Whether 11-9 is New 9-11 Means Little to Closing of South Sacramento Home

7509 Circle Parkway closed escrow on Nov. 9, 2016.

Some of us woke up yesterday and could not get out of bed, for obvious reasons, but then the closing of a south Sacramento home required attention. Despite the protest outpours across the country, the #NotMyPresident and #StillWithHer Twitter hashtags, despite the twisted guts, tears and disappointment in our fellow Americans or even the plans in motion for California to secede from the Union, Sacramento real estate carries on. We dust ourselves off, and we plunge forward. When it rains on our parade, we parade in the rain. We stay true to our convictions and move on. Not to mention, our clients, family and friends need us to pull together and keep it together.

One could argue that our 2016 presidential election fallout is much more civil since the losing end is a class act. If the tables were reversed, it’s hard to say what kind of anarchy would have exploded. This Sacramento Realtor can report that she did not encounter any happy people yesterday, but then I didn’t go into my office where some I heard were exhilarated. However, the clients I spoke with seemed subdued, even the seller of a South Sacramento home appeared somewhat dazed. We talked a little about how we explored the process of selling his home very slowly and moved at his own pace. He had a few repairs to make and staging to undertake before we could put his home on the market.

Not every South Sacramento home seller is raring to go when it’s time to sell. Some people need time, and over my 40+ years in the real estate business, I have developed a lot of patience for my clients. Their time is my time, and it doesn’t matter to me how much time they need to get ready. For this South Sacramento home, the seller replaced the lining of the pool, since it was leaking. He painted the interior and spruced up the home, including moving out much of the furniture. When I saw the professional photographs, I wondered if he still lived in the home, it looked so spectacular. This seller listened carefully to the advice I had given him, and it showed.

As a result, we sold the home almost immediately to a single woman who later completely flaked and canceled for unknown reasons. I blame these situations on the fact that buyer’s agents don’t always work with a client. Often they work with a complete stranger who happened by an open house or stumbled into their office. They call these buyers “clients” but they aren’t really clients when it boils right down to it. Soon as we cleaned up the paperwork to mark the departure of this so-called buyer, we plopped this South Sacramento home back on the market as a brand new listing and BINGO! Sold again at list price. Nobody likes to sell homes twice but we do it and don’t look back.

We pushed the price a little bit for this home because it was so immaculate. It was excellent to see it appraise for that value as many similar homes in Parkway Estates sell for less than that list price. Granted, we had a two-day delay because the new buyer’s bank, at the last minute, withheld her access to funds and the following day her lender could not manage to fund by the cut-off deadline, but we sailed into recording on Nov. 9th. These delays could not have been prevented from the listing side of the transaction; it falls squarely on the shoulders of the buying side team. Yet, in conclusion, the sellers were ecstatic and very happy and, at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters. Even an election turned south can’t dampen that excitement. We soldier on. Not much can affect our real estate market.