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No Short Sale After Buying New Home
Some agents never met a listing they didn’t like. Even though there might not be a chance in hell or high water that a listing will ever sell, there are real estate agents in Sacramento who will list those kinds of homes. That’s because agents can get residual value from those types of listings. Not to mention, some agents are ignorant. Some are overly optimistic. There are all kinds of reasons why an agent would take a listing that will never sell, but the most hopeless kind of listing is that which is a short sale when the seller has just bought a new home. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.
Listing a home as a short sale when the seller has bought a new home is pointless. I will never, as a successful Sacramento short sale agent, knowingly take a listing like that. Been there, done that. Because I’ve learned the hard way over the past 7 years of selling short sales that it’s idiotic to do it. There are ways you can do a short sale and then buy another home but you cannot, read my lips, buy a home and then do a short sale. Not in your own name. You can buy a home in somebody else’s name and then short sale your former home, but you can’t buy a home in your name and then short sale.
If you don’t believe me, call your bank and ask. Be upfront. Say, hey, I just bought a new home. Will you do a short sale for me? Don’t get mad at me if they think it’s a prank call and hang up. I don’t write the short sale rules. Banks have a word for it. It’s called Buy and Bail. Goodbye short sale, hello foreclosure.
There are too many short sale sellers who are genuinely hurting and struggling with underwater homes. Banks know if a seller has bought another home that the seller can afford to own two homes. They don’t grant short sales for people who can afford to own both homes. A seller either deliberately goes to foreclosure, works out a deed-in-lieu arrangement (which is pretty much just as bad) or hires a lawyer to sue the short sale bank for some kind of fraudulent past mistake. But you don’t short sale. Sorry. There is no short after buying new home.
Weintraub’s 2013 Real Estate Predictions
This Sacramento real estate agent and About.com homebuying expert finished her 2013 real estate predictions and forecast yesterday. It seemed like December 1 is a good target date to try to hit every year. It provides a healthy amount of time for people to argue with me before I head off to — this year it will be French Polynesia — my holiday vacation. And every year I get the same question: Elizabeth, how do you know this stuff?
I know this stuff because I look at the way things are going and I predict they will continue to move in that direction. Most of the time I am 100% on target with my forecast. Sometimes, things take a right or left turn or spin around and blow up, but not very often.
For example, one of my predictions is home prices will rise in 2013. They’re going up now in most major metropolitan cities. It doesn’t mean we have a recovery. It means inventory has shrunk and demand has grown. We’ve run out of homes to sell and buyers are clogging up the streets. I throw a home on the market and it’s like tossing bread crumbs to starving pigeons. They swoop down in droves and peck each other, jockeying for position to get a nibble.
Last year in my real estate predictions I talked about short sale fever. Oh, darn, there goes that song again in my head, White Line Fever. Nevertheless, I was spot on about that. Short sales took over and surpassed the position occupied by the foreclosure market. Many of the REO agents turned to try to do short sales. I don’t really agree that an REO agent is a good candidate to do a short sale because the qualities that make an REO agent successful are pretty much the opposite of the qualities inherent in an excellent short sale agent. 2013 will pretty much continue to be the year of the short sale.
The year 2013 will be an interesting ride. It marks my 39th year in the business. If you’re looking to buy or sell in Sacramento, Yolo, Placer or El Dorado County, rattle my cage. The Elizabeth Weintraub Team is well positioned to handle all of your real estate needs.
Wishful Thinking Won’t Close a Short Sale
I’m not from Missouri, so you don’t have to show me the money. But I do have built-in radar that makes me question certain things. If something seems off, I tend to explore it. That’s my nature. I grew up with the expression: Question authority, because I lived through the 1960s. You will notice I did not say I completely recall the 1960s, but I did survive those years.
Today the expression is: Question everything. When one is a Sacramento short sale agent, one tends to question everybody and everything anyway because a real estate agent has a legal fiduciary to her client. I look at what people do and not so much what people say. Sometimes, agents can be bamboozled. Some of them so badly want to hold a deal together that they’ll let things slide and they’ll believe their own wishful thinking. For example, I am working on a short sale in which the buyers were unwilling to meet the bank’s demands. They sent a signed cancellation. Then, after talking with a third-party vendor for Bank of America, I was able to get the bank to agree to look at a different solution.
I presented this solution to the buyers in the form of an addendum. That was a couple days ago. The buyer’s agent says the buyers will sign the addendum. Every time I ask him for it, he says it is coming and he is working on it. But the addendum has not arrived. There comes a point in which somebody needs to be the grown up in this situation. Today is that day. We need to examine the facts. The facts are we have a signed cancellation. We do not have a signed addendum. We have a verbal that the buyers will sign the addendum but the addendum is not in my hands.
It’s nothing personal, but that short sale is going back on the market today. My advice to my sellers is to sign the cancellation and find another buyer who is willing to perform. As a professional courtesy, we gave the buyer’s agent until 9 AM today to produce the document. If it shows up, the home won’t be released to inventory, but I am not holding my breath. I wish people would do what they say they will do. But that’s what they call wishful thinking. If you’re looking for a short sale in the Sacramento area, call me.
Cash Investors, Pie Crusts and Robot Agents
There is an acronym company doing business as a limited liability corporation and trying to buy homes in Sacramento as a cash-infused investor. There are undoubtedly many such companies and investors vying for homes in Sacramento. But this one in particular canceled an escrow because it didn’t do its due diligence upfront, so I’m wary about them. This particular company has also hired at least 3 different real estate agents in Sacramento to throw offers at the wall. I know this because I have received offers from 3 different agents representing the same company.
You know, not a day goes by, honestly, in which I don’t answer my phone and hear the words: I am a cash investor. I suspect the callers feel I should treat them differently than I would anybody else, but they’re in for a rude awakening. Just like I am a number to them, they are a number to me. I realize they have little vested interest in the property or in meeting the seller’s needs. They probably have not even seen the property. If the escrow demands a special consideration, they are unlikely to provide it. They are not special. Their cash is not “king” to me.
It seems like the REO robot agents are being replaced by the robot buyer’s agents. The tide has changed from robot listing agents who represent banks and asset managers of foreclosed homes to robot selling agents who represent cash investors. These guys comb MLS daily looking for new listings, writing offers, uploading the purchase offers to DocuSign and emailing those offers to listing agents. You throw enough at the wall, something is bound to stick.
As a Sacramento short sale agent, I have to look out for my seller’s interests and help them to choose the most motivated buyer to close their short sale. As a general rule, short sale banks don’t seem to like limited liability corporations (LLCs). I’m not sure why, either. It could be that an LLC is in-your-face about profit, versus a home owner who just wants a roof over her head. In any case, it’s hard to get excited over these cash offers. If push comes to shove, they don’t shove.
You know, short sales involve a lot of frustration. I dodge a lot of whipped cream pies in this business. Speaking of pies and throwing crap at the wall, I’d like to share a story with you. It involves a pie crust. Those of you who have never made a pie crust may perhaps find it difficult to believe that pie crusts do not live in your grocer’s freezer. Yes, you can actually make a pie crust at home out of flour, salt, shortening and water.
The trick is to not overwork the dough. If you massage it and roll it too many times, it will become tough and crumble. I was probably 7-years-old when I made my first pie crust. I thought I had followed the directions explicitly but I was having trouble. It wasn’t sticking together. I blamed it on my rolling pin. After I had rolled out the dough, I tried to fold it into quarters and lift on waxed paper to the pie tin, but it fell apart. I rolled it again. It crumbled again. In a split second of frustration, I hurled it at the wall.
Uh, oh. I could not believe I did that. I was horrified. My mother stopped what she was doing and stared at me. I was in big trouble, and I knew it. My heart started to pound. I might never get to bake again in the kitchen. I might go to bed without dessert. Maybe stand in the corner. But instead, my mother started to laugh. “That’s exactly where my first pie crust ended up,” she said.
Today, I make a perfect pie crust. And I’m a pretty darn good Sacramento short sale agent, too. Just don’t call and tell me you’re a cash investor, because I don’t care.
The Value of an Experienced Sacramento Real Estate Agent
Do you ever wonder about the experience levels of some of the professionals you pay? Not to knock medical assistants or dental hygienists, but don’t those TV ads trying to lure deadbeats educate aspiring students bother you somewhat? They make me want to ask my doctor’s assistant where she went to school and what she did before she became a medical assistant. Most of us probably want to believe our doctor’s assistant went to college, earned a degree, on top of fulfilling a calling to the medical profession, a passion to help people, and is dedicated to medicine. I don’t know if you get that with a 6-month course and education financing through HSBC.
Yet many people would never in a million years ask a Sacramento real estate agent how long she has been in the business. They are about to spend or receive the most money they will probably ever see in one lump sum in their lives. Do they check out the real estate agent they are about to hire?
Not that length in the business is a sole determining factor because a person can be a real estate agent for many years and do no business at all. Holding a real estate license doesn’t make a person a real estate agent. Renewing said real estate license doesn’t make a person a real estate agent. I’m not a big fan of the alphabet letters either. The certified-whatever designations. That’s probably because many years ago I was involved in the seminar business, and I know that seminar companies are in the business of selling seminars. In other words, an agent can pay for a real estate designation. It doesn’t mean the agent learned anything. It also doesn’t mean the company that awarded the designation taught an agent anything.
Real estate agents learn on the job. End of story. They learn by selling homes in Sacramento, for example. The more homes a person sells, the better that real estate agent becomes — or you would hope. An experienced real estate agent is a different kind of real estate agent.
Every real estate transaction is different. That’s what makes being a Sacramento real estate agent exciting. It’s what motivates me to turn on my computer and go to work every single day. It’s always something new. A new challenge, new people, new events. And when you throw a short sale into the mix: an opportunity to practice patience, improve tolerance and to solve difficult problems.
Everybody is welcome to hire a novice, but why? Novices will cry and moan and say everybody has to learn somewhere. But do you want them practicing on you? You have a choice when you hire a real estate agent. We’re not all the same. I will close over $30 million in sales this year. I sell more than 100 homes a year — so I must be doing many things right. I believe experience is important. If it matters to you, let’s get together. You can read client reviews of Elizabeth Weintraub and decide for yourself. I have pages of recommendations. What you see is what you get.
