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WSJ, Trulia and Zillow List Best Real Estate Agents in America
Best Real Estate Agents in America for 2015
The purpose behind the Real Trends 1000 List of Best Real Estate Agents in America is to sell crap to the agents on the list. Being named to this list means I will endure yet another year of harassment and haranguing from manufacturers who want to make me a plaque to celebrate my accomplishments and charge me an enormous sum for the privilege of hanging the ugly thing on my wall so our 3 cats can shoot spitballs at it. Real Trends will also sell my name to thousands of spammers. It’s the price of success, and it sorta sucks. Still, it also means the Elizabeth Weintraub Team ranks #7 in the Sacramento region, which is impressive, I suppose.
Real Trends now works in collaboration with the Wall Street Journal, Zillow and Trulia. Every year they put out a list of the best agents in America.
A couple of new clients called yesterday to request help with Sacramento real estate, people who probably did not know this list exists yet called me anyway. One was a buyer who said he had previously worked with a team in Nevada and was thrilled with the results. Because it’s difficult for one person to be in 10 places at the same time unless that person has a team for support. He gets it. He understands why working a team is the way to go. Happy-as-clam clients, that’s what we strive for. Clients for whom we strive to meet every need. Instantly.
This buyer wants to move his family to either Curtis Park or East Sacramento, probably with a more dedicated focus on homes in Land Park. Those neighborhoods happen to be my specialty. I live in Land Park. He hit the jackpot with us. I personally match buyers to team members who possess intimate knowledge, and we work together to make magic happen.
He knows the benefits of working with a team in Sacramento, so one less thing to explain. It doesn’t cost extra to get a team to work for you, either.
Another client, a seller with a home in Natomas, called to talk about sales strategy and market conditions. She wants me to list her home in Natomas as soon as the tenant moves out next month. She found me online and read my reviews. She gets it. As a natural course of progression in these types of conversations, she asked how much I charge, and I explained my standard fee that has remained unchanged over the past 40 years. Then, I went one step further to justify and to explain that she can find some cheap-ass agent, and she cut me off right there.
Said she’s been down that road with an agent who would cut the commission, and she does NOT want to work with a discount agent. I don’t blame her. She understands the value full-service agents bring, and knows the entire transaction will be smoother and she’ll make more money with an agent who is full service. And she’s absolutely right. I love working with smart people.
While my team and I are honored to be on the list of the best real estate agents in America, we much prefer focusing on clients and making them happy. I work with my sellers one-on-one by providing personalized and customized service. My sellers enjoy the privilege of sole access to me. I handle the listings and my team shows homes. That’s what sustains a successful Sacramento real estate business year after year. Not the top 1000 list of best agents.
Elizabeth Weintraub Picks Up 2 Top Agent Awards at Lyon Celebration
Elizabeth Weintraub Team Roaring 20s Style: Josh Amolsch, Shaundra Bradley, Elizabeth Weintraub, Dianne Slutsky and Barbara Dow
The truth is no matter how many awards Lyon Real Estate gives to Elizabeth Weintraub, the very best award was having a rollicking good time with my Elizabeth Weintraub Team members, kicking up our heels on the dance floor and sprawling all over the 1920s gangster car, well, until the photographer kicked us off the vehicle. Never behave yourself if you don’t have to is my motto. Last night was the Lyon Top Agent Awards dealie-bop at the Hyatt downtown Sacramento. The brokerage handed out awards and recognized its top agents at Lyon Real Estate for our 2014 production, which was so last year I barely recall the harried haze.
Dinner at the Lyon Agent Awards
When we arrived, my husband swore he had spotted a waiter toting a tray filled with glasses of champagne. Try as we might, weeding our way through the neck-to-neck crowd, we could not find that guy. But we did find several bars and chose the less crowded bar. Soon as we popped into line, the bartender took off for the bar next to us. We slid over to that bar, and the bartender dashed back to his original position. It was beginning to look like we could not get a glass of champagne. Wha, were we chopped liver? I nabbed the guy back at the bar and ordered a glass of bubbly.
“I’ll have to charge you for it,”the bartender warns, mentioning that there is a guy with a tray of champagne glasses wandering about. Well, I suspected champagne guy wandered into the kitchen, where he slipped and broke his neck, or maybe he scooted out to the sidewalk for a smoking break. Actually, it didn’t matter where he vanished to, the fact remains I was standing there in all of my Roaring 20s get-up and my fingers were not wrapped around the stem of a glass of champagne. That situation needed to be rectified, and I did not particularly care if I handed over a 20-dollar bill to fix it.
Presenting Top Outbound Relocation Agent Award to Elizabeth Weintraub
With drinks in hand, we began to wander back to the front of the entrance when suddenly the ballroom doors flew open and the crowd poured in. All of the Lyon agents and their guests looked glamorous and spectacular; not to mention, there were feathers and sequins scattered all over the dance floor by the end of the night.
I picked up the Top Outbound Relocation Agent Award from Lyon, as I refer many potential out-of-area sellers and buyers to our Lyon Relocation department. People call me from all over the country to ask if I will help them to sell or buy a home. The problem is I work in Sacramento Valley, and although I can sell real estate anywhere in California, I prefer to stick to areas that are my specialty.
Elizabeth Weintraub, Top 1% of Agents at Lyon Real Estate
The president of Lyon Real Estate handed me the top agent award and said, “I didn’t recognize you tonight; you look beautiful.” OK, maybe you would have scuffed up his spats or kicked him in the shins, but he was trying to be complimentary.
Toward the end of the top agent awards ceremony, which was short and sweet this year, thank goodness, they began the countdown to the top 1% of all Lyon real estate agents. It’s always hard to know exactly where I might place every year at Lyon because they calculate the numbers internally in an odd way. I might rank in the top 10 agents in a 7-county area in Trendgraphix for number of homes sold or sales production, but not end up in that ranking at Lyon. Still, I placed in the top 1% of Lyon real estate agents, and am named to the top 3 agents in the brokerage out of almost 1,000 agents. I’ll probably pick up more top agent awards for our downtown office but, like I said, none of that compares to rocking out with my team.
I love these guys to pieces. Trust me, we know how to have a good time.
Sacramento Real Estate Agent Award Scams
Being a Sacramento real estate agent with one ear to the ground for scams sometimes make me the lone real estate agent who will point out the emperor has no clothes when no other agent has the tenacity or guts. It’s one of the reasons why I was hired many years ago to be the home buying expert at About.com. I will tell it like it is. People count on me to give them the straight scoop. It’s in my nature.
Not to mention, I really detest being taken advantage of. Nobody likes to get dressed up on her day off, studiously explore a pocket of homes, pore over a comparable market analysis, drive to another part of town to meet a seller from the mountains and her Duck Dynasty husband, be given a tour of a home in which the occupant is baking cupcakes and not be offered one single bite, only to discover her sole purpose in that house is to confirm a sales price that the seller had already signed a listing at with some other agent. But it happens in real estate.
What I find more annoying is the clever schemes being carried out to supposedly honor real estate agents and their achievements. These scams are so clever they border on being evil. Companies exist that are making a profit selling awards they create in the form of plaques or advertising to agents they honor with an “award.” It’s kind of hard for an agent to complain about it when the agent is receiving recognition. That’s why I hold contempt for it.
Two such companies come to mind but there are others. The first is Five Star Professional. They claim that they select agents based on client surveys, but I have my suspicions. First, as an experiment, I wrote to Five Star to ask why I wasn’t listed in its 2013 agent list. Lo and behold, suddenly a survey appeared in my email in which I was asked whether I had closed a minimum number of transactions (it wasn’t very many, a bare fraction of the number I had closed last year). So, that meant the bar was relatively low.
Next thing I know, I receive an email saying I have been nominated to the 2014 Five Star Professional list. You know, I don’t even like the word “professional” as a marketing tool because it sounds so slimy. It’s not used for real professionals like a doctor or a teacher. People use professional when there is no actual business designation or the individual has no degree. So, let’s call it what it is: a real estate agent. No sooner did that email arrive than my phone rang, simultaneously, and my Caller ID showed it was Five Star Professional. They want to help me market my new award. They want to sell me advertising.
So does Real Trends Best Real Estate Agents in California. They named the Elizabeth Weintraub Team in the top 25 of all teams in California based on number of homes sold. I know how many homes I have sold and I probably do rank in the top 25, but so what? Soon I began receiving emails and faxes and voice mails from a company, evidently associated with Real Trends, that wants to sell me plaques to hang over my desk.
This is what happens to a top producing Sacramento real estate agent. But . . . these things also happen to agents who are NOT top producers. No wonder the public doesn’t know what or whom to believe.
You might ask how is this different than a newspaper or a magazine or an association that holds an award dinner, hires a celebrity speaker and then charges those who have “won an award” to attend? I’d be right there with you asking this question. But at least the winners don’t have to buy their own plaques.
