it comes to being punctual. I’ve learned lessons about punctuality. For example, if you’re late boarding the bus, you’ll sit in the back row and puke. Plus, you will have earned the wrath of every other person on that bus you forced to wait. But pure common decency and respect for other people dictates that we should be on time for our appointments, whether it’s an appointment to speak to God (for some of you) or an appointment to meet the babysitter or an appointment to meet a Sacramento real estate client.
I rarely meet another person who is such a stickler for being on time as I am. However, I can report that my Hawaii broker Hella Rothwell is one of those individuals. She was often very early for her appointments. Early enough that during my recent Big Island wor-vacation she would knock on my hotel door while I’m still wrapped in a towel.
When I am on my way to meet with clients, if I run into unexpected heavy traffic on Business 80, I will text that I might be a few minutes late. I never want a seller staring at the clock and wondering where I am. It is a sign of respect to value another individual’s time. Yet I usually will allow time for small emergencies or sudden delays. I go so far as to type the property address into Google Maps and my time of departure to estimate my time of arrival. Then, I leave a little bit earlier than that. I’d say my on-time arrival is about 99.9%.
I recall years ago a fellow real estate agent sharing with me how he determines how long he would wait for another person who is late. In his world, he gave a person 15 minutes if they were a friend and 30 minutes if they were a client. That sounds so odd to me, because it implies that you devalue your own time somewhat in exchange for making money. That it is OK for a client to disrespect your time. To be fair, this is the same fellow who said it was always OK to make a U-Turn in the middle of the street because, “Hey, I’m in Sacramento real estate.”
Well, we are all different. What works for one Sacramento Realtor might not work for another. I give everybody 5 minutes. Doesn’t matter who you are. If you are not where you say you will be to meet me when I get there and there has been no communication, I will call or text 5 minutes later to find out if there is a delay. But then I’m a bit more proactive about being on time.
Do You Know Why You are Calling This Sacramento REALTOR?
Elizabeth Weintraub, Sacramento REALTOR, at antique phone booth in Dunsmuir, California
When a Sacramento REALTOR answers her phone all day long, she tends to engage with a wide assortment of callers. It doesn’t seem to work the other way around because most other people do not answer a phone call. It’s far too inconvenient to talk on the phone for many people. Texting or emailing is preferred today. People don’t want to hear the sound of each other’s voices, I suspect. It’s an intrusion. Therefore, if I want to ensure that I most likely will NOT engage in a conversation, all I have to do is tap my phone and call somebody. That phone call will go to voice mail where I can chat to my heart’s content and leave a message that will get ignored.
I get communication coming at me from all angles every single day. Text messages that show up on my computer if I’m at my home office, and simultaneous text messages appear on my cell. Ditto for emails, although the push generally comes through my computer, and they come from 3 accounts, plus there is a fourth account I check a couple of times a day. And there is always the ringing phone of opportunity. In my drawer is the graveyard of used Bluetooth devices, at least a half dozen. I am using a new Plantronics device that engages once I insert the piece into my ear, which is very handy. Plus, if I’m in the midst of a manicure, it offers hands-free answering.
Because I answer my phone, it’s the luck of the draw what I get. Often lately it’s other real estate agents asking if some random listing belongs to me. They can retrieve this information from MLS but they don’t bother. The main reason they are calling is because their buyers found a property online and spotted my name and phone number or the buyer ended up on my website. It’s common for agents to look up a property address on their own cellphones and end up on my website as well. If they belong to the 90% of the agent population who don’t sell very many homes, they are probably unfamiliar with how mobile websites work and simply do not understand why the listing does not belong to me. I continue to insist the listings are not mine but they don’t grasp the notion. It can progress to the point where I have to look up the address in MLS and give these agents the listing agent’s contact information just to get rid of them.
Still, it’s good news that I enjoy a big presence online. It means that the Weintraub listings I do have receive excellent exposure, and they are posted everywhere. You can’t tool around online and not find homes for sale listed by this Sacramento REALTOR.
I get my share of spam calls, especially from Homes dot com and I continue to file reports at the Do Not Call Registry. I ask Homes dot com not to call me, and I tell them I am on the DNC list but they call anyway. Blocking callers doesn’t always work. They are relentless. You know who else is relentless? My Elizabeth Weintraub Team members. They try to call and email and text every single person who contacts us to buy a home, and they follow up like no tomorrow. Which is why we don’t need the new Zillow service, recently offered to certain top real estate agents for free (at the moment, it’s sorta beta; if it works out they’ll probably charge for it).
A real estate agent called yesterday to ask if she could book my services to stage a home. This was a strange and puzzling call. Well, she had read an article I had written for About.com about Home Staging and decided, for some odd reason, that I was a home stager. I guess she missed the print at the bottom identifying me as a broker-associate in Sacramento at Lyon Real Estate. I shared the news that I am a Sacramento REALTOR and asked if she knew what that meant. Hey, you never know where people register on the bell curve.
I also referred the caller to a home stager in Sacramento, but the agent said she had already tried that company and those home stagers were booked for this week. Well, yes, you have to give home stagers some notice. It’s called planning your listing. The good home stagers are always booked. Still, these types of calls don’t stop me from answering my phone. Ya gotta maintain a positive outlook about it and keep that sense of humor.
Should Sacramento REALTORS Work During the Holidays?
What some Sacramento REALTORS may forget over the holidays is the fact we owe a duty to our clients — and, by extension, to our fellow real estate agents — to communicate and respond. We ought not completely shut down, pull in the shingle and lock the door without giving people someplace else to go. But some agents glob onto the catch phrase: family comes first, which to them means disregard everything else around them. It doesn’t mean ignore business and not work at all over the holidays. It’s a little weird anyway that in our popular culture people have to remind themselves they have a family. Like an excuse.
If an agent doesn’t want to work during the holidays or bother with talking to clients or handling real estate documents, then an agent should find another agent who does. Then, there are those of us pass on some of our business to other agents but continue to communicate via email or text. Some of us have assistants who work overtime and their fingers to the bloody bone. But we don’t put up a “gone fishin'” sign and split.
I don’t know why I bother to gripe about agents who don’t work during the holidays except that it’s beats griping about my aching calves from hiking up Bald Mountain over the weekend. I’m walking around like the penguin on Gotham. It’s annoying to repeatedly call, text and email an agent and not get a response. It’s unprofessional behavior from agents as well to treat each other this way. And it begins around Thanksgiving every year.
It’s as though agents mentally sign off for the year. No point to work during the holidays, they say. We might receive a purchase offer but the agent may fail to respond to a counter offer. It’s like some agents drop off the face of the earth. They can’t even manage to check email once a day. Which means we’re left holding the bag, apologizing to our clients for their behavior.
On the other hand, several agents followed up on their promises this Thanksgiving, which makes me doubly appreciative of their efforts, especially by comparison. I received an offer on Friday, which my sellers accepted. Everybody else was probably pooped out shopping during Black Friday when they could have instead gone online and bought a lovely holiday gift from Cards Against Humanity, all boxed up and appropriately titled for six bucks.
Now, maybe today, if I’m especially lucky, and I generally am, we’ll get the offer we’ve been waiting for since last Tuesday. It might be expired by the time it lands into my hands, but I swear I will keep my lips zipped and focus on the bright side.
Photo: Highway 128 into Winters from Sonoma, Thanksgiving 2014.
