Sacramento Spring Home Selling Starts in the Rain

One of my Elk Grove sellers yesterday almost passed out when I called to say we had sold his home. I’m not joking. He could not believe it, and that’s putting it mildly. One day he’s a guy with a home in Elk Grove that is almost upside-down with a roof at the end of its life and the next day he’s slipping $50,000 into his pocket. I’m sure that’s the way it seemed to him. “Buttt,” he stuttered in disbelief, “We haven’t even been on the market for 2 weeks yet.”

When a listing is done right, much of the work is done upfront. Sellers don’t see the hours we agents pour over our listings, highlighting this feature, brightening this spot, cropping thusly, and plastering it everywhere online. Or the time invested to study the comparable sales and help the seller to choose just the right sales price. Or the number of inspection reports obtained from roofers, pest workers much less our own visual inspections, rearranging, color coordinating and staging the home a little bit. What they see is a buyer walking in the door and cooing, “I want this home.” It sends sellers into shock.

It was an unbelievable day yesterday for this Sacramento real estate agent. I don’t always have days like that Wednesday or I would probably drop from exhaustion. In addition to receiving an award from Leading Real Estate Companies of the World at my office meeting, bringing in a breakfast item for a potluck to honor veteran and former SAR president Barbara Harsch, and adding another curb scrape to the front lip spoiler on my car on my way to drop it at the body shop, it seems like everything happened in three’s. First, I took 3 new listings: met with the sellers, inspected the homes, shot my photographs, signed all the paperwork, explained how showings work, all that stuff.

Lyon Real Estate and I are bringing to the Sacramento spring home selling market today a gorgeous remodeled home in East Sacramento at 700 San Antonio Way at $649,000. The attention to detail in this remodel is astounding. Another new listing is a home in Carmichael, just north of Fair Oaks and east of California Street at 6145 Fountaindale Way at $350,000. This is a single-level, open floor plan with vaults and attached deck, surrounded by mature landscaping, built in 1992. The third new listing is located at 17 Oasis Court, which is on a culdesac, built in 2008 (among newer homes in central Sacramento), with 4 bedrooms and 2 baths at the affordable price of $195,000.

On top of this, I put 3 listings into contract and into escrow. Like the home of my Elk Grove seller who almost had a heart attack. I picked up 3 new clients by answering my phone as I was driving around Sacramento, too. We’re just getting started in this Sacramento spring selling season. See, focus. That’s the name of the game, and an agent must be on top of her game. Besides, it was too rainy to take my daily bike ride through Land Park yesterday anyway.