Elizabeth Weintraub • Sacramento Short Sale Agent • Land Park

How did I get to be almost 60 years old without ever going to Yellowstone National Park? Besides Old Faithful, Yellowstone has almost 300 waterfalls and it's the world's first national park. It's bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware put together. It has 10,000-some thermal features, petrified forests, exotic plants, calderas, weird wildlife and, at more than 2 million acres, a person can't see it all in a week.

So, come this fall, my husband and I are taking a vacation to Yellowstone. We planned this trip last year just before The National Parks by Ken Burns was released on DVD, figuring that we'd never get a reservation onsite in 2010 after that movie hit Netflix. The problem with going to Yellowstone is it's in the middle of nowhere, which means you pretty much have to drive there. Even with flying into Jackson, Wyoming, it's still a 3- to 4-hour drive. And of course, there are no direct flights into Jackson from Sacramento.

The average altitude in Jackson Hole valley is about 6,500 feet above sea level. That's higher than Denver. Most of Yellowstone is over 7,500 feet. Yikes. I realize that adjusting to high altitudes takes a few days because the oxygen level is much lower the higher you go. Hey, I used to live in Colorado. Plus, high altitudes can make you dizzy and give you nausea.  So, to sort of ease into it, we're planning to take an extra day and spend the night in Jackson, Wyoming. Have you ever looked online at 5-star hotel rates in Jackson, Wyoming? You wouldn't think that a place in the middle of nowhere would charge $1,000 a night for a hotel room, but there is such a hotel in Jackson.

I suspect people who would spend $1,000 a night for a hotel room are the same people who might light their cigars with a $100 bill. It's not that I couldn't afford to pay $1,000 a night for a hotel room, but why would I want to? You don't get enough bang for your buck. It's still just a hotel room. Hair dryer, tub and bed. The TV doesn't rise up and vanish into the ceiling. There's no Jacuzzi or dancing bears in the room. Butlers aren't dangling grapes over my head. Nobody is massaging my feet . . .

If you'd like a lot of bang for your buck and you're a home buyer who is looking at homes in Land Park, I just listed a very special home at a great price. This is a 3-bedroom, 2-bath 1940 Tudor, featuring all the little nooks, crannies and woodwork vintage you'd expect to find in a Squeaky Williams home. As an added bonus, there is a large room over the 2-car garage that can be used for guest quarters, a hobby space, art studio or workout room. It's accessed by a genuine spiral staircase inside the garage.

The sellers remodeled the kitchen a few years ago, and it's gorgeous. Granite counters, maple cabinets, wood flooring, stainless appliances, including a counter-depth, built-in Sub Zero refrigerator. The breakfast nook area has a wood ceiling. Off the other end of the kitchen is a laundry room, with drawers for holding laundry supplies and maple cabinets, plus the counter over the space for the front-loading washer and dryer is attached by Velcro, so it can be removed to put your own washer and dryer in that space.

In the living room and dining room, you'll find hammered wood beams and crown molding. Almost all of the flooring is original oak hardwood. Each of the bedrooms has unique architectural characteristics crafted from wood. There is a fireplace in the living room and another fireplace in the master.

The master suite has wood vaults, too, plus a spacious bath with a skylight, dual-sink custom vanity and 3 cedar-lined closets. There is also a separate area for a desk and computer. From the master, you can access the back-yard deck through French doors. But you can also get to the back yard from the dining room. The fenced yard has a flagstone walkway, gardens and 2 mature alders.

3109 16th Street, Sacramento, CA 95818 is exclusively offered by Lyon Real Estate and Elizabeth Weintraub at an affordable price of $499,000. For a private showing, please call your Land Park agent, Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916 233 6759.

View the virtual tour of 3109 16th Street.

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

I receive a lot of interesting emails from readers all over the country. I do my best to answer questions. Many of those questions center on short sales, probably because I write a lot about short sales and enjoy a strong internet presence as a Sacramento short sale agent. But since selling short sales takes up only about half of my annual real estate sales, I also field questions on other activities such as selling homes in Land Park and throughout Sacramento that are not short sales.

A reader from my About.com homebuying site wrote yesterday. She was clear that she had written to me on January 2 and seemed a bit perplexed that I had not yet answered her inquiry, which I had not received. She had a "very important question." She and her husband had been engaged in "repeated discussions" regarding the color of the carpeting for their mother's home. They were preparing the home for sale and could not agree on which colors constitute neutral coloring. She did not understand the word "neutral."

At first blush, one might wonder how a person could be confused. But the more I thought about it, it's not so unusual for some individuals, especially those from other cultures, to be perplexed. Some of us live in a white-bread world. No color at all. But other cultures are awash in color and relish color. Color is treated as a daily substance. It's water for the thirsty, spiritual for the soul and serenity for sleep. Color brings the world alive.

However, when you are selling a home, neutral is the recommended choice of color, especially for carpeting. It evokes no emotion and does not detract from the home's features. It presents a clean slate, a home you can move in to immediately and decorate to your preference. It's a light beige, a sheer coffee-cream, sandy fair-skinned brown, boring pale tan, much like the photo above. Above all, it is not white.

The photo in this blog annoys me. Probably because it reminds me of my master suite when my husband and I bought our home in Land Park 7 years ago. The room is screaming for color accents. Can you hear the pain? It's not how I would stage a home for sale, but it does show the recommended color of carpeting. Since I am not selling, my master suite now has bamboo flooring, dual-pane windows with honeycomb blinds, and the walls are painted my favorite cat-puke-green color, with a slightly lighter shade on the ceiling. Not everybody's cup of tea, but it works for me.

Before you write an offer on a home in Sacramento, the very first thing your buyer's agent should do is look to the tax rolls for ownership and deed transfer information. If it's a company, Google that name, because the owner might appear to be a bank but that company might be in the business of buying up homes at trustee's auctions and not a bank at all.

If the entity that acquired title is not the entity that foreclosed, the buyer may face a struggle in finding a lender, due to the 90-day seasoning requirement by FHA and conventional lenders.

Savvy investors are buying Sacramento foreclosures at trustee's auctions and receiving title via a trustee's deed, some at 50% or more discounts from market value. I have a buyer who looked at homes in Land Park this weekend and now wants to buy such a home. The trouble is coming up with a price that is high enough to satisfy the investor's demands and low enough to make sense in this market. Using comparable sales is not the best way to determine this price.

I am employing a strategy that I used with a buyer who bought a flipper home in Woodlake last week. If you're thinking about buying a flipper home in Sacramento, you might want to ask your buyer's agent to gather the same data before picking your price. Knowledge is power, and there's no reason to stumble in the dark without it.

Here is how to choose an offer price on that flipper:

• Get the name of the owner from the tax records.
• Run a search of the tax records with this owner's name to find out how many other properties the investor owns. Very few investors buy only one home at a trustee's auction.
  
• Look up those homes in MLS to see if any are for sale by searching on the address name. They may be temporarily off the market. Each home on the market represents cash paid for a home that is not yet returning a single dollar to the investor.
  
• Pull up the last 18- to 24-months of production for the listing agent. Investors tend to pick one agent to move inventory.
  
• Check the tax records to see if the sellers of that agent's listings was your investor. You may find that agent doesn't sell any other property than the investor's and may even be related to the investor.
  

Armed with this information, put together a spreadsheet of all those properties that include the:

• Date purchased
• Trustee's deed price
• Date sold (to determine the DOM)
• Sold price

Then calculate the percentage of profit in each sale. Using this percentage, you can then apply it to the price the investor paid and come up with a price at which you and the investor may eventually settle upon. Then offer less and start negotiating.

Investors like to buy auction homes in stable communities such as Land Park or Midtown because there is a high demand for these homes. If you're looking for a home in the Land Park or Midtown area, call your area specialist, Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.

The Short Sale Savior, by Elizabeth Weintraub, coming in June 2009.

Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub, Tudor home in Land Park, Sacramento

When I was a little kid growing up in Minnesota, the thing that piqued my excitement at the end of the winter -- more so than whether some groundhog in Pennsylvania saw his shadow, and second only to my first sighting of a robin -- was watching tender flowers stretch and yawn and push their fragile bodies through packed snow. A sparkle of color and life. A reason for hope. Spring was just around the corner.

Now that I live in Sacramento, I still yearn for signs that winter is nearly over. That the rains will ease up. It's not the same as finding a hyacinth poking its head through patches of ice, but early spring flowers do breathe life into an otherwise decaying garden.

Although it was slightly overcast yesterday, I managed to shoot a few photos of my gardens in Land Park, Sacramento. I hope you enjoy these flowers. This is what Land Park yards look like in the spring. There's also a surprise for you at the end. :)

If you're looking to buy or sell a home in Land Park, why not call your Land Park agent, Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916.233.6759. When I'm not shooting photos of flowers and squirrels in Land Park, I'm out showing homes in Land Park. Put my 30-some years of experience to work for you.

The Short Sale Savior, by Elizabeth Weintraub, coming June 2009.

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

Perhaps the meeting is in response to the Land Park survey results sent out last month, although I don't see that item listed on the agenda; however, the Board of the Land Park Community Association has decided to hold a meeting tonight. It was announced shortly after midnight last night via email. The president of the Land Park group works in my office, so I most likely see her this morning to find out what is going on. A meeting announcement such as this is unusual.

There is a director position to fill, but given the hotbed of contention, it would take a person of iron steel, determination and conviction to fill it.

Oh, and the meeting place has changed. It's no longer at the school on Riverside. The Land Park Community Association will meet tonight at The Monroe Lodge, which is located at 3225 Freeport Boulevard (north of 9th Avenue and south of 8th Avenue).

I wonder how many people will A) get the meeting notice B) find time in schedules to attend and C) know the meeting place has changed?

The Short Sale, by Elizabeth Weintraub, coming from publisher Archer Ellison in January 2009.

Interested in buying or selling homes in Land Park? Call Elizabeth Weintraub, your Land Park neighborhood specialist at 233.6759.

Photo: Big Stock Photo