I recall a dinner I attended and planned for sales reps from Linotype-Hell in Minneapolis some 20 years ago. Reps came from all over the Midwest. One of them was Bud -- from Iowa. Bud was a big guy who wore plaid shirts, a meat-and-potatoes-and-corn kinda man. The first course was an appetizer. Scallops. Two large scallops. Served on a big plate. Bud looked down at his plate and then glared at me: "Where's my dinner?" he asked.
Last night my husband and I had dinner at one of our favorite outdoor dining spots in Midtown Sacramento, Lounge on 20. I like the vibe at this place. It was so crowded we almost didn't get a spot outside. The trick is to get there about 7 PM, right when the happy-hour crowd is leaving to go wherever happy and half-drunk people go at that time of evening. Maybe to Target. Maybe back to the Capitol garage with bicycle cops hot on their tail.
I ordered a hamachi appetizer, which was about the size of a boiled egg. A beet salad, which consisted of a row of 5 or 6 tiny beets -- I mean tiny, like the size of a thimble. And my main entree, which was day boat scallops. The scallops arrived on a large plate, and there were two of them. Smaller than a lime. Not large, in other words.
For $17. Two scallops. I got Bud's appetizer for dinner!
We try to go out and celebrate on Fridays, especially if I've had a good week. This week I closed another short sale in Natomas. The seller said she had talked with me several years ago but made the mistake of hiring instead some other Sacramento short sale agent. That agent could not perform. Oh, well. Not every agent can sell a short sale. The seller had a sticky situation, too, involving mortgage insurance.
I hear this a lot. They hire an agent who claimed to be a short sale agent but wasn't. It's OK. Sellers can come to me even if they initially hired some buddy or relative or referral from an ex-husband, whatever, and those agents eventually fall down on the job. I don't hold it against sellers because they have their own reasons for making what I might believe are the wrong decisions, but that's their choice to make.
Not only did I sell and close this short sale, but I sold it to a VA buyer who was represented by an excellent buyer's agent. Not very many short sales are sold to buyers getting a VA loan because they can be very tricky to do. I also sold this for $10,000 less than the bank previously demanded. And it was a Wells Fargo short sale.
Earlier in the day yesterday, I drove over to remove the lockbox. It was about 3 PM in the afternoon. As I turned the corner into this Natomas subdivision, I noticed sprinklers were going off. On everybody's front lawn. Eight or 10 homes had sprinklers running in the front yard in the middle of a hot afternoon in Sacramento. How is this even possible? These homes are not in an HOA.
Sacramento is an interesting place to live. We can't seem to get a balanced budget, Midtown restaurants give you 2 scallops for dinner, and we don't yet have water meters. But those Sacramento short sales are closing!
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Certified HAFA Specialist
My Sacramento Real Estate Listings
Elizabeth Weintraub is an author, home buying columnist for The New York Times-owned About.com, a Land Park resident, and a Land Park real estate agent who specializes in older, classic homes in Land Park, Curtis Park, Midtown and East Sacramento. Weintraub is also a Sacramento Short Sale agent who lists and successfully sells short sales throughout the four-county Sacramento area. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put 35 years of real estate experience to work for you. Broker-Associate at Lyon Real Estate. DRE License # 00697006.
The Short Sale Savior, by Elizabeth Weintraub, available at Amazon.com.
Lyon Real Estate is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender. Even if you accept this offer and use our service, your lender may not agree to change your loan.
Photo: Unless otherwise noted in this blog, the photo is copyrighted by Big Stock Photo and used with permission.
The views expressed herein are Weintraub's personal views and do not reflect the views of Lyon Real Estate.
Disclaimer: If this post contains a listing, information is deemed reliable as of the date it was written. After that date, the listing may be sold, listed by another brokerage, canceled, pending or taken temporarily off the market, and the price could change without notice. It could blow up, explode or vanish. To find out the present status of any listing, please go to elizabethweintraub.com.
