This Agent is Accepting New Home Listings in Sacramento

It’s been a stressful couple of months in Sacramento real estate lately as this listing agent has been focused on winning challenge after challenge. It can take a slight toll. In the middle of all of this action, it’s important to pause and assess the housing market to best advise my clients. This is when I often head for a massage. It’s nice to feel a human touch on my skin. To unwind and relax. I visited Images Salon on Riverside next to Vic’s Ice Cream in Land Park yesterday and was delighted. Ten times better than the place not to have a massage in Land Park.

I’ve got 12 escrows pending to close before my birthday this month, and once I realized how many were already sold, it’s made me more excited to work even harder to sell the remaining few I have and to gather more listings. I have a small number of homes in various stages of prep and, after a manicure, pedicure and haircut, these will be available for sale, but I am also accepting new home listings in Sacramento to sell over the summer. Moreover, believe it or not, I am working on the Sacramento fall real estate market.

It’s always a cycle in real estate, and it’s a balancing act to make sure my home listing inventory is not more than I can personally handle. For example, a few years ago, I had 70 listings and that was about the maximum this agent can comfortably handle, but today that number of home listings is small enough to count on two hands. That’s because inventory has been dramatically reduced in Sacramento. Plus, it’s rare to tackle a short sale anymore; those days are gone. Compared to a few years ago, I feel almost like I am on vacation, if it were not for the constant challenges of pending escrows. Any agent can flip a home into escrow but getting it closed is where the true professionals shine. To better explain cycles, let’s look at the housing market numbers in Sacramento:

Studying the Trendgraphix chart above and searching MLS, one can really notice the cyclic trends. For example, at the moment, the number of residential home listings for sale in Sacramento per the MLS are 3,253. The number of pending sales, which include a handful of pending short sales, are 2,908. That means we’re still running out of homes to sell. It’s a drought, although not as severe as our water drought.

The first thing I notice in the May Trendgraphix report above is the column for May looks very similar to the column for October of 2013. But what is different about it is two-fold. First, the pending sales in October were quickly moving down as fewer homes were selling. However, the pending sales in May are continuing to move up, a trend that began in January and shows no signs of slowing! Closed sales fell off slightly in May, probably due to the flakes and unqualified buyers, but I predict that June closed sales will correct. Second, our pending sales exceed those closed. It’s been that way all year.

You don’t see the smaller details, but as a busy Sacramento real estate agent, I can tell you that our inventory over the past year and half has doubled. We moved from 1 month of homes for sale to a little over 2 months, but that it still not enough home listings to sell. Our days on market has increased to 31, meaning buyers are taking longer to make the right choice. Home buyers are also hitting prices harder as homes are selling on average at 98% of list price. A buyer might say that sellers are 2% overly optimistic, but as a listing agent I know it’s the other way around.

If you’re looking to hire the best Sacramento real estate agent you can find, your best bet is to call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I’m presently accepting new listings. Will your home be sold by Elizabeth Weintraub next month? There’s one way to find out.

Chart: Trendgraphix