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If You Think Selling a Home in Sacramento is Scary
Selling a home in Sacramento does not have to be a scary event.
Selling a home in Sacramento is not as scary as it seems if a seller hires the right Sacramento Realtor. Yet for many people, selling a home is a frightening experience: like an asteroid hurtling toward the earth with no place for you to hide or, worse, bumping into an old boyfriend at the grocery store with your hair wrapped in bleaching foil because, darn it, you forgot to pick up coffee. A Realtor with a bit of sensitivity, compassion and experience should be able to guide sellers through putting their home on the market. Alleviate some of that anxiety.
For some people, it’s not knowing where they are moving when selling a home. It’s hard to focus on the sale when there is no destination on the horizon. They imagine themselves homeless, sleeping in the car, while some other fool is living the good life and jumping into their swimming pool. Slamming their soft-closing kitchen drawers. Leaving their sticky fingerprints all over those stainless appliance finishes.
I have talked to sellers who have told me after interviewing a bunch of other Realtors that not a single agent had asked them where they were moving. Like the agents didn’t care or were too focused on just getting that listing.
When you’re selling a home in Sacramento, you want your Realtor to grab the big picture and to anticipate things that could go wrong and stop those horrible events from happening. Only an agent with adequate experience can do that. Sure, you might want to hire your sister-in-law who happens to have a real estate license — because one in 35 people in California most likely do have a real estate license — but what you give up to achieve complete trust you lose in specific performance, which reduces bottom-line profit and adds to anxiety levels. Good intent but bad idea.
This is why so many people who are selling a home in Sacramento want to list with Elizabeth Weintraub at Lyon Real Estate. They know I will do everything in my power to reduce anxiety and provide professional guidance to achieve my sellers’ goals. Your goals are my goals. Every listing plan is customized. If you think selling a home in Sacramento is scary, you haven’t met this Realtor.
Did You Forget to Sell Your Home in Sacramento?
Did you forget to sell a house in Sacramento last year?
You might not think it’s possible for a homeowner to forget to sell a house in Sacramento but as a real estate agent, I can assure you that it happens. I often joke that if some agent just followed me around and picked up the real estate business I leave lying on the side of the road, they, too, could be a top producer. My biggest drawback is I don’t continue to ask sellers if they are ready to sell. I don’t want to insult their intelligence. But I also realize that sellers sometimes forget which agent they have called, much to my dismay.
It’s completely arrogant to assume that a seller will think only of calling this Sacramento real estate agent when she’s ready to sell. I mean, many do and wouldn’t dream of hiring any other agent because they believe I am the best Sacramento real estate agent for them, but people are different from each other — what one person does, another does the opposite. Not to mention, they have other things going on their lives than simply concentrating on selling a home. They have children, families, vacations, illnesses, financial complexities, career demands, political distractions, community involvement — complications to everyday life that often take precedence.
From now on, my plan for 2014 is to not let any business slip through the cracks. I will politely stay in touch until the cows come home or sellers tell me they no longer have any interest in selling a home.
Sellers don’t always use analytical criteria when hiring an agent. They sometimes believe by mistake that all agents are the same, so hiring the guy across the street or their Uncle Joe, doesn’t make any difference, when it can make ALL the difference in the world. They don’t know that the top 10% of agents sell 90% of all the homes in Sacramento or how to find that top 10% or even why it makes a difference.
And whose fault is that, that they don’t know? Fortunately, I know the answer to that question, and my focus in 2014 is to answer it for clients. If you’re getting ready to sell your home in Sacramento, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Question Home Equity by Marilyn vos Savant
I grew up with the expression: Question Authority, but as the billboards around Sacramento seem to imply, today’s message is more along the lines of Question Everything. It’s not that people don’t always tell the truth; it’s much more complicated. In part, it’s whose perception of truth is the truth, and it’s also human error, among other things. The human error doesn’t always originate at the source. Let’s not even start talking about FOX News.
For example, when I enter a listing into MLS, I am not the person typing the data entry. An error could happen at that level. Ultimately, I am responsible for checking the contents of my listings; however, I also send the link for a new listing to my sellers so they can double check the information as well. You can never have too many eyes on a document to verify information.
However, I noticed this weekend an entry in the Ask Marilyn column by Marilyn vos Savant, whose claim to fame is a high IQ. It asked how co-owners of a home worth $200,000 with $10,000 in equity must divide the asset. Ms. vos Savant went into great depth explaining loan balances and various options available should an unpaid loan balance be higher or lower than market value, but she ignored the equity position entirely.
The fact is if a person has $10,000 in equity and a home is worth $200,000, that means the encumbrances are $190,000. It’s simple math. The equity is already computed and disclosed. The discussion should have been centered around how to divide the $10,000 of equity: $5,000 for you, $5,000 for me. If you want the house, you’ll give me $5,000. If I want it, I’ll you $5,000. If we plan to sell to a third party, we don’t have enough equity to pay a commission, so we’re hosed.
Which just goes to show that there are times you can’t even trust the words in front of your eyes. Something was missing in that column.
What Neutral Carpeting Means to a Sacramento Seller
I receive a lot of interesting emails from readers all over the country. I do my best to answer questions. Many of those questions center on short sales, probably because I write a lot about short sales and have personally sold hundreds of short sales. But since selling short sales takes up a small portion in retrospect of my annual real estate sales, I also field questions on other activities such as selling homes in Land Park and home listings throughout Sacramento that are not short sales.
I’ve been in this business almost 40 years. Not many agents can say that. But some things that were true 40 years ago are still true today. Take neutral carpeting, for example.
A reader from my About.com homebuying site wrote to me in quite a huff. She was a bit perplexed that I had not yet answered her inquiry, which I had not received because so much of these types of inquires go to spam. She had a “very important question.” She and her husband had been engaged in “repeated discussions” regarding the color of the carpeting for their mother’s home. They were preparing the home for sale and could not agree on which colors constitute neutral coloring. She did not understand the word “neutral.”
At first blush, one might wonder how a person could be confused. But the more I thought about it, it’s not so unusual for some individuals, especially those from other cultures, to be perplexed. Some of us live in a white-bread world. No color at all. But other cultures are awash in color and relish color. Color is treated as a daily substance. It’s water for the thirsty, spiritual for the soul and serenity for sleep. Color brings the world alive.
However, when you are selling a home, neutral is the recommended choice of color, especially for carpeting. It evokes no emotion and does not detract from the home’s features. It presents a clean slate, a home you can move in to immediately and decorate to your preference. It’s a light beige, a sheer coffee-cream, sandy fair-skinned brown, boring pale tan, much like the photo above. Above all, it is not white.
While Elizabeth is on vacation, we are revisiting her favorite blogs from previous years.
Buying and Selling a Sacramento Home at the Same Time
If this were a different type of real estate market in Sacramento right now, my advice would be completely different about buying a selling at the same time. The following advice applies only because this is a seller’s market in Sacramento. Sellers who want to move up or move down in a buyer’s market would have an easier time of it. What your agent might not tell you is trying to buy and sell a home in a seller’s market is almost impossible.
It doesn’t mean you can’t do engage in buying and selling simultaneously; however, it could be very difficult. The reason is we have very little inventory in our Sacramento metropolitan area. People try to equate this particular market of Spring 2013 to the Spring 2006 market, and they are not the same. Back then, in 2006, we had a lot of homes for sale.
This is what the numbers looked like in March of 2006 for all Sacramento counties combined:
- Active Listings (Homes for Sale): 6,488
- Pending Listings (Homes in Escrow): 1,479
- Sold Listings (Closed Home Sales): 1,425
Here are the numbers for March of 2013 for all Sacramento counties combined:
- Active Listings (Homes for Sale): 1,378
- Pending Listings (Homes in Escrow): 1,371
- Sold Listings (Closed Home Sales): 1,835
What is particular startling about these two comparisons is the fact that despite the fact that active listing inventory dropped by 78.8% — meaning we have 5,110 fewer homes on the market in 2013 than we did at this same time in 2006 — we sold 30% more. Moreover, national average interest rates were at 6.47% in March of 2006. Today, interest rates are unbelievable low. Yesterday, the rate offered by a major local mortgage broker was 3.5%. This is huge, and these facts are what is driving the market.
It’s why it’s to be buying and selling at the same time. As a seller, you are in the driver’s seat. As such, for some sellers, the only way to buy and sell at the same time is to sell and rent back for a few months. Because if you could ever in your lifetime make that kind of demand of a buyer for your home, now is the time to do it. Or, sell and move into temporary quarters. Or, sell and delay the closing for a few months. Because you really need to have the cash in hand to make an offer to buy.
Put on your other hat, your buyer’s hat. Now, you are probably one of 20 offers for the same house. Your offer is contingent on selling your home. It doesn’t matter if your home is already in escrow, it is still contingent. It is contingent until that puppy closes. And most sellers do not want to take a contingent offer, not when they see investors and home buyers waving cash in their faces or buying their home without a contingency on selling a home. Having a contingency to sell in your offer makes you unattractive to many sellers.
Having said that, I will say I have done it. But I do warn my sellers that if they want to buy a home and sell a home at the same time, they will have a much easier time of it if they have the cash and financial means to buy without selling. Or else, wait until their home is sold to buy another home. It doesn’t mean I won’t try to do both sales concurrently for them, but the odds are against that happening.
If you want to buy or sell a home in Sacramento and need a good Sacramento real estate agent, please call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put almost 40 years of experience to work for you.
