Email Elizabethtop producers sacramento
Can I List With Another Agent If My House Does Not Sell?
Only out of the heads of sellers comes a question like can I list with another agent if my house does not sell? I seem to be hit with a lot of odd questions lately. Another seller yesterday enthusiastically mentioned that she found a tenant to rent her house (meaning she does need to sell now) and would I prepare all of the legal paperwork for free? She was very worried about getting sued by the tenant. Because tenants have all of these god awful rights now.
Holy shit! Am I a fairy godmother?
Last time I looked in the mirror, I saw a Sacramento Realtor looking back at myself. Realtors get paid commission when they sell a house. We don’t work on rental properties. And we do NOT prepare legal documents without a law degree. Maybe she’d like me to prepare her family’s will, too, while I’m at it. But I said none of those things, ‘cuz why. What I said was you are so lucky we have a property management company!
The seller who asked can I list with another agent if my house doesn’t sell wasn’t really paying much attention to how his question would be received. Now, another agent might have answered that question with a response that says absolutely and let it go. They do nobody any favors with that approach.
But not me, because I feel a desire to educate and enlighten. Yes, I will go there.
I explained that if his house doesn’t sell, another agent won’t be able to help him, especially not when he’s already hired one of the best agents in Sacramento. If his house doesn’t sell, it will be because buyers no longer want to pay what it is worth or the market has tanked. It will have nothing to do with me.
He responded by disclosing he’s been burned in the past. See, call me out on stating the obvious, but isn’t that purpose of hiring a top producer? So you won’t get burned? Damn those scum-ball agents messing it up for the rest of us. I promise automatic cancellation for all of my sellers if any are ever so upset they want to cancel the listing, which has never happened. Knock on wood, LOL.
I just told him he’s safe because in my 40+ years of selling real estate, not one client EVER accused me of burning them. But I am not unsympathetic regarding his former situation. Further, it’s sad that sellers have to ask this kind of question to start with.
But that’s what we are up against it. Former bad experiences that clients survived with some agent who screwed them over. Well, that kind of lowlife agent is not me.
Noted on List of Top 15 Agents in Sacramento
Got the screwiest new offering for Realtors yesterday when I received an email to congratulate me on placing in the top 15 agents in Sacramento. As though my production was news to this Sacramento Realtor. But even weirder than that was the way this company has gone about trying to promote itself. Of course, everybody is always trying to make a buck off of Realtors. It’s rampart in this industry. Blatant or otherwise, it is always present. Feeling like somebody’s mark.
What makes this company different is it is wants to sell a product that does not exist to a Realtor. It claims it can improve a Realtor’s SEO ranking by paying to be included on a website that doesn’t really rank very well in Google. Unlike the guys who swoop in at Annual Agent Awards time, stick you on their list and then try to sell you a plaque. Because these guys just go for annual membership of $250.
The company is STL, which is an acronym for States Top Leading News, kinda hokey. At first glance, I thought it was for St. Louis, and maybe it is since the company is based in Missouri. More power to these guys. They’re not roping me in, but I imagine they will find a lot of other agents. Primarily because most agents do not understand how SEO works. I barely know it myself, and Google constantly changes algorithms. Panda almost killed me.
This company simply goes to Zillow, pulls out the top 15 agents in Sacramento, whether they are agents or not, and puts them on a list. I was a bit astonished when I saw how one real estate company with about 30 agents in their office signed up to be a Premier Agent and Zillow took their money. To me, that is misleading. Maybe there should be a category for brokerages? Separate from agents?
I suppose the thinking of STL is agents pay to be Premier agents on Zillow so they will pay STL to be on some weird little website? I guess. Never underestimate the Bell Curve.
In any case, they are republishing what already exists on Zillow. Skimming data. Mixing it up some, though, and they can’t be reading the stats correctly because some of the agents on their list whom they rank above actually rank below me. So I don’t know how much credence I put into their list of top 15 agents in Sacramento, except I know my spot is earned.
Full-Service Realtors Means Sometimes Going Beyond With Service
Full-service Realtors in Sacramento offer sellers so much more than just higher prices, fewer renegotiations in the middle of escrow and expert analytical skills. We sometimes have to go beyond what most people expect with service and sharing our knowledge. Oh, we’ve had it hammered into us that we can’t give legal advice and can’t give tax advice, anything that departs from our skillset of real estate and that for which we are licensed. After all, we are not accountants nor lawyers. We are full-service Realtors.
But what does that mean to the public we serve? It means we are judged every single day by what we do and how we do it, and our performance darn well better be excellent. We need to anticipate what a seller needs before she or he asks. Often, it also means we go beyond what other agents might do.
One of the aspects of my full service for sellers involves giving advice as to improvements. There are often little fixes a seller can do to make a property much more saleable. Left to their own devices, sellers will fix things that are inconsequential to a buyer but which the sellers think are important. That’s generally a waste of money. I don’t advise sellers based on my personal preferences, I advise based on what sells. What buyers say they want and expect. My advice is based on my vast experience spanning four decades in real estate.
But I don’t just throw out advice, like: paint that wall a dove gray. Since I spent 10 years of my life fixing up homes and flipping them, doing the work with my own two hands, I know quite a bit about home improvement projects. Not only that, but I know which products to recommend, which vendors to supply those products and the contractors who can do the actual work. And I don’t even watch HGTV, heh, heh.
Discount agents are often too green, too new, and honestly, many of them don’t care. They can’t help. I shared with a friend the other day what I do to attract multiple offers and drive up the sales price versus what a discount agent does. A discount agent’s advice is: take the offer. Sellers make more money through full-service Realtors, and they get more qualified advice from an experienced veteran vs. a newbie. A discount agent will promise full service but they can’t deliver. It’s impossible.
Looking to sell your home? Before you wander into Lowe’s, give Elizabeth Weintraub at Lyon Real Estate a jingle at 916.233.6759. I’m happy to help.
