Another Crazy Weekend In Sacramento Real Estate

I tell ya, real estate keeps getting crazier and crazier and I sometimes think I might be addicted to it! Maybe I should find some kind of a 12-step program? (“My name is Tamara and I’m a real estate agent”).

Well for those of you in Sacramento, you know it was a hotter than hot weekend and I of course, was out showing property in hotter than hot weather. But I gotta tell ya about the first house.

Some people think they are carpenters and then others, well, let’s just say they aren’t. So I show this wonderful couple a fixer upper house in North Highlands. Great price, very nice neighborhood. Did I say fixer upper? I meant, tear-it-downer! Seriously! This house had more rooms than the Winchester Mystery House and we suspect (the buyers and I) that none of the interesting additions or remodeling was done to permit. How do I know, you ask? I dunno, but normally folks don’t put the sprinkler controls in the master bedroom…..not normally!

Anyway, wrote an over-full price offer on that house in North Highlands and I hope my buyer gets it as I know he’ll turn it into a masterpiece (if he does, I’ll publish before and after pictures!).

Next, I showed my good friends and long-time clients a house in Carmichael that they wanted for an investment….we wrote an offer for nearly twenty thousand over asking price and still didn’t get it!

So what’s going on?

I’ll tell you what I think.

I think the banks are in a big butt hurry to get rid of all these foreclosures (and can’t say that I blame them). So they are putting houses on the market below market value and even, in some cases, putting time limits on how long offers will be accepted.

This putting limits on how long they leave you to write an offer reminds me of a K-Mart Blue Light Special (“Attenrion K-Mart Shoppers…”). What this does is instills a sense of urgency in agents and buyers and of course, investors who are scattering like mad rabbits to buy up the best of the best.

But it gets better.

Now with the listing, aka bank-owned property, listed at a below fair market value price, the games begin! Buyers and their agents scamper around in a big hurry so that they can stand a chance at getting their offer considered. Now a good real estate agent will run a set of comps first to see what the real deal is. If a house is priced at $199,000 and seems to be in pretty good shape and all the recently sold houses went for $250,000 don’t be so sure you’re getting a good deal, BECAUSE the offers and accepted price will likely come in in the $200′s.

The highest and best bids, whoops, I mean offer, will win the house. And even if you offer nearly 20,000 over like my buyer did, there is no guarantee you’ll get the house. So what this means to me as a Sacramento real estate agent is this: when buyers call all excited because a new Carmichael real estate listing  just went on MLS at $150,000, I get the great job of telling them that chances are it won’t SELL for that amount. In fact, I won’t even show it until I run comps and then tell the prospective buyers the more than likely price. So what this means to you, if you want to take advantage of the lowest home pricing frenzy in Sacramento history, is that you need to find yourself a good real estate agent who knows the good, the bad, and the ugly of today’s market, and who is still as excited as pizza pie to dig in there and find you your dream house…or your dream investment……or just likes to run around in the heat and look at interesting houses.

(“Hello, my name is Tamara, and I’m a real estate agent ”)

Ta ta for now,

Tamara