When Does a Sacramento Realtor Present Offers?

The answer to when does a listing agent present offers should be as soon as possible.

Real estate agents often ask me: when do you present offers? Oh, I dunno, the third Thursday of every month? I don’t really understand that question. I’m not a lady who does lunch. I’m a Sacramento Realtor who sells an absurd number of homes every year throughout Sacramento. In fact, I resent the term lady since it infers that I am to live up to somebody else’s expectations of how I should behave, and I don’t always feel like being a lady. The business doesn’t always call for it. Life doesn’t always call for it.

Speaking of ladies, my husband and I were discussing First Lady causes during our leisurely walkabout a while back through Midtown Sacramento. How many can you recall? Nancy Reagan ran around saying No a lot. Lady Bird planted flowers. Jackie Kennedy gave us style and china, dishes not the country. Michelle Obama, such a class act. When they go low, we go high. What the heck did Rosalynn Carter advocate?

You know what I would take up as a cause if I were First Lady? Kindness. We need more kindness in the world. And not in a killing them with kindness kinda way. We can be kind without resorting to lady-like behavior.

People have forgotten how to be kind to each other. Or maybe our political environment in this country has beaten people into a pulp to the point that they just don’t care. But we are so rude. We don’t hold doors open for anybody, we run through yellow lights and don’t let anybody pull in front of us, and we scream at our children at the grocery store. Please and thank you are words that rarely escape our lips.

The world doesn’t revolve around us. Nobody cares what we’re texting, heads stooped, as we walk into light poles or out in front of traffic without looking. I’ve got news for ya: Twitter doesn’t rule. People can be so self centered. What would happen if everybody took the time today to be nice to just one other person? That would be a worthwhile exercise. Maybe it will catch on.

But as to when I present offers, I do it when I receive them. As soon as an offer comes through my email, I zip it off to the seller. That’s because we’re looking for one buyer. Just one buyer. Not a whole bunch of buyers and a whole bunch of multiple offers. We’re not playing Bowling for Buyers. We want that one buyer who will pay the price at which the seller will sell. The buyer who loves the home more than anything and can prove it.

My advice for buyer’s agents is keep your eyeballs glued to MLS. Pendings happen within minutes in this real estate market. Don’t show your buyers a home on Saturday and hope by Sunday morning it is still available. And by MLS, I don’t mean Major League Soccer.