Elizabeth Weintraub • Sacramento Short Sale Agent • Land Park

Some people can't believe that I write a blog every day. They wonder how I come up with my ideas. The truth is I don't come up with ideas -- stuff happens, and I write about stuff that happens. You can't be in real estate and not have stuff happen. For example, one of my sellers will receive an offer on Monday. I know this because I spoke to the buyer and referred her to an agent. That's because I rarely practice dual agency; I prefer to represent one party only. Keeps my priorities straight.

This buyer gushed all over the phone how much she loved my seller's home from my online photos and virtual tour.  I shoot and upload my own virtual tours. She saw the home yesterday and was there forever. My seller said she spied the buyer later in the day parked down the street. Last night, the buyer drove by the home again. She's bringing her husband over on Monday. The seller is hopeful but uncertain that this buyer's husband will like the home.

Oh, thbbitt. I've been in this business long enough to know that if mama ain't happy, nobody is happy. That home is going into escrow on Tuesday.

Here's another home for sale I just listed that went on the market late yesterday afternoon. This is a US Home built in 2002, boasting custom upgrades and an excellent location. It's in the Greyhawk community of Granite Bay. The way a subdivision is laid out has an enormous impact, and Greyhawk is a masterfully planned area. Nothing is left to chance. This particular home is nestled on the corner of a culdesac, surrounded by mature trees on an extremely wide and winding street. All of the yards are beautifully landscaped and show pride of ownership. You're enveloped by flowers and color. Simply driving down the street gives you a feeling that you have entered a different world and left the city of Roseville behind you.

When you open the double doors of this executive home, a marvelous scene unfolds in front of you. The orchestra begins to play The Sound of Music. OK, maybe that was just in my head. It seems the foyer is three stories high, but it's probably not, with its soaring ceiling, oversized tile and magnificent chandelier. Off to the right is a curved staircase, with curly wrought iron balusters and cherry wood handrails / posts. A bridge connects two wings on the second floor.

This is an open floor plan that typifies the great room concept. To the left is a formal living room, the entrance flanked by two floor-to-ceiling white columns. Next to the living room and also off the entry is the formal dining room with identical white columns. Both rooms have recessed ceilings, recessed lighting and crown molding. Directly in front is the family room, with tall arched windows covered by plantation shutters, and a fireplace with a gas log. The family room is also open to the kitchen, which overlooks the gigantic manicured back yard.

There is more than 4,200 square feet of living space in this home; it sports 4 to 5 bedrooms and 4 baths. The first bedroom is located on the main floor and is presently used as a home office. It has chair rails and crown molding, plus that all-important closet. The guest bath is made up of two rooms, featuring an ornate Italian vanity in the powder room.

The kitchen features cherry wood cabinetry, white ceramic counters, an island and mostly Monogram stainless appliances. There is a 6-burner gas stove with a whisper quiet range hood. The space is large enough to accommodate another dining table, and provides a view of the yard.

The master suite is remote and makes up the south wing of the home, accessed by the bridge. There are two rooms in the master, crown molding, archways, and a long hall filled with closets on both sides leads you to the master bath. There, you'll find dual vanities situated on opposing walls, a big walk-in shower and a sunken tub. Speakers are hidden in the ceiling.

The other two bedrooms are junior master suites, each with their own private bath, located in the north wing. One bath has 2 rooms. There is a bonus room in the north wing as well, which is big enough to hold a pool table because you will indeed find a pool table in that room.

On the north side of the home is the spacious 3-car garage; an interior door leads to a storage area and a big laundry room with built-ins and cabinets.

The back yard is absolutely beautiful. The lot size is more than 1/3 of an acre. The lawn is lush and green, and there is a built-in BBQ situated on a stamped concrete patio -- a perfect entertainment area. Surrounded by baby palm trees is a water fountain. The view is calming and serene. All the other homes in Greyhawk seem miles away from this paradise.

P. S. I should also point out that for followers of feng shui, the numbers of this home add up to the lucky and magical number 9.

4005 Shadybrooke Court, Granite Bay, CA 95746 is exclusively offered for sale by Lyon Real Estate at $835,000. For more information and a private showing, please call your Sacramento real estate agent, Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916 233 6759.

Click here for a virtual tour of 4005 Shadybrooke Court.

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

Lots of real estate agents want to know what's the next thing that's on the horizon for real estate. The savvy agents want to jump on that bandwagon and ride the road to easy riches. This morning, thanks to inspiration provided by Broker Bryant's excellent blog,  I would like to share my thoughts about the matter.

I look at the real estate market in Sacramento like an analyze-it-yourself medical chart. You know, the ones that say if you have a cough and a fever, you can diagnose that condition yourself. The option 1 arrow points to an increased consumption of liquids and plenty of bed rest. Or, option 2, ignore those symptoms and go out to party like there's no tomorrow. The illustration following option 1 shows a happy woman being hugged by her husband and kids. The illustration from the option 2 path might show a bare foot with a toe tag on it.

With that in mind, here's what I think will happen in real estate, not only in Sacramento but throughout the country. Eventually, interest rates will rise. That's pretty much a given. Qualifications are already much more stringent than they were a few years ago. When interest rates go up, a home buyer's purchasing power will go down. In flat markets like Sacramento, we probably won't see a lot of appreciation over the next few years.

So what will be hot? I'll tell you. Sellers who have assumable FHA loans. If you're taking out a conventional loan today to buy a home, you might not be able to sell your home down the road. First-time home buyers might not want the conventional or FHA rates offered a few years from now and may be unwilling to take out a new loan to pay off your existing loan. But they'll be drawn like a moth to the flame to those available loan assumptions. Why? Because those interest rates range from 4.5% to 5.5%. They are fixed-rate mortgages. And they are assumable.

If you're a homeowner who has an FHA loan with a low interest rate, you could be sitting on a gold mine.

I already have my plan in place. Down payments will need to be in the 7% to 8% range to do a cash-to-loan transaction. If there is equity leftover, sellers will need to offer owner financing. That means either carry a second mortgage, do an all-inclusive trust deed or a land contract. Those financing instruments are saleable to investors. The agent who has the source of funds to buy those financing instruments will have an edge in the marketplace.

See, I am not only a Sacramento real estate agent. I am also a veteran of real estate from the 1970s and 1980s, back when we used to create paper (a second trust deed) and use that as a down payment on another home. I understand how this type of financing works. I also realize that now agents could be deemed arrangers of credit and, as such, subject to all sorts of laws and regulations. I ask agents: are you guys ready for this? Are you ready to do business in year 2013?

One of the nasty surprises in store for women when we age is our arms turn into crepe paper overnight. I suspect that's why a lot of older women don't wear sleeveless garments. Well, unless you're Madonna. But her arms are spooky. They look manufactured. I could probably achieve that model of perfection if I were willing to pump iron and do push-ups, but reality says otherwise. There are too many other things to do, like get my listings sold.

I say, if a person doesn't like the way my arms look, a person can stop staring at them. It's too hot in Sacramento in the summer to wear long sleeves.

I look at a photo of Sandra Bullock, for example, and I spy that little flab where her underarms meet her body. Those little rolls of fat. And I bet that imperfection drives her insane. I think to myself, well, you just wait, Sandra Bullock. Wait until you see what happens when you get to be my age. And then I don't feel so awful about crepe paper arms.

I spend a lot of time looking at photos. Primarily photos of my listings. Because it's the photos that get buyers in the door. Buyers aren't likely to write a check without looking at a home in person. The trick is to get them into that home. And that is accomplished through photography. Through emotional appeal. Because almost all of the buyers today start out looking online for listings. So, those photos of homes for sale have to pop and pull.

When I take a new listing, I try to schedule my staged homes to go into MLS on a Friday. Especially in Sacramento with Furlough Fridays. When a buyer gets up in the morning, I want my listing to be fresh and in that buyer's face. That means all of the photos are attached to the listing, and the virtual tour is in place. I would have a heart attack if one of my listings hit MLS without photos or with incredibly bad photos, and I don't understand why some agents do it.

There is a feature in MLS that lets me set the time my listings goes live. Some agents don't know that. My listings are dialed and ready to go at midnight on Thursday. I work on those listings offline on Thursday. My sellers are prepared for showings on Friday and Saturday and, if the location is conducive to traffic, we generally hold an open house on Sunday. I might have spent weeks preparing the home for sale, polishing my photos in Photoshop and putting together my marketing strategy. All for that first weekend on the market. Because that's when buyer interest will be the highest.

Doing online marketing for Sacramento listings is a bit like casting out a fishing line and watching your bobber float merrily along the water. You feel a little nibble. Suddenly, the bobber swirls and takes a nose dive. That is the greatest feeling in the world. You've got about 2 seconds to yank on the line and reel in that fish. And that's how I hope my open houses go today. I hope buyers will be so excited that they'll write an offer at the kitchen table and nobody will be startled by my crepe paper arms. If they are, I'll divert their attention back to the task at hand. But I might also be tempted to bite them. Hard to say.

People find it difficult to believe that when I started in this business in the 1970s, I sold homes without inspecting them. Never saw them. I owned a small real estate company and was responsible for counseling buyers, writing and negotiating the transactions. My agents tracked down the deals. Almost every transaction involved owner financing. To work like that today would be unthinkable and ripe with liability.

I had previously been an escrow officer and before that a title searcher at a title company. I thought I knew everything about real estate. I was young and cocky. That's why I took the California real estate broker's exam 5 times. I didn't realize back then that I needed to learn how to pass the exam. Passing the exam and selling real estate are two different things.

When readers from my About.com home buying site write to ask how they should get started in real estate, I tell them that starting out at a large brokerage is invaluable. Newly licensed real estate agents need to learn the basics from the ground up and align themselves with a mentor. Laws change constantly. The business is complex.

But there is also no substitute for experience. I learn something new every day, even after 30-some years in the business. Because when a person stops learning, it's time to change careers. I will never know it all in this business.

When I moved to Sacramento, I interviewed the major real estate brokers in town. I wanted to affiliate myself with the best. With the company that offered the best support, and provided superior technology and ongoing education and, as a result, I chose Lyon Real Estate -- a leader in the community since 1946.

Because I am a real estate broker and not just a real estate agent, I could work entirely by myself in California. I don't need to affiliate with a Sacramento real estate brokerage. But I choose to work at Lyon Real Estate because it supports me fully by offering the tools I need to do the best job possible for my clients.  As an added bonus, I have the opportunity to work with some of the brightest and most experienced agents in town.

Experience means an agent can predict future problems and head them off at the pass before they can explode and blow up a transaction. It means contracts are written correctly, and one can pretty much figure out which direction negotiations will move and prepare.

Often, when I am about to go into contract with another Sacramento real estate agent, I may look up that agent's production in MLS. I want to know who I am working with. For example, August stats from Trendgraphix show we have 6,267 agents in Sacramento. Of those, 73% have sold 4 or fewer homes this year. 85% have sold 7 or fewer homes in 2009. This means, if I've done the math correctly, that only 15% of the agents in Sacramento have sold 1 or more homes a month this year.

The fact is the more transactions an agent completes, the more knowledge an agent accumulates, or you would hope. And some Sacramento home buyers know this. A first-time home buyer emailed me out of the blue yesterday. She said she wanted to be upfront by disclosing that she's interviewing several agents to help her buy a home. She asked me to send her my last 12 months of production and present inventory. I'd say that is a pretty smart buyer.

Some agents may feel uncomfortable disclosing what they may feel is personal information or be offended, but I didn't have any qualms letting her know that I have closed 33 transactions over the past 12 months -- about a 50/50 split between sellers and buyers -- and I presently have 31 listings, of which 5 are unsold or in negotiations. I don't close $40 million a year like a few agents in town, but I do all right. If you dig for it, all that information is available on my web site; it's not like it's private data.

When I look back over the years, my worst nightmare transactions involved unsupervised agents or agents without much experience. Experience teaches one how to manage client expectations while keeping a finger on the pulse of the real estate market, how to protect a client's interest and comply with the law, but most of all it prepares an agent for the unexpected. Because sure as the sun will come up tomorrow, I know that I'm likely to receive an offer from an agent who thinks she understands the business but has no real practical experience. And I will try to have compassion for that agent because I once stood in her shoes.

I prefer to receive a copy of the estimated closing statement before my buyers sign loan documents, but given the deadlines lately, it's not always possible to get my hands on that PDF. One of the reasons I ask for the buyer's closing statement in advance is so I can let my buyers know how much money they need to bring to the signing.

After signing loan documents in Sacramento, closing generally takes place 2 to 3 days later. Escrow needs the balance of funds deposited prior to the lender's funding. Title companies have 4 recording times in Sacramento, so it is possible for the lender to fund and the transaction to record on the same day.

Getting the balance of funds into escrow, though, can be tricky. Escrow expects certified funds, so you can't write a personal check. You also can't haul in a truckload of quarters or pay in cash. You basically have 2 choices: wire funds or bring a cashier's check, and both can present challenges if you don't handle the deposit of funds in advance.

I've had buyers show up at a bank near closing time, request a cashier's check and be denied because the bank required advance notice before the withdrawal of certain amounts of cash. How would you feel if you went to your bank to withdraw your money and the bank could not give it to you? To get around this dilemma, buyers should ask their bank a few days in advance about its policy regarding withdrawal -- find out your bank's procedure beforehand.

The more common issue concerns a wire transfer. It's not instantaneous. Not in today's economy. Some banks have cut-off times for wires. Others take 24 hours, or more, to wire funds to the intended destination.

A Sacramento home buyer discovered he was short $5,000, due to a mistake made by escrow. The buyer went to his bank Thursday afternoon to wire funds to escrow. By 2:30 the following day, escrow had not yet received the funds. Because escrow could not confirm receipt of the wire, the buyer's lender could not fund and this buyer's transaction did not close. Due to the holiday, the buyer now can't close until Tuesday. It means this poor guy can't move in today, nor will he be grilling a steak in his new back yard on Labor Day.

Sometimes wires don't go out on the day requested. Sometimes account numbers are transposed on the wire. Sometimes the wrong amount is delivered. Mistakes happen because human beings are involved.

Sacramento home buyers need to give themselves a little breathing room and not try to deposit the balance of funds at the last minute. Sacramento buyer's agents might want to inform their buyers that these types of things can happen.

A client called yesterday to share bad news with me. Patricia (not her real name) just received a pink slip and will soon be out of work. She is part of the national growing trend of single women home buyers, and had bought a home last month in College Greens, a popular Sacramento neighborhood just over the river near Sac State. It closed a few weeks ago. But instead of sounding depressed over the terrible news, Patricia was bubbling over with enthusiasm and joy. I was confused.

The reason for Patricia's giddiness was because although many of Patricia's friends had encouraged her to buy the biggest home she could afford to buy, she instead bought a home well below her means. Her mortgage payment is less than rent. She called me to say thank you for guiding her to make the right decision.

I take a personal interest in my clients. They are not just another escrow to me. Part of being a real estate agent means helping people to do what is best for them. I'm not afraid to lay out options for buyers and speak up if I think they are doing the wrong thing.

In uncertain economic times, like those facing us in Sacramento right now, it's smart to think ahead and prepare for the worst. State workers are furloughed 3 days a month, which means about a 15% reduction in pay for many of them. Sacramento unemployment is almost 12%.

The CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS offers a free 6-month Mortgage Protection Program to first-time home buyers. It pays buyers up to $1,500 a month if that home owner loses a job due to a layoff, but not many buyers are taking advantage of this program. For various reasons, Patricia didn't qualify for that program, but even so, she's not about to lose her home because she can afford her mortgage.

It's not always wise to buy a bigger, more expensive home with all the bells and whistles just because you can. Sometimes, it's better to buy a smaller, more affordable home.

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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 Sacramento. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put 35 years of real estate experience to work for you. DRE License # 00697006.

The Short Sale Savior, by Elizabeth Weintraub, available through bookstores everywhere and at Amazon.com.

Photo: Big Stock Photo