Email Elizabethtop sacramento short sale agent
Why You Need a Short Sale Agent to Buy a Short Sale
Top Short Sale Agent in 7 Counties in Sacramento Valley over 10 years.
Home buyers absolutely should hire an experienced Sacramento short sale agent to buy a short sale, there is no doubt about this fact in my mind. I don’t say this simply because I have listed (and therefore sold) more short sales over 7 counties than any other agent, which makes me the top Sacramento short sale agent in this area. By a wide margin. I say this because agents who don’t deal much with short sale banks and are not on top of the new laws, are placing their buyers in a disadvantaged position.
There is a huge difference between an agent who has sold 5 short sales, one every other year, and a short sale specialist who has amassed almost 400 sales in this arena over the past 10 years. I am constantly amazed when talking to buyer’s agents about the intricacies of short sales how little agents know as opposed to how much they THINK they know. Just because one bank in one short sale handled a situation in X manner has no bearing on a different short sale.
Yet, that doesn’t stop these guys from claiming to be an expert in an area in which they have almost no expertise. I call that a distorted reality, like the state of mind where Donald Trump resides.
I can tell so much about a short sale just by analyzing public information. There are some short sales in Sacramento that are not short sales. Oh, yes, they might be listed in MLS as a short sale, but they are not, for a plethora of reasons. By calling the Elizabeth Weintraub Team, buyers can lessen the chances of going into escrow on a home that may not, under any circumstances, close.
In fact, just this morning a preapproved buyer called about a short sale in Sacramento after reading an article I wrote for The Balance about hiring a short sale agent to buy a short sale. I made excellent points about not hiring some Joe Schmo without short sale experience. And it’s a good thing he contacted me. The short sale he is considering has no photograph in MLS (which is a violation) no marketing comments, and the price is jacked up two hundred grand from last year’s canceled listing.
Which is only the tip of the iceberg. Without going into detail about the financing, and the subsequent short sale bank, we might very well save this buyer from disaster. It’s a good thing he called a short sale agent to buy a short sale. You can call, too; call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Chart: Trendgraphix, used with permission
Why Some Agents Hate Sacramento Short Sales
Agents are not always justified when they hate short sales.
Just because there is one bad apple in the bunch or an agent runs into a scheming short sale seller is no reason to decide that all Sacramento short sales are worthless and to not recommend short sales to their buyers — yet, there are many agents in Sacramento who do exactly that. There are agents who hate Sacramento short sales. An agent a while back told me he has listed 40 or 50 short sales. I thought, hmmm, I’ve never heard of him, and I looked up his production in MLS, which goes back to October of 2008. He’s listed and closed 24 short sales. At least I know what kind of agent I’m dealing with.
Some people do fuzzy math. Even so, that works out to about 3 1/2 short sales a year. Enough to know better. Not enough to know anything, though. His attitude seemed to be that short sale sellers are liars and cheats, and they try to squeeze every free day they can out of the lender without paying a mortgage. He tells his buyers to avoid short sales. I imagine lots of other agents tell their buyers the same untruths and perpetuate the same misperceptions. They harbor a lot of anger and they hate short sales.
My experience, on the other hand, has been incredibly the opposite. Since October of 2008, I’ve listed and closed 295 short sales. My total production exceeds 295 because I’ve been negotiating and closing short sales since late 2005. I have the dubious honor of being the top Sacramento short sale agent. But just to keep the numbers simple, let’s run with the 295, which is just my sellers, not my buyers. That breaks down to an average closing of almost one short sale a week for 7 years straight.
Never in all of my short sale experience have I had a seller refuse to cooperate. Only once did a seller elect to accept a bank’s offer of a loan modification (he later went to foreclosure). Yes, sometimes banks offer loan modifications when they realize the seller wants to short sale, but if that loan modification does not involve a principle reduction, it’s pretty much worthless, and most loan modifications do not.
Besides, I ask my sellers qualifying questions. We discuss what will happen during the short sale so there are no surprises. I generally collect all of my paperwork upfront, and we contact the bank at least twice a week. Nothing falls through the cracks. My sellers do not leave the home a giant mess when they move out. They clean it up. Because my sellers are conscientious, which is why they are doing a short sale in the first place and not walking away. There is no reason to hate Sacramento short sales.
A buyer’s agent needs to do a little homework on a short sale before suggesting the buyer write an offer. The agent should check out the track record of the listing agent. It’s easy to do, just put the agent’s ID into MLS, check the sold tab and click submit. Find out from the listing agent if the seller has some place to go, whether all the financials are collected, and exactly how long the negotiation might take. Don’t just throw your buyer into a situation that is likely to cause all of you heartache. True, not every short sale is a short sale. But the qualified short sales are and an agent should learn the difference.
If an agent tells a buyer to disregard a short sale that is perfect for that buyer and all but guaranteed to close, whose interest is that agent best serving? Some agents don’t want to wait for a paycheck. That’s the thing they don’t tell you. They want a 30-day closing so they can get paid in 30 days, and I say shame on those agents. That’s despicable.
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!
The Short Sale Market in Sacramento
April 2012 to June 2013 Sacramento Short Sales
At the beginning of spring, I wrote about how Sacramento short sales are slowing down and how the short sale market in Sacramento was pretty much over. I received some push-back on that statement, primarily from companies wanting to sell more short sale training programs and webinars to real estate agents. No, no, short sales are not over, they cried. Because they didn’t want it to be over.
After 8 years of the short sale business in Sacramento, some people are just waking up to the fact that it’s lucrative. Like with most things of this nature, once you figure it out, it’s gone. You’ve gotta be there when it’s happening.
It’s taken the federal government many years as well to straighten out its HAFA program. Just last month, the federal government extended the HAFA program to December of 2015, allowing closings to string out into September of 2016. The government has also decided in its June HAFA supplemental to remove the requirement of income / asset verification by the lender. When they do that, you know they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to make sure every last short sale can squeak in. There will always be stragglers. But the big push for short sales is over.
You can see on the chart on this page that short sales have declined steadily since last year. In fact, when compared to the overall market in Sacramento, short sales make up about 10% of all homes for sale in June. Some of the short sales that are in MLS as a short sale are also not a short sale because some of those sellers don’t qualify. The sellers don’t qualify because they listed the home with an agent who doesn’t know how to qualify them.
I noticed the switch in my business this spring. As a Sacramento real estate agent, I list homes all over Sacramento. Much of my inventory is now traditional sales. When the top Sacramento short sale agent in Sacramento tells you that short sales are so Barry Manilow, you should believe it.
Chart: Trendgraphix
