In retrospect, 10 years ago, the height of short sale flurries in Sacramento real estate, that's when I probably made the decision to solely represent sellers. That period of time in 2008 taught me there is a lot more to selling a home and representing a seller than moving a product. It's managing expectations, helping sellers to avoid pitfalls and problems by anticipating the actions of others. Coaxing them to closing.All of that was contingent on buyers doing what they promised. Which rarely happened. Because many home buyers were squirrely as all tomorrow, unsure, confused and noncommittal. Not to mention, listing agents have no control over another agent's buyer; we can't even talk to them. And now, we seem drawn back to a similar attitude, just different market. Hard to believe yet... 09/12/2018

I am always a little bit surprised when the Sacramento housing market moves precisely as I expect because real estate is such a volatile thing, like a hurricane, you never really know for certain what will happen. You just get lucky at times, that's all. But I don't feel very lucky at the moment. Closed sales are down, buyers are canceling escrows without so much as a second glance, and our days on market growing.The biggest issue is an equal and opposite reaction. You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: August 2018 Sacramento Housing Report. 09/11/2018

When I asked one of my sellers to complete her seller disclosures, she asked if the buyers would be willing to wait a couple of weeks. While this might sound outrageously amusing to some agents in the business, sellers are not automatically aware of what is expected from them. Even when we send a timeline, laying out each duty of the responsible parties. If there are lingering questions, sometimes they don't get asked.As a Sacramento listing agent, I find myself very much attuned to the needs of my sellers. I realize they are not in the business of selling real estate, and when I suggest certain actions to help relieve them of liability, those suggestions don't always make sense to sellers. Like giving buyers invoices when the work has been completed and available for viewing.You can re... 09/10/2018

The reason I know so many listing agents in Sacramento during the boom years of our seller's market suggested ordering pest reports upfront is because the sellers would say so. Right after deciding to hire me and not someone else. I would even go so far as to suggest these are the listing agents who may encounter difficulties when negotiating a request for repair. Make the seller pay for everything often seems the norm of the day in some practices, but not in mine.I tell sellers what will work and what won't. I level with my clients. There was no reason to dig up dirt on what might be wrong with a property when a seller was required to disclose only what the seller knows. Not what the seller would know if the seller conducted a physical inspection. No reason to produce a report showing ... 09/09/2018

When we first received an offer from the buyer's agent on a particular listing, it was received two weeks after the agent showed the home. He apologized for the late delivery of the offer. Which seemed very strange. No other explanation. It was also a financed offer with a 21-day close. Did not seem real, but since the paperwork checked out and we had no other list-price offers like this one, we accepted it.Of course, we had to issue a counter offer to fix all of the mistakes and oversights in the offer but that's par for the course for a listing agent in Sacramento real estate. You would be amazed at how many agents cannot write a clean offer. But I was not expecting to receive a cancellation at 10 PM, the minute I landed from Hawaii in Sacramento. You can read more in my personal blog... 09/08/2018

The first time your personal infomation is stolen after a thief snatches your credit card, you feel violated. You're shocked. How could it happen? You don't use the same passwords nor click on suspicious links. Your personal information is mostly kept private. You don't hand out your credit card in a restaurant and hope the server is honest. The next half dozen times you come face-to-face with fraud, it is sheer irritation. If you rarely use a credit card, your risk is much lower than a person whose credit card statement, say, runs 5 or 6 pages. I did not realize Uber fraud existed, but I don't find it shocking that it does. One of the ways bad guys commit Uber fraud is by creating a fake driver account and charging phantom rides, rides nobody took, to a stolen credit card on a newly cr... 09/02/2018

When other agents ask me if the seller I represent will accept an offer, that is not a question a listing agent can really answer. I do not know what a seller will take. Not inside my seller's head. Even if the seller had told me he or she will not accept an offer lower than X -- for one thing, unless they autorize me to release this information, that informtion is confidential -- I still would not rely on it. Further, sellers are just like anybody else and capable of changing thoughts based on present circumstances.There is also the not-so-obvious. Stating a seller will perform in a specifc way that causes a buyer damages when the seller refuses could get a listing agent sued by both parties. So, why is it that some buyer's agents readily and openly make promises that guarantee buyer p... 08/26/2018

The implication is probably three-fold when buyers with agents call listing agents. First, they may possess little patience. We live in a world where everybody expects immediate responses from everybody, which is insane. Second, they might not feel their agent knows the best questions to ask or is too inexperienced or not attuned to their needs. Which means in their mind, they feel they can do a superior job. Their agent is just in the picture to write the offer. Sounds insulting to buyer's agents if you ask me.And third, they might not really understand how real estate works today. They could be old school, like back in the day when almost all agents operated as dual agents. You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: Buyers With Agents Calling Listing Agents, Why? 08/25/2018

There were so many negatives involved with selling this resale home in Natomas, but that was OK. I look for the negatives so I can figure out how to overcome those drawbacks. A Sacramento Realtor can't just sell the benefits. We need to smooth over those negatives. Some homes have more positive attributes than negative. With this home it was more evenly balanced.The main problem was the fact this home was about a year old and the builder was still building new homes. Why would a buyer choose a used home over a brand new home for the same price? Well, I found a reason. You can read more in my personal blog today about this story at New Natomas Homes vs Resale Homes by Same Builder. 08/23/2018

As a kid having to trudge uphill and barefoot in Minnesota snow 10 miles to school was bad enough, but in the dead of winter darkness was even worse; so, you can imagine that I was never a fan of daylight saving. Nor did I much care for it when I got out of school and went to work at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange Building, arriving in darkness and departing in darkness.But the worst, the absolute worst was being forced to move forward or backward in time twice a year when I hadn't left town. This is a holdover from 1949 when daylight saving made sense. It doesn't make sense anymore. And thank you, Myrl Jeffcoat for giving me the idea to blog about daylight saving in California. I guess it's been simmering at the back of my mind ever since I read about November's ballot initiative in th... 08/17/2018

Doesn't matter where you live, if you're a listing agent who wants more listings, just print out a boarding pass. That's all it takes. Soon as you plan to leave town, sellers start to call. The good news for me is nobody knows if I am physically in Sacramento or whether I am in Hawaii. When people guess, they are often wrong.The photo on this blog is of the view across the street from a home in Laguna West. While I sat at the wrong house, waiting on the front porch, I got up and shot a photo. Minutes ticked by. After 5 minutes, I called the sellers. Just checking to see if you're at the house, I said. Yup, they answered. They were waiting for me. Uh, oh, maybe this house with the cobwebs is not where I was supposed to be. Sure enough, I was at the wrong house.At least I quickly figured ... 08/16/2018

Until I took a peek in MLS at the number of short sales available in Sacramento County, I did not realize how few there actually are. I mean, for a while there, I sold more short sales than any other agent in a 7-county area. In fact, I might still hold the record, don't know. But right now, we have only 13 short sales on the market, with an average days on market of almost 60 days. Thirteen homes out of 2,746.What a difference 12 years makes! Or does it?Because you would think all areas of Sacramento have rebounded from the height of the market in June of 2006. The statistics, though, tell a different story. You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: Wonder if Median Prices of Sacramento Homes Have Recovered from 2006? 08/15/2018

Neighbors can be truly vindictive people. They might not talk to you for years, but boy, the moment your house goes on the market, they often become very vocal. All the things they've been harboring about you will come out. This is more than disclosing disasters to the buyer that happened at your house which you may have fogotten about. Which could evoke a potential lawsuit, if that happened. It can also involve the neighbor calling the listing agent to insist she correct the property lines before selling. Perhaps the neighbor has always felt your property lines encroached but complaints fell on deaf ears. What the neighbors don't realize is agents will simply inform the buyer of the hearsay attributing the source, but we are not correcting anything. We can take a slighted neighbor and ... 08/14/2018

Our listing prices for Sunday Open Houses today run a wide gamet. I've got listings in Sacramento ranging from an affordable entry price-point of $340,000 all the way to breaking the million mark. The locations are just as vast. From the city of Davis to Fair Oaks to Elk Grove to Sacramento's Curtis Park and Downtown neighborhoods.In fact, two of the open houses illustrate the difference between two very similar price points. It drives home the idea that if you move downtown, to the inner city core, the vibant center of the "happening zone," you will get a smaller house, fewer bedrooms and perhaps no garage for the same price as a larger home with more bedrooms and baths, plus a garage in Elk Grove. Just depends on what type of lifestyle you are looking for in Sacramento.You can read mo... 08/12/2018

Our real estate market in Sacramento is shifting slightly. Now, instead of receiving 5 offers on every listing, we might get one offer, but it is still a darn good offer! First-time home buyers are still submitting offers, so that is good news. But most of those are in the lower price ranges.Some buyers are even asking for a closing cost credit without raising the sales price. That would have been an unheard of request over the last few years. Sellers would say no, forget you. But now sellers are saying, hey, maybe we can make this work. You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: July 2018 Sacramento Housing Report Suggests Stability. 08/11/2018

About the third week in July, I noticed all my listings had gone into pending status. That rarely happens to this Sacramento listing agent. I'm generally good for one to two listings a week. And I never run out of them. There seems to be a never-ending supply.But then, a few short weeks ago, they all sold. I could not believe my eyes. Even the cats were shocked. You can read more in my personal blog at this link: Couple of Weeks Ago This Sacramento Top Producer Had Zero Listings. 08/08/2018

The skies in Sacramento are mostly smoke and haze from all of the wildfires. Similar in some ways to the overcast skies and bad air quality that happens in Kona from the volcano erupting on the other side of the island. Tradewinds bring the vog over Kona, but it doesn't happen every day. Not like in Sacramento this summer.Makes it hard for home buyers to venture outside to look at homes, too. But now, if a buyer missed the chance to buy this starter home near downtown Sacramento, that opportunity is here again. You know, I often tell buyers that if you're lamenting missing the chance to buy a certain house, you can always write a backup offer. Then, if the present buyer flakes out, you will be in first position. You don't have to compete. But do they? No, they don't like to write an off... 08/06/2018

There are days I turn into a neat freak. I snap. You know how it goes, right? I mean, you notice for months that something in your home is going astray. But you hope it will somehow correct itself overnight without you lifting a finger to do anything at all. Like those coat hangers in the closet that multiply when you're not looking.Then it turns into a threshold level. How much can you stand of the morphetic thing that is occuring in your house? Whether it's the accumulation of white cat hair in the corners of the kitchen that turn into Texas-sized tumbleweed or the shower stains turning your glass into an opaque structure. There comes a time when you've got to tackle that situation.Some people just remove the offending etched glass and replace it. But there is a better way. You can re... 08/05/2018

Although it has been decades since I've had a concurrent closing that did not close on schedule, all it takes is that one lone wolf to mess up everybody's lives. Even when you double check with all involved in the transaction to make sure nothing can go wrong, some wiggly thing can cause all havoc to break loose.In our situation, it was a receipt for a wire. The transaction involved a gift letter for the buyer and the individual wiring the funds sent the wire from a different account than the account noted as proof of funds for the gift letter. Oops. The lender did not notice this until the day we were supposed to close, 3 days after the wire was sent.Now, as a Sacramento listing agent, you know you have to relay this information to the seller. And you know how it will be received. You ... 08/04/2018

What a beautiful Grand Colonial in Curtis Park, Sacramento. Finding homes with spacious square footage in Curtis Park is not an easy task, but this is such a home. It boasts more than 2,800 square feet, according to the Sacramento County Assessor. Yes, before you ask, there is a first-floor bedroom and full bath. More like two master suites. Although the main floor master is a bit smaller than the second-floor master.The second floor master suite is enormous and overlooks the pool, spa and deck at the back of the home. Plenty of walk-in closets throughout the house as well. A nice amenity is the marvelous sauna in the front bedroom upstairs. You don't expect it. You open the door and gasp. What a wonderful sauna! Beautiful wood benches. Hot rocks. When you finish, why not cool off by re... 08/02/2018