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Cats, Covid19, And Selling Sacramento Real Estate
Cats, Covid19, and selling Sacramento real estate are where much of my time is spent during each waking hour. With cats, COVID19, and selling Sacramento real estate are now part of daily life for this Sacramento Realtor. It occurred to me these three things are where so much of my time is spent each day. When you have nine cats, they are part of every hour of every day.
Of course, all nine cats do not live inside. I do cat rescue and also have purebred Ragdoll cats. Whether inside or out, cats play a significant role in daily life. This picture is of Toby-Tyler on the cat tree. He is a 7-year-old male rescue, and his sister Gidget is on the lower shelf. These two orange tabby cats I rescued. They were abandoned, left inside a wall of a commercial building. As they were not quite two weeks old and I had to bottle feed them every 3 hours. They have been my cats ever since.
Covid19 is impacting people in so many different ways. Everyone is impacted by it. We are so fortunate to be in the greater Sacramento area. Our Covid19 numbers are reported to be lower than anywhere in the country for this disease. The shelter in place slowed sales and created a much more stringent loan approval process. We have an escrow right now where underwriting threw a monkey wrench in the mix, and now they have to qualify all over again. My seller is left waiting. We could have canceled the contract, but the buyers want the property.
Of course, selling real estate is what we do every day on our team. We wake up and immediately hit the computer sending back emails. Next, we start a task list for the day and look at our calendar. The last thing in the evening is checking email before turning off the computer to go to bed.
Covid19 restricts us from going to so many different places. The trips to Costco, animal feed stores, and the grocery store are the big outings. Selling real estate, it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle, and you do because you love it. This job is not for a 9 to 5 worker as they would definitely not be happy in this role.
At Weintraub & Wallace, we love what we do. We each work independently and own business, but we support and help one another like a family. The harder you work in real estate, the more successful you can become. With self-employment, it gives you a lot of freedom to decide how you will run your business. Many Realtors work very part-time, so they don’t earn very much and have limited funds to market their listings. Always hire full-time professionals with hundreds of 5-Star Reviews
When I think of Covid19, I think about my mother. I haven’t been able to see my mother for over six weeks because she is so frightened of catching this disease. Watching the news would stress anyone out. Things are delivered or dropped off on her porch. I have a friend that’s got herself locked up in her house, and she’s terrified to go out as she has some health issues. She is worried she will get Covid19.
Of course, I don’t want anyone to catch this dreadful disease. There are so many people that are suffering on such personal levels with direct loss from this disease. Losing loved ones, friends, or co-workers is heartbreaking. I feel very blessed that our family has stayed healthy, my friends have stayed healthy, and my clients have stayed healthy. We wish good health to everyone.
The phone is ringing off the hook again for showing property and writing contracts. I’m just going to focus on one day at a time. We don’t have control over what’s happening with Shelter in place orders. No doubt, we are following all of our instructions from the federal level to the local level. We wait for the opportunity to come for businesses to start to recover their losses. The real estate market is on the rise, so don’t wait; it’s an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the lowest interest rates.
We all need to be problem solvers and do our best to help one another when difficulty arrives. My sister colored my hair today as my hairdresser is not working, so my sis volunteered. She jumped in with both feet to help. She bought some hair color and did my hair this evening. I was so grateful. We all just help each other and will get through this and anything else that comes our way. Blue skies and warm temperatures are on the way; it’s going to be a good week.
Cats, Covid19, and selling Sacramento real estate, it’s certainly never boring. There’s always more to do, more to learn. If you’d like to buy or sell real estate, please call Weintraub & Wallace Realtors with RE/MAX Gold. We can be reached at 9162336759.
JaCi Wallace
Real Estate Work During Covid19 Requires Patience
Real estate work during Covid19 requires patience as everyone is impacted on some level. Though real estate has been named as an essential service along with construction, don’t kid yourself it is not back to normal by a long shot. The scheduling of repairs is often booked weeks out. In many cases, as there have been layoffs in various businesses, a shortage of the workforce can mean delays. This week has been about working longer days. Whatever it takes we are putting in the extra time and effort.
When I worked at another real estate company previously, we would measure different aspects of your sales personality. When we polled 20% of the top producing agents (who by the way sell 80% of the real estate) we found two qualities that were consistent, one of which was impatience. To follow up on leads and take care of so many tasks each day you have to be hair on fire impatient for results. We kill it, cook it, and serve it on a pretty platter while someone else is still writing a memo.
In this Covid19 environment, it is not about fast pace as much as it is about digging in and looking creatively at how to best help our clients. It does not mean not taking action, but that we must continue to work cooperatively with other agents and vendors to get the job done. We can no longer fly through inspections as we are on waiting lists in some cases.
Dust Yourself Off After Setbacks
Our photographer is busy and many people are preparing in advance to sell their homes, a great idea right now. We were very busy the last two days, long hours with little sleep. There can be setbacks of course. Sharing with clients and setting expectations can help avoid disappointments. The key is to get up, dust yourself off, and hit the reset button. We will show up and continue to work hard for our clients. People still need a place to live and with low-interest rates, this can spell out more affordable payments. Also, some people out of work may need to sell their home and some are relocating.
What seems one of the hardest things right now is getting things completed in a swift manner. Most companies have cut way back on staffing. That includes pest companies, stagers, roofers, inspectors, and repair people. Now, you hope someone calls you back, but it may not be the same day. Yesterday and today have been days where I had to take a breath and say I’m doing my very best. Working within the framework of this environment is what we must continue to do and making unrealistic demands of people will get you nowhere. That doesn’t mean accepting poor performance. It may mean in some cases you are helping other people to ensure the tasks are done well.
Patience And Perserverance
I was working with a friend yesterday on a co-listing and she was very honest with a seller after a disappointment with a vendor. She said we just don’t know when we will be able to get someone back out and it may cost more. We will get someone but it’s going to take time, she said. The client understood. We didn’t say, ” no worries this will be done right away.” The truth is we are working on it round the clock. We will get the job done but it requires patience and perseverance in this Covid19 climate. Our sellers are amazing people, we are so very grateful for so many wonderful clients.
Interviewing Vendors
We have to interview vendors very carefully as they are making promises and they don’t always deliver. We have the best plumber but he is on a job in the bay area for a few weeks. Some vendors have scheduling issues as they may have skeleton crews and suffer from exhaustion. We can’t control someone else’s performance but we can fire them and start over which is what we have to sometimes do. This means delays and postponing other steps as there is a sequence to properly preparing a home for sale.
Set Expectations With Clients
I’m now setting expectations with clients much more carefully as this market demands it. I find myself on a daily basis saying, folks, we need your patience during this time as it’s a team effort. Talking openly about the counties that have implemented restrictions with regard to how we show homes is critical. As information becomes available, we continue to post it for everyone.
There are addendums with regard to Covid19 that buyers must sign before being shown a property. Trying to hold escrows together takes much more effort right now. We are doing our very best each day to sell your home, which is almost a daily conversation. Sharing the smallest details is what helps sellers the most.
Price Correctly
Now, it is more important than ever to price correctly as homes are still selling if they are priced to sell, based on closed sales. Loan qualifications are more stringent and working with a great lender is more critical than ever. I think what worries sellers the most now is that property is not being shown as frequently. More buyers are looking online at photos and area, driving by first. If there is something that buyers decide is not appealing, they don’t come and take a look. The good news, buyers that are serious and qualified are looking, there is no window shopping right now.
Keep the faith. Warmer temperatures are on the way. We are working harder than ever to help our clients sell and buy homes. Real estate work during Covid19 requires extra patience and diligence. We have several homes in escrow right now and working hard to close them. If you are looking for information on how to buy or sell a home during Covid19 call Weintraub & Wallace Realtors, with RE/MAX Gold. We can be reached at 916-233-6759.
JaCi Wallace
Why a Desktop Scanner Replaces a Fax Machine
A desktop scanner replaces a fax machine now, our cat, Tessa, is partly to blame.
Little did I know that today a desktop scanner replaces a fax machine. It was not readily apparent to me. My entire home operation for selling Sacramento real estate was set up to be self sufficient many years ago; when a device malfunctions, I tend to simply replace it. I’ve only had 2 fax machines in Sacramento, one that I took out into my back yard and literally beat to death with a hammer, a Panasonic fax machine. And my Brother 4100e. That happened 10 years ago!
I figured something must be wrong when I looked on the OfficeDepot website and noticed that my Brother 4100e was still a top seller, after all of this time. How could that be? Something was not right. A similar fax machine, one grade higher, cost twice as much and the main difference was it held another 20 pages in its document feeder. This seemed crazy.
OK, maybe OfficeDepot just did not sell enough fax machines anymore. I clicked on a few other websites and nobody carries much in the way of fax machines. That was a telling sign, a red flag. We have fax machines at my office. Heavy duty fax machines. My husband asked what I use a fax machine for. Well, mostly to fax listing documents to myself so I can forward them to others. That is a scanning function.
I already have a ScanSnap portable scanner that I bought years ago when short sales were hot. I could take that baby to seller’s homes and scan all of their tax returns, sensitive personal documents, directly to my computer. But since short sales pretty much dried up in 2012, I haven’t used my portable scanner. Fugitsu also makes a desktop scanner. A desktop scanner replaces a fax machine, and I never realized it.
Fortunately, I have several eFax services at my disposal, one of which is free. Why have I been paying AT&T $40 a month for a fax machine? The things we put up with when we’re a busy Sacramento Realtor. For starters, the document feed roller tends to stick and sometimes I have to stand there and manually feed each of my 30-some pages into the fax machine by hand. Not to mention, our cat, Tessa, long ago batted off and destroyed the document feeder guide plate.
The copy function isn’t working correctly because I need a new cartridge, and since I’ve never replaced the drum, that could explain why copies have a big long black line streaming down the front. To buy a new drum and new cartridge would cost more than to replace the fax machine. It makes sense to me that a desktop scanner replaces a fax machine.
Ah, the old days of those 1980’s thermal paper fax machines and how we could not live without them. It meant we didn’t need to drive our client’s houses, we could fax documents to their offices and later to their homes. How high tech. Now, we can’t live with a fax machine at all, not even a laser fax machine. Outdated, and of no use.
