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Because I receive so many phone calls throughout the day, it’s sometimes difficult for me to answer my cell when it rings. This means callers often end up having to leave a message. I’m only one person and can’t be on two phones at the same time. To deal with this situation, I [...]

Let me put it this way “There was a statistically irrelevant number of new home sales above $750K, somewhere between zero and 500″.

People often don’t pay attention to warnings. That’s because sometimes we look at them in jest, like Lost in Space: Danger, Will Robinson. I can advise sellers that the price of their short sale is too low, but they ultimately set the price, not me. I can also tell buyer’s agents that they need to [...]

Lowballing a short sale can cost a buyer that home. Not so much because the lender will counter the offer — although, that’s pretty much a given — but because some other short sale buyer might snatch that house away from the lowballer.
Depending on your state laws, a seller may or may not [...]

Intuition is something you’ve either got or you don’t. It doesn’t seem to me like a person can learn to have intuition. It’s sort of sizing up all that is on the surface and juggling it with what you know to be true to try to figure out if a given situation makes [...]

As a Sacramento short sale agent, I often receive lowball offers from pretend buyers or guys who want to flip, but these offers can be used to a seller’s advantage. Instead of advising sellers to toss them into the circular bin, I say counter them. Yup, issue a counter offer. With a [...]

Don’t deviate from the plan. That’s my motto. Because I’ve learned that 9 times out of 10, if I make an exception to the way I do business, it comes back to bite me. In other words, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Once you’ve got a system that works, [...]

Buyer’s agents are the biggest roadblock to closing a short sale. Buyers, if you’ve been writing offer after offer on those short sales without success, perhaps it’s time to fire your agent. I’ll probably get a lot of grief for saying this, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles or the pooper-scooper scoops, [...]

I just finished reading Justin Halpern’s cute little book — when did they start publishing these tiny hardbacks? — called Sh*t My Dad Says. It’s a fun romp and totally engaging, not to mention, although appalling at times it contains a lot of common sense. Made my dad look like the [...]

Sellers of short sales in Sacramento are not required to do a short sale if they don’t want to. Even if they have signed a listing agreement and a purchase contract. That’s because short sales are subject to the seller’s approval of the terms and conditions set forth by the bank’s [...]

Home buyers in Sacramento often tend to put too much emphasis on the list price. I’ve heard buyers say they won’t pay list price for any home, and I send those buyers elsewhere. Well, not at first, of course. I try to educate them. What if the home is underpriced? But [...]

Oops. It just happened again, moments ago. I emailed an offer for a Sacramento short sale to the seller and the seller panicked. “I can’t sign this offer,” the seller exclaimed. “It says: ‘the seller will pay for this and pay for that,’ and I thought I wasn’t paying for anything!” [...]

Lockbox day came and went on Saturday. But I didn’t have time to collect all of my lockboxes from my closings last week because one of my Land Park / Curtis Park buyers needed me to draft a Request for Repair. Picking up lockboxes falls to the bottom of my priority [...]

Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall. Hey, I hear the Jefferson Starship will play at the casinos this spring. Hard to imagine that it’s been 40 years since I was 17.
Ah, I remember it like it was yesterday. The year was 1969. We had reserved seating on the first floor, [...]