10 Days to Close Escrow on Wilhaggin Fixer House in Sacramento

10 days to close escrow on this fixer home in Wilhaggin.

When I walked through the Wilhaggin fixer house with the sellers, I saw 10 days to close escrow and the sellers saw a house that nobody would want to buy because of its condition. This home had been an eyesore in the Wilhaggin neighborhood for years. All the neighbors had their eyes on this house, hoping that someday it would be available for sale. Some had even approached the sellers with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, offering to “help” buy.

To the sellers, this was once a home to a close family relative. They didn’t fall off any turnip truck lately and saw through the attempts to “help.” For various reasons, it had not been occupied in so long that carpet beetles had moved in, and now a bunch of them were hanging from the ceilings. When I first spied the beetles, I thought they were nails coming through the ceiling, hundreds of nails. But that would mean construction in the attic, which didn’t make any sense. The beetles were all dead, of course.

After we went on the market, the sellers called and asked if they should go over to vacuum up the carpet beetles, but the beetles were such a lively selling point, I didn’t see any reason to do it. The home would be sold AS IS. I have enough experience over the past 40 years selling homes in this type of condition, and cosmetics is the last thing anybody needs to do. I knew buyers would fight over it. They would want to close fast, probably like I anticipated, 10 days to close escrow.

Some buyers, I expected, would lowball. I don’t know why those buyers think that just because a home needs work, they don’t have to pay market value. It is my job to get the seller top dollar. We shot professional photos, although the carpet beetles didn’t show up in the photos, I made sure to include those creepy things in my description. This stirred up a huge buying frenzy, and eager buyers overloaded our Sunday open house. People just kept elbowing each other out of the way to get in.

We received 8 offers. Only one was a lowball, and that was some yo-yo trying to wholesale, which is a waste of time. Waste of his agent’s time, too. The extraordinary thing is the sellers had hoped the home was worth $200,000. They had paid for an appraisal that estimated value at $200K, which I can’t explain why or how that value happened except everybody has an opinion. Some opinions aren’t worth much.

I studied the neighborhood comps and estimated $425,000. That’s too high, the sellers thought. We compromised and listed the home at $399,000. Since the sellers were a little uneasy with an aggressive approach, listing under the $400K price-point meant we would attract many offers, so it was a good strategy to price at $399K. Well, we surpassed even my projection, and it sold at $435,000.

10 days to close escrow, all cash.

In fact, I had suggested we consider multiple counter offers, which would probably have pushed the price a little bit higher, but it was the seller’s choice to take the offer they liked the best. Not rock the boat, they said. It’s always the seller’s decision. We closed escrow yesterday. The good news is the sellers are so ecstatic with my performance, they have another listing for me!