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The Difference Between a Challenge and a PITA for a Sacramento REALTOR
There is a big difference between a challenge and a pain-in-the-ass (PITA) when it comes to Sacramento real estate for a REALTOR. A challenge presents obstacles that beg to be overcome and resolved, whereas a PITA just gets worse and nothing will fix those problems. It’s sometimes difficult to figure out which is which when they first appear in front of me. I like to try to help every buyer and seller who contact this Sacramento REALTOR. But when I start to question why-oh-why am I working on a house, that’s a definite clue that I should not.
I am not afraid of hard work. I don’t care how complicated a situation presents, I am confident that I will find a way to make it work out. It’s why I am successful. In fact, it’s how I sell hundreds of homes. It’s how, for example, that since 2006 I’ve sold more short sales than any other agent in town. So many agents would not touch those houses with a 10-feet pole. But not this agent. I welcome challenges. It’s how I turned into an exceptional Sacramento REALTOR.
If you have a difficult to home to sell, I’m your agent. I’ll do it. I gain deep satisfaction by successfully closing the seemingly impossible. By the same token, I welcome the easy-to-sell homes and I do a bang-up job selling homes in Land Park, East Sacramento and Elk Grove, all the way in some cases to Lincoln. The really nice homes in Sacramento owned by trouble-free sellers balances out the problematic sales. I take the good with the bad.
So, when a seller called, wiping away tears through our discussion about selling a certain home in Elk Grove, I decided to help her. Yes, I can be a sucker for a sob story. I sometimes feel as though if I don’t do it, who will? Many agents don’t like problems and they won’t work on situations fraught with difficulties. She faces an extremely complicated situation, made ten-fold by a super hard-to-sell property. Whatever pushed her to the edge meant she had to take action, pronto. I stopped what I was doing and jumped on this for her. Took copious notes. Shot photos. Inspected. Qualified. Put together a game plan, gathered required documents.
This went on for a two-week period. Finally, we were ready to go on the market. No more frantic text messages. No more interpreters. We were set. This seller’s 3-year battle was about to come to an end. Then, the seller emailed to say the timing wasn’t quite right. Maybe some other time? I guess there is a reason this has been going on for three years. It has nothing to do with me. It will never get resolved through a real estate agent. That nagging thought about why was I doing this vanished, because I’m not doing it. Not now, not ever.
It’s not a challenge. It’s a PITA. In those situations, a Sacramento REALTOR has to say no.
How a Sacramento Agent Stays on Course
In a conversation with my sister in Minneapolis this weekend, we discussed how as we get older it becomes easier to understand how a person can mistake her husband for a hat or an umbrella. We have so much overload in our lives today as compared to a few years ago. Especially as an agent selling real estate in Sacramento in the month of May. This is why as a busy agent I often feel the need to take breaks now and then, but even while I’m riding my bicycle around Land Park in the afternoons, I can spot weird things out of the corner of my eye that can morph into, oh, I dunno, imaginary animated objects, for example. I’m not going bonkers. I’m sure of it.
But listen . . .
In the newest version of Plants vs. Zombies, the game board uses triangles and other traffic zone images that impart super powers to the plants. If a person’s brain is otherwise engaged, like mine often is when I’m riding my bike (because I’m listening to music on my wireless headphones, interrupted only when I answer a real estate call — hey, why did the music stop? — Oh, yeah, I’m getting a phone call), it’s easy to zip past a triangle in the road and perhaps picture a double-fisted bok choy nestled securely behind a boosted walnut. I can see how people lose their minds. And you know what? It’s not all that frightening.
I’m here to tell ya that if you’re gonna turn into a vegetable in your old age, there are probably worse things.
Like many top producer Sacramento agents, we keep a lot of information categorized in our heads, and it’s a balancing act much of the time, especially when an escrow has a contingency to sell. I noticed yesterday as I filed away closed escrows that I am often lately helping sellers to buy homes at the same time they are selling. Even so, these escrows don’t last anywhere nearly as long as the short sales used to several years ago. During that time period, it was not unusual to work on a file for 4 to 6 months or longer. In fact, during that particular ice age, I usually got to know my sellers fairly well and their home inside out, with every single detail embedded in my brain.
When we got to closing, it was sometimes a bitter sweet farewell. I often felt like I was parting with an old friend, because I was intimately familiar with each facet of the transaction. Nowadays, I take a listing, it sells, it quickly closes, and that lengthy interaction is often shortened. I feel like, hey, we just met, and now you’re going into the closed box under my desk. Wha? Come back!
But it’s all for the best. At least this Sacramento real estate agent is not losing her mind. Not yet, anyway.
Sacramento Real Estate and Yoda: Times They are a Changin’
Sacramento River in South Land Park Hills
As I look over my listings and escrows in Sacramento this morning, I see a pattern. I’m not talking about those free flashbacks we were promised and never received — what a rip. No swirls and dots nor peacock feather trails. Nope, the pattern I see is every single one of these listings and escrows has a challenge, for lack of a better term. All of the challenges are different, but they are challenges just the same. Not insurmountable, either, but it’s not the same for a Sacramento real estate agent in 2014 as in previous years. Selling real estate the last half of 2013 and early 2014 is harder. The times they are a changin’. You wonder where Yoda got his manner of speaking? I tell ya, he stole it from Dylan. But I digress.
For example, one Sacramento short sale presents a peculiar difficulty with Chase Bank. To provide you with further clarity, consider the fact that every short sale agent probably felt like that Meg Ryan scene in When Harry Met Sally when Chase Bank last year began using Equator. However, this year, its HELOC department is stuck in bureaucracy and over the course of two months can’t seem to open the file. I kick, I nudge, I push, I sweet-talk, I escalate; I set that Chase short sale underwriting department on fire and run out the back door, and they aren’t budging. Feet glued to the floor. It’s as though they are lobotomized. But eventually, Chase will get it together; it’s the Peter Principle in action.
Another escrow is stuck in limbo until the bankruptcy court releases the home or authorizes the sale. The court date has been pushed forward, just when I had hoped it would be resolved. Are you involved in bankruptcy proceedings is not usually a question I ask a seller when I accept an equity listing. I imagine in this economy the bankruptcy lawyers are doing a ton of business, though.
The ripples of the past are still present. We Sacramentans haven’t completely emerged from the sea like Bo Derek: all cornrows and smiles and tan. Nope, we’re more like Tank Girl coming home to discover the earth looks like steaming lava fields on Big Island and treasuring that baby tree sprout, straining toward the sun from a sidewalk crack.
I have another escrow that’s nearing 45 days and the buyer’s loan is still not approved. That’s because the buyer wasn’t actually approved by the bank at the inception — like most of the bogus crap passed off as meaning something, the pre-approval letters make better paper airplanes. The buyer also could not satisfy loan conditions for the longest time, and it seems like nobody really pushed the buyer to perform, except for my sellers. Hello? Clock ticking.
Experience has taught me that these issues will get worked out, and we will close. Moreover, eventually the overpriced listings will be reduced or we’ll find one of those tasty Bay area buyers. Sacramento real estate is a fairly tight market that often moves in circles, it can be like a roulette wheel. Make sure you have a good real estate agent at your side. Sellers today need a smart agent who can offer sensible advice on such matters like always double your odds on craps and let’s not overlook Kenny Rogers: know when to fold ’em and back off. This is a great time to sell if you know what you’re doing!
Super Bowl Sunday 2014 and Sacramento Open Houses
Home buyers in Sacramento were out in droves over the weekend, attending open houses, touring new listings and writing offers. This was the one weekend in January to do it because we got a break in those football games. Granted, I am not a person who watches football. I am probably in the minority but football doesn’t interest me. Not even if I imagine the team players as short sale negotiators at various banks — oh look, Bank of America just swiped the ball from Green Tree, and Wells Fargo bashed PNC in the head. Nope, still doesn’t do it for me.
Next weekend, of course, will be Super Bowl Sunday 2014, and it’s just not a good weekend for an open house. Oh, sure, there are Super Bowl widows and widowers who will be out and about, but the bulk of Americans will be focused on who will win the Super Bowl. Big Super Bowl parties everywhere except at my house. I’m not even sure who is playing, I think Denver and . . . After we get past this next weekend, it should be clear sailing through spring into summer for Sacramento real estate.
A negotiator at SLS called me this morning to ask when we would record on a short sale scheduled for closing. I told her it would be tomorrow. But what TIME, she persisted, almost in a whiny voice. Well, Sacramento has 5 recording times — it will be one of those, I offered. One of those 5 times. Don’t know which one. She probably would have smacked me if we were sitting across the table from each other.
But then I’d throw a football into her face and break her nose.
Why Sacramento Listings Are Withdrawn, Canceled or Expired From MLS
Not to have a single withdrawn, canceled or expired real estate listing in today’s Sacramento real estate market is completely impossible among top producers, yet some websites rank agents by percentage of listings sold. If a Sacramento real estate agent had only two listings a year — and that’s about the number of listings that most agents list — and she sold one and the other seller canceled, the agent would show a 50% ratio, which is really bad.
There are many reasons why a home listing in Sacramento might not see its way to closing, and most of those reasons are out of the agent’s control. Let’s take a look at withdrawn or canceled listings, for example. This is excluding a canceled listing that comes back on the market with a new MLS number to reset the days on market, or is off the market for a spell during a winter vacation or improvement project. Typically, 3 things cause a canceled listing:
- Insanity
- Exhaustion
- Overpriced
Insanity. When an agent deals with a large cross section of the population, she is likely to encounter a few sellers who suffer from sort of mental incapacity. They could be completely psychotic or simply bipolar but not every seller is balanced. Is it the agent’s fault that she doesn’t have time to administer the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test prior to accepting the listing?
Exhaustion. This happens more frequently during short sales because these types of transactions take much longer than other types of home sales. If the buyer, for example, drops dead or buys another home (same thing to the seller, basically), thereby canceling, the short sale can start over. There are many reasons for short sale rejection, and sellers need patience to eventually close. Some sellers give up the fight and choose foreclosure.
Overpriced. This is the most common reason for a withdrawn, canceled or expired listing. It is the worst mistake a seller can make, but sellers choose the sales price. When a home doesn’t sell due to price, sellers become angry at themselves and some of that anger ends up hurled in the agent’s direction, too, because who wants to squirm in their own hostility all by themselves? Misery loves company.
There is a guy in my real estate office who makes a very good living by working with withdrawn, canceled and expired listings. He spends all day in a space about the size of a phone booth calling these sellers. Can you imagine his phone conversations? The guy has got to be an armadillo in disguise or a saint, I’m not sure which.
In any case, all of these canceled listings can affect an agent’s percentage performance on some websites, and percentage of listings sold is not an accurate indicator of the agent’s actual performance.
