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Winning the Cat Box Wars is Like Closing a Difficult Short Sale
Getting my cats to switch over to the Breeze litter box system is sort of like getting a short sale — with all of its moving and opposing parts — to close escrow. It becomes a matter sometimes of who will be last person standing at the OK Corral — who has the most staying power. Who will emerge the victor — will it be the 3 cats who have always used litter and are not exactly known for changing their preferences? Or, will it be me, the caretaker, who has to put up with a few extremely stinky cat boxes?
The way the Breeze switchover works is you have to stop cleaning the cats’ existing litter boxes and wait for your cats’ cleanliness instincts to kick in. The idea is when they no longer have a clean cat box, they will embrace the Breeze litter box. When that happens, you can remove the stinky old cat box and they should continue to use the new Breeze litter box. So, who has the most stamina? Me or the cats?
I understand stamina and perseverance. I am a real estate agent in Sacramento with extensive experience in closing short sales. Further, I have sold more than $65 million in short sales, according to the January 2014 Trendgraphix report, which is more than other real estate agent over a 7-county area. When I say that not every short sale is a slam dunk, thank you, ma’am, you better believe it.
A short sale is closing next week that had been denied 3 or 4 times — I can’t recall. I’ve been working on it for more than a year. The buyer has been waiting all of this time, very patiently. When the nearly impossible happened and we received the short sale approval letter from the first lender, we still had a battle to settle with the second, which involved more negotiation with the first lender. In the end, both lenders finally agreed to close. Each gave a little bit to make it work.
But bottom line, the agents and the buyers and the sellers all clung to the hope it would close. We didn’t lie down in the street and moan: Oh, shoot me now and put me out of my misery. And that’s why I think I will win the cat box wars. Plus, I found evidence of usage this morning, which is cause to celebrate. Oh, how a little poop excites a weary warrior!
A Sacramento Short Sale Lifespan
For the first time in my life, which is almost since the dawn of humankind, MLS has not immediately loaded on my computer when accessed. I have an internet connection. MetroList is just not responding. It won’t open in Safari nor Firefox. It partially loaded in Firefox and then quit. There is no joy in Mudville; it’s trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P and stands for poop, and the Grinch has stolen Christmas.
We count on things in our life to always be there for us and never change. To work when we expect them to work. But that’s not how life works. Stuff goes wrong. People let us down; they die.
But Sacramento short sales can go on practically forever. I have a few I’ve been working on now for more than a year. A short sale doesn’t die. It doesn’t blow up. It doesn’t just go away and, in some cases, the short sale bank won’t even file a foreclosure notice. It’s not having the Notice of Default filed that can keep a short sale alive and pumping out blood long after the arteries have been sliced.
This is the little known secret that agents don’t realize. Once a bank says NO to an agent, many will give up. Not this Sacramento real estate agent. I keep on pushing until either the seller collapses from exhaustion or the bank says: All right, you got it. Here is your short sale approval. Few sellers are outright rejected in this day and age. This is not 2005, Dorothy.
If you want to work with a Sacramento short sale agent who has closed hundreds of short sales, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. I really doubt you will find an agent in the Sacramento Valley who knows more about short sales.
Does Anybody Care Who is the Top Real Estate Agent?
I was out a little late last night doing my second job, which is swimming as a mermaid at the Dive Bar downtown Sacramento. You think that’s the same mermaid in the fish tank night after night, well, I’ve got news for you. Have you ever stood up on the bar and cupped your eyeballs against the fish tank to verify that? Ha, I didn’t think so. And besides, that’s not really my second job, that’s Myrl Jeffcoat in a wig, just ask her.
But whatever I was dreaming about last night, I woke up late this morning. The cats were sequestered and obviously fed because they were quiet. We recently had replaced all of the doors in our house, so with some of the doors closed, I can’t hear a thing from another room in my bedroom. Asteroids could be blasting through the ceiling and tearing holes through the living room floor, and I would sleep through it. Which, by the way, just when you thought we were in the clear and not about to encounter any asteroids in our lifetime, we find out there are millions more — more than 10 times as many as we originally estimated — of undiscovered asteroids speeding toward our two-car garages about to hit Earth at any time and squash us like the pinheads we are.
Whose fault is that? Obviously, it’s the Russians. I grew up in the 1950s and I know where to point the fingers of blame.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. What I meant to talk about before I got so carried away is when I stumbled out of bed, rubbing my sorry eyes and realizing that for the first time in a week my jaw did not ache, although, I did leave the refrigerator door open after filling my water bottle at midnight, and it was open all night, even though it has a warning sound when left ajar, and this was the reason my husband elected to take this point in time to provide a lecture about energy costs and global warming and asking if my mother raised me in a barn, I spotted an email on my computer with a bunch of exclamation points in my inbox.
It stood out amidst the sea of morning emails like a sore thumb. It was titled: Hooray. From my transaction coordinator. My heart leaped a little bit, and I tuned out husband talking for a moment. The email was filled with heart-shaped words and uplifting praise. For just a moment, I allowed myself to feel a smattering of joy. It is possible? Could it be true? My eyes frantically searched the flowering language for the phrase I was so filled with mouth-watering anticipation to read.
It wasn’t there. This was NOT a short sale approval for a particular short sale in Natomas, for which we’ve been tirelessly fighting for forever and know from the bottom of my heart that one day it will happen.
Nope, wasn’t it. Darn, darn!
It was something else less expected. Something that has been happening once or twice a year for a little while now but is still very unexpected when it does occur.
I thought, what? Is Marilyn Goff on vacation? She’s not even in the top 3 agents for the month. Look, here’s #2 and #3. Yikes.
For the month of October 2013, Elizabeth Weintraub is the #1 real estate agent at Lyon Real Estate.
A Solution to the War Between Two Short Sale Banks
You’ve got life easy if you’ve never had to talk to short sale banks. Be thankful for that. Man, I used to see myself as a person with little patience. That’s one of the reasons why I tried back in my 20’s to learn how to sew. I was under the impression that sewing a dress would teach me patience. You know, you’ve got to trace the pattern on the cloth, carefully cut it out and figure out how to attach the pieces without sewing them inside out or upside down.
My dress ended up in the trash can. It wasn’t disappointing to me. It was satisfaction.
However, over the years, I seem to have acquired patience. I have no idea where it came from. One day it wasn’t there and the next it was. I toyed with the thought that it’s possible aliens have taken over my mind or maybe the 1960s had some sort of long-lasting effects like those flashbacks that never materialized. Hard to say, but patience is absolutely required if a Sacramento real estate agent needs to negotiate a short sale.
The latest irritation that popped up this year, part of the aftermath from passing the Homeowner Bill of Rights, is when the first lender and the second lender refuse to see eye-to-eye about issuing short sale approval. I’m not issuing approval first, says the first lender, arms folded, you issue it. So, we try to reason with the second lender. I’m not issuing approval first, says the second lender, let the first lender go first. What reminds me of being back in grade school has been going on all year long. It’s enough to make an agent with less patience smack ’em.
I understand the reasoning. If the second issues approval, it shows the hand of how much it will accept from the first. Some second lenders would rather let the first make an offer of compensation. On the other hand, if the first issues approval, not only does it set the stage for compensation to the second, because it does not want to revise the approval, but it is also obligated to stop all foreclosure action. Yeah, that’s the real reason. Now the first can’t move forward with foreclosure, especially if it can’t come to an agreement on compensation to the second.
Short sale approval is the only part of the Homeowner Bill of Rights that protects a seller in the event of a short sale. Applying for a short sale offers zero protection, none. Protection is afforded only after the short sale approval.
One solution to get around this stalemate is to have one of the lenders issue approval for a short time period. The letter can contain a short expiration date, like 7 days to 10 days out. And, that’s exactly what happened in a West Sacramento short sale today.
There are always ways around a problem. If you’re looking for a patient Sacramento real estate agent who finds solutions, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759.
Evaluation of a Sacramento Short Sale Offer
There are so many reasons to scrutinize and evaluate an offer for a short sale, I hardly know where to begin. I guess I will start by saying there are people in this world, buyer’s agents among them, who wrongly believe that all offers should go to the bank. They also tend to believe that the seller is lucky to receive any offer at all and should not care what the offer is or who it came from or anything else about the offer; the seller should just sign it and shut up.
You might scoff and wonder who could be so incredibly ignorant, but I can tell you that a lot of people fit that description. I help my sellers evaluate purchase offers because they don’t sell a house every day. They also, knock on wood, will only do one short sale in their lifetime. It’s my job to see that the short sale closes.
I am looking 3 months down the road at short sale approval when I examine a purchase offer from a buyer. I consider the odds as to whether that buyer will still qualify for or still be interested in buying that home when we get approval. I consider the financial strength of the buyer, the motives of the buyer, the way the offer was written, who the buyer’s agent is and that agent’s experience level; I also look for signs of cover up or deception. There are a lot of crooked people running after short sales.
I won’t tell you exactly what I look for to determine whether there might be fraud because the crooks will read this and make sure they don’t do it.
In a seller’s market, a seller can also be very choosey as to which offer the seller elects to take. All offers are always sent to the seller, but only one offer receives the recommendation to accept it.
If you are thinking about considering a short sale, call this Sacramento short sale agent first, Elizabeth Weintraub, 916.233.6759. Yes, I will take your short sale if you have listed with another agent who could not get it approved; but I’d much prefer that you call me first.
