There are a ton of marketing companies who want the business of a Sacramento Realtor. In fact, they want to work with all real estate agents because agents constantly need to market. These companies try to persuade agents to give them their clients email addresses so the agents can market send spam. What? You say. It's not spam. It's your monthly newsletter. Ha, ha, ha. Well, I have news for you. If your client did not say she wanted your monthly newsletter and you sign her up for it, without her permission, this may greatly annoy her. You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: The Difference Between Target Real Estate Marketing and Spamming. 08/01/2018

You would not think crooks would want a lot of exposure by trying to break into a home for sale in Sacramento. What, with the big ol' honkin' sign in yard, announcing it is for sale, to the stream of traffic flowing in and out, there is a lot of activity. Agents accessing lockboxes, traipsing in and out. I also tend to put my lockboxes on the gas meter. Those locations are often more public. Plus, the crooks have a harder time getting the lockbox off a gas meter than they do the front door. When it's hanging on the front door, they can take the door handle. But if hoodlams want to get inside, they generally will. You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: Should You Arm the Alarm When Home Selling? 07/31/2018

It is bad enough that after every closed real estate transaction, the mortgage broker on the other side -- the guy who represents the buyer, mind you, when I represent the seller -- decides to include my email address in a personal marketing scheme. They all tend to do this. It's complete spam to me. I don't work with buyers and do not need their services, and if ever the opportunity presented itself for me to recommend a mortgage broker, it would not be that company. In fact, I would go out of my way to tell buyers to stay away from this kind of spammer guy.I'm a walking marketing target to these people because I hold a real estate license. How about holding a human license? Like a birth certificate? Does that give companies a right to target you? But they do, day in and day out. It is... 07/30/2018

When preparing a home for the market, I often spend hours and hours with my sellers, making sure their home is the picture-perfect dream home when we go live in MLS. I agonize over words I use to describe as much as the sellers obsess over each nail hole they forgot to fill. Even the directions are important. Especially when I compare an older listing. For example, a Sacramento Realtor does not want to send traffic down a busy street past sketchy intersections when a more beautiful route is readily available. But sellers also have a job to do. And one of the most important jobs takes only 15-seconds to identify. Plus, it stop sellers from working on projects with low-rates of return, especially when time is of the essence.You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: The Fif... 07/28/2018

With listing agents, it is very clear which agent is the listing agent. With buyer's agents, it's not always so clear. A potential home buyer who handed out a one-star "review" was insulted that I would not continue a conversation with him and provide more free advice. I had already told him, numerous times, that I could not give him advice when he is working another agent. Per the Code of Ethics.That didn't matter to him, because he alone decided it was OK to talk with me anyway. When I refused to answer more questions and said I had to go, he decided to find a review site somewhere so he could slap a one-star on my page. Because he was so grateful for the assistance, you see. Or, he thinks with his pecker. Hard to say. You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: To the S... 07/27/2018

 The relationship a buyer's agent maintains with a listing agent throughout an escrow tends to set the pace for future interaction. I'm not saying listing agents all have long memories, nope, that's what the Bad Agent File is for, heh, heh. In my business, I deal with way too many agents to recall the specifics of each. It can be even a bit weirder if an agent has been openly hostile or arrogant. Makes it sorta hard for that agent to later beg for help. But it happens. I've watched the transformation happen before my very eyes. You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: MLS Says Refrigerator Stays But Agent Missed Offer Inclusion. 07/26/2018

So often when I write about my day in blogs, I get rather technical. All hung up on some legal point or some new maneuver I've figured out to bypass an annoyance. While it doesn't happen to me all the time this way, it can be easy to forget about the people in a real estate transaction. I tend to compartmentalize steps to a transaction. Mostly focused on the outcome.Then, when a transaction closes, I talk about the things I did right and how I orchestrated certain scenarios. But today, I'd like to talk more about the other side of the transaction. The buyer's agent and first-time home buyers. Buying a home from an immigrant who only 3 years ago was a first-time home buyer himself, moving now across the country.You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: First-Time Home Buy... 07/25/2018

 What we may see as unreasonable behavior in Sacramento real estate from Bay Area buyers could also be viewed another way. An unreasonable buyer could instead be an unusual buyer with specific criteria to which we Sacramento listing agents are unaccustomed. Communications we might find stark and antagonistic could alternately be viewed as direct and to the point.But most important, just because an offer contains mistakes and seems wrong to us does not mean we should not work with it. Yup, after writing these words, I can clearly see we have arrived at the tail-end of our strong seller's market in Sacramento. You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: Fixing Bay Area Offers Involves Finesse While Closing Sacramento Sales. 07/24/2018

One of my reasons to visit the California State Fair this year was to see the Tiny Houses, but that exhibit was last week. Now it is gone. Well, there are always national musical acts, right? Except none I want to see, well, maybe UB 40, and they were not performing yesterday. No carnival acts, either. No Lobster Boy. No Bearded Lady. My husband develops motion sickness on rides. No roller coasters.But there are plenty of other things to do at the California State Fair, starting with food and beverage. Plus, what better State Fair food than something on a stick? You can read more in my personal blog today and see a lot more photos at this link: Fun Photos From the California State Fair 2018. 07/23/2018

Not a Sacramento buyer's agent out there who doesn't want her buyer to be thrilled with the purchase of her new home. And right along with that, rare to find an agent who doesn't cringe when buyers announce they want to take another 24 hours to think about their purchase. You know what happens to those red shoes you're not so sure you want to buy at Nordstrom? You decided to wander a few other stores, and when you come back to look at the shoes again, they are gone.Same deal with a house. Houses don't stay on the market forever in Sacramento, and when that one is sold, the next house is not the same. It is different. There is no skew number you can grab and go to the customer service counter to find another. You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: Pros and Cons to Slee... 07/22/2018

No matter how many times I say it, still a bit astounding when people exhibit narcissistic behavior, as though the world completely revolves around them. I want to fall back on logic and believe they will eventually see the other side or at least one other way of looking at the situation, but no. Sadly mistaken. Too wound up in their own existence. To some extent, aren't we all?After soothing over sellers' expectations over a low appraisal, I was also prepared for the buyer to be unhappy about the low appraisal. Never met the buyer, and I know nothing about the buyer except it's a lowballer buyer. Which I guess is all I need to know. Because if the buyer can't lowball, the buyer is not all that interested. Believe it or not. It was the case of a buyer crying the appraisal is too low. Yo... 07/21/2018

Our mindset in America tends to lean toward buying stuff on sale, always needing a discount to validate a purchase. Many of us are raised that way. It's not our faults. Maybe our mothers or grandmothers survived the Great Depression. Folding pieces of aluminum foil, saving scraps of plastic. Hey, my husband still insists on saving plastic bags, which eventually lose integrity. Have you ever touched a stuffed bag of old plastic bags? They don't break down ever, but they do fall apart.It's also one of the things I do not like about shopping at, say, Safeway in Midtown Sacramento. They hand you a receipt and say, look, you saved $35 by being a Safeway customer. Ha, ha, ha. Do I look like I fell off a turnip truck yesterday?My point is you do not have to scrape every dime off the table duri... 07/20/2018

I worried a little bit when my seller said he planned to leave town and go to a place without cellphone or internet. He described the place of a friend who lives with a dead plant hanging over his kitchen sink for years. This would be bad to get a bunch of offers and not be able to call or email the seller.Also, some of the buyers who appeared to be very interested were not putting pedal to the metal and signing an offer. They dragged their feet. Probably walking the neighborhood, talking to friends and family, trying to decide what to do. While this was going on, of course, the buyer who did not hesitate wrote an offer and bought the house. You can see how this happened in my personal blog today at this link: How Long Did It Take to Sell a Southside Park Bungalow at 411 U Street? 07/19/2018

How do you report unethical behavior in a Sacramento Realtor? The truth is you probably don't. What? Why would another Sacramento Realtor say that? Because of the burden of proof. Well, that and the competency of the ethics committee, from what I hear they are often comprised of retired agents who rarely sell.And if the ethics committee puts on their glasses and hearing aids and finds a violation, they can fine the agent. Oh, I heard it also goes on the agent's permanent record that nobody reads. But it is really difficult to bring an ethics violation against another agent when your testimony relies on hearsay. Not to mention, some agents might end up working with the unethical agent, and they don't want their clients or income to suffer because of it. It's very frustrating that this ca... 07/18/2018

Not too long ago in my recent past I once received an unsolicited award in the Top 100 Agents (whatever) that was actually a physical award. They presented the awards at a meeting or convention somewhere in Sacramento and a team member attended to receive it. But the bulk of award notifications all involve some kind of monetary contribution, serious coin that the company bestowing the so-called award would like to extract from agents.Nobody really seems immune to these schemes. It starts with a reputable and official award like Master's Club from the Sacramento Association of Realtors, but even those require payment for the award itself. You pay for a formal event, too. And then all the newspapers and magazines hound agents for payment to publish. That's followed by other companies jump... 07/17/2018

Lately I've been noticing a bit of grumbling from sellers over questions asked by buyers. There seems to be a big uptick in buyer questions, which tells me that buyers might be even more cautious than we think. I know it takes them longer to make a decision in our changing Sacramento real estate market. Earlier in the year, homes were snapped up within a few days. Buyers are now hesitating, sleeping on it, performing some due diligence even before writing an offer. Then, once they get into escrow, I seem to be receiving an abnormal amount of additional questions from buyers. Not only are they pouring through the seller disclosures more closely, but they ask strange questions about things.You can read more in my personal blog today at this link: What is Buyer Due Diligence for Sacramento... 07/16/2018

If you use email, you have to be on your guard all of the time. Ah, the life of a Sacramento Realtor. Definitely not like the old days. You've always on your toes. And if they aren't emailing you with crap, they are calling. Sometimes I hang up on prospects because they sound too cheery, LOL, and I figure they are a telemarketer. I'm lucky if they call back.Through email, though, it is easier to spot the spammers and hackers. The first thing I think about when I get a piece of email is: Do I know this sender? The second is the call to action. Does the sender want me to do something specific? Like click on a link that could contain a virus? However, there are many more clues something is amiss. You can read more and see the actual email I received from supposedly Zillow in my personal bl... 07/15/2018

When I look at the locations for all of my listings, it is generally much easier to manage when the home for sale is near my own home. Some of my listings are a long ways away, and even further, ha, ha, when I'm in Hawaii and working on Sacramento real estate. It's almost like possessing a sense of security. Knowing I can run over there if I need to unlock a door, fix a leak, call the police on squatters, whatever.I cannot imagine my new listing will be for sale for very long. It's an entry-level home for first-time home buyers. It also makes a great rental property for downtown workers because it's close enough to walk downtown but not in the thick of things. This home is near Southside Park, which features a pretty lake and a recreation area for kids.You can read more in my personal b... 07/14/2018

It was a little disconcerting waiting for UC Davis to call me for an appointment after my doctor found a lump in my breast. I could feel the lump, too, and figured, well, it's my time to deal with this. Everybody else I know has dealt with this. No big deal. Then the days ticked by. By day 10, I sent an in-office message to my doctor, asking when was UC Davis planning to book this follow-up appointment while I sit here contemplating mastectomies vs. chemotherapy.The radiology department at UC Davis then called Monday morning, while I was at a listing appointment in Fair Oaks. I called back and left a message. Four hours went by so I called to leave another voice mail. Following morning, still no call back, so I called again mid-morning; let them know this was my 3rd call to make an appo... 07/13/2018

When I worked on short sales, back in the market crash days, I routinely received referrals from other agents in Sacramento. But that's because those agents had half a brain and did not want the madness that accompanies short sales. Plus, they knew I was a specialist in that area, and their clients would be in good hands.Fast forward to today, when most people have equity, and it seems I am still an agent other agents refer. As a listing specialist who does not work with buyers, I guess the word has gotten around. An agent I did not know sent me a referral last week. You can read more about this in my personal blog today at this link: Sacramento Agent to Agent Referral: Who Ya Gonna Call? 07/12/2018