Last night I went to meet one of my company’s agents, Jamie, to help her with an offer she was working on for a buyer at a new home subdivision, Pavilions Condos.

It was an unusual Friday evening of work.  I happened to be in Sacramento enjoying a few hours off, so it was easy to go meet Jamie at this subdivision, which is in one of the most desirable parts of Sacramento’s beautiful Arden / Arcade district (95825).

I got to try out the new Tomtom One to get there.  The Tomtom (in case your TV is off and you’ve missed their commercials), is a GPS navigation system.  I’ll be reviewing it on the Sacramento Map Project blog in a few days.  So I punched in the address to where I was going, without recourse to a map, or for that matter, really knowing where I was starting out.

Nice.

So there we were, Jamie and me, and Jamie’s very congenial and likable new clients, along with the also congenial Luke Greene, the broker representing the builder.  I was going to look at the comparable sales for our clients, and wasn’t really finding any good ones (as suspected), since this was a new home subdivision and many of the homes were being sold outside the MLS.  Luke suggested that Kristin would be the one who really knew more about the comps, and went to get Kristin. 

Enter Kristin, a comely brunette, if she’ll pardon the expression (which I hope she will, since she’s an attorney and if she doesn’t pardon it I’m in a heap of litigation).  So Kristin and I talk about what comps she has and when we can get more information about them from the title company and so forth, which of course isn’t going to be last night because title companies keep bankers’ hours.

So I end up giving Kristin my business card so she’ll have my email to send me more information, so I can pass it on to our clients and so on, and imagine my surprise when Kristin says:

“John Lockwood — do you write a real estate blog?  I read that all the time and it’s in my favorites.”

WHAT?

Someone reads this thing?

I’m told by Luke and Jamie, who had a better view of my face, that at this point my expression got kind of bug-eyed, and my face turned red.

Imagine my surprise:  I have a fan.

So for the rest of the night there I was kind of on cloud nine, in my I-didn’t-know-I-was-meeting-clients khaki shorts, because not only do I get to help Jamie write an offer for some delightful clients, which would have been wonderful enough all by itself, and not only did I find the place pretty automatically with the help of satellites in outer space, but now, lo and behold, I have a fan.

Heck:  how well could the rest of the evening go?  Well, we got through the offer process quite well, making sure we put in a contingency period for the comps and the rest of the buyers’ inspections, and while Luke went to copy the paperwork, we all got to meet Brian and Diana Moore, who assist the new owners at the Pavilions.  Brian’s the customer service manager, and Diana is marketing director and runs the Design Center, which is where you go to pick out your add-ons and accessories for your great new condo.  It turns out we got there on party-for-the-residents night (thank you, Diana), so there was cheese and bread and shrimp-on-a-stick, and everyone couldn’t have been nicer and more congenial if you’d picked them out of a book full of nice and congenial people.

Eventually Luke came back with the paperwork, so we bade the clients good-bye so they could get on their way back to the bay area, and eventually Jamie left to pick up poor Bridget, who’s outside a gym in Rancho Cordova freezing (this is a bit of a long story, isn’t it?), so there I am eating cheese and bread and shrimp-on-a-stick with Brian and Diana and Kristin and Luke, and eventually it dawns on me that if I don’t leave, these congenial people, including Kristin (who I’ve now been calling “my fan” for the last hour or so) are going to have to be there all night.

I figured it out, though.

So I guess what I learned in addition to the fact that I have a fan is that if you want a gorgeous luxury condo in a beautiful part of Arden Arcade where you can walk to Borders and a host of upscale stores, and you want to make sure the agent you’re working with and the folks who’ll take care of you when you spend your builder incentives (oh yes, we love builder incentives) are all nice and congenial:  I know where to recommend.  I hope you’ll let me take you, but either way, I hope you go.

We’ve updated our lists that we refresh periodically for the following popular property categories:

• Condos for Sale in Sacramento County
• New Homes in Placer, El Dorado and Sacramento Counties
• Sacramento County Duplexes

Enjoy!

We have newly updated listings for condos in Sacramento County and Sacramento County duplexes. We’ve also updated our lists of new homes in El Dorado County, Placer County, and, last but not least, Sacramento County.

I’ve been working with a client who’s been touring some of the Rivage condos in Folsom with me. These are beautiful brand new condos built by John Laing, just across the street (East Natoma) from their earlier, similar development, Esplanade. They’re running about $331,990 to $370,990 for the units we saw, and feature the Esplanade’s three most popular floor plans, from approximately 1313 square feet to 1747 square feet.

I’m working on some “comps” for her today to see what prices we might negotiate, but I just thought I’d dwell for a minute on my experience as a Realtor® in working with the in-house staff of agents there. At the risk of going all gushy on someone else’s business, I’ve really been impressed by the excellent level of professionalism I encountered there, especially from Patrick Saumure, the Senior Community Manager. Patrick’s been a pleasure to work with. I’ve sometimes seen new home sales people be a little more on the “car dealer” side of the sales spectrum than I would like, but Patrick was the exact opposite of that, I thought. He treated me as an agent right, and I really thought he did an oustanding job of presenting the advantages of his product to me and my client with lots of good information and no pressure. His follow-up with me and my client has been low key and friendly throughout.

I always like it when I can meet a colleague who teaches me something about the business, and leads by example. Patrick is an example to me of how my customer service can be improved constantly, and I hope we have an opportunity to work together in the future with more buyers who’ll get to experience his friendliness and outstanding service.

Wow, it’s been awhile. Fortunately you always have access to the latest listings on our search page, because our condo listings were looking a bit long in the tooth there. But no matter, they’re updated now, so you can get the latest condo listings here.

Well, that’s what I get for being out selling instead of hanging around the office typing. That works for me.

Now just one more appointment this morning, and let’s see when I can get those new homes and duplex listings updated…

I got a call from Chris the other day, the seller of a lovely condo I’d shown on Bremen. (See Listing Details or More Photos). It turns out this condo probably wasn’t a fit for the buyer I showed it to, but Chris followed up and asked me to point out some of it’s nice features, such as a very nice neighborhood (I’ve worked in Greenback Estates before so I knew he was right about that), extremely low Home Owner Association fees even compared to other parts of Greenback Estates (always important when you’re buying a condo), and inside laundry, which is not commonplace and is important to many buyers. Chris also has more info you can check out here

Equally as interesting to me as the condo was Chris’s unique approach to selling. Being an appraiser, he’s familiar with the business, so he’s selling it sort of “by owner”, but worked with a company to list it for him in the MLS. Not only did he price the unit well, he also followed up with agents, and offered an extremely competitive commission to the buyer’s agent. So many sellers ignore the simple fact that in today’s market, you’re competing for attention from the buyers, and you’re competing for attention from agents as well. Time and again, I’ve seen buyers and sellers and their agents succeed or fail based solely on what one might call “emotional intelligence” — their ability to co-operate with another human being. It’s a lesson I have to learn over and over again myself.

As always (I should really get this in a footer), information in this web site and links from it is based on multiple sources and has not been verified.