Throw Like a Girl

Yes, I want to throw like a girl. Picking your battles is half of the battle in Sacramento real estate. I am fond of repeating the adage is this the hill on which you’re gonna die? Because it helps me to figure out which issues are worth fighting for and which to let fall by the wayside in hopes a semi-truck will slam by and mash its sorry remains into the pavement.

By my background, I am a fighter. A seller told me yesterday that she chose me to list her home in Fair Oaks among other candidates she had interviewed because I possess that competitive spirit and it shows. I get things done. Experience breeds confidence and authority.

I don’t think I was born that way, though. Yet, I had great outside role models, apart from my mother, while I was growing up in the 1950s: Pippi Longstocking, Mae West and Amelia Earhart, to name a few. I admired all three as a child and aspired to become just like them, apart from the fact there are some people who will say I have not yet grown up, I do believe I have come close to possessing some of their spunk. We don’t have enough strong women role models in the country for young girls to admire, although Mo’ne Davis is certainly an inspiration. I love what fans say about her: Throw like a girl. John Oliver did a segment about this superstar sensation on his HBO show: Last Week Tonight.

People might question whether one needs to fight in real estate because we’ve been brainwashed into thinking it’s always a win-win situation. I hate to smear those rose-colored glasses but both sides don’t always win. Sometimes the winning party gloats. Sometimes the losing party is angry, and vice versa.

Even when a home buyer pays more than list price and wins a multiple-offer situation, the buyers might tend to be a bit irritated at closing, after the glow of victory subsides. They think to themselves that maybe their agent coerced them into paying too much or not asking for enough because they listened to friends / relatives explain how they bought a home and what they demanded. They don’t realize every situation is different and each deal has its own peculiar set of circumstances.

If at the end of the day you sold your home in Sacramento, you won. If every morning you wake up in your new house, you won. It was probably a woman who helped you to get there.