Archive for 2005

New Year’s Resolutions

Wow, here it is the end of the year already, and what have I done? Another year over, and a new one’s begun.

It’s funny how even my resolutions have become Internet resolutions.

Here’s a good one: I’ll tell the people close to me and the people I meet how special they are. Like my teammates, Vicki and Wendy, who’ve done such an outstanding job with all our clients this year and made even a nerd-turned-salesman like me look good.

We’re counting down the days until the 25th anniversary of Vicki’s Real Estate License. This awesome silver anniversary is taking place on 02/27/06. Suggestions are open as to what we’ll do about this neat event — just please don’t call Vicki our “senior” team member, she might not take the “senior” thing in the spirit it’s intended. As she does every year, Vicki closed a ton of business this year, thus keeping me off the streets and letting me live to type another day.

(By the way, consumers you can check up on me or Wendy or any other real estate licensee using the DRE’s license status check utility.)

During the last year, it was great too watching Wendy grow from an outstanding buyer’s agent into an equally outstanding listing agent. Now we just have to get our marketing guy — hint, hint, note to self — to get more sellers to call so she can do a great job with even more of them. Oh, and speaking of outstanding agents, outstanding results, with just under three years in the business, and out of sixty agents in our office, Wendy took the #2 position in our office for the number of closed transactions representing the buyer, only one closed transaction less than a top producing agent whose been at this thing for sixteen years!

At the risk of letting my boasting become tiresome, I really am proud of my team’s accomplishments, especially with buyers! Even though you had to put my buyer-side production together with Vicki’s to beat Wendy’s, our team’s average overall is none too shabby. Looking at how many buyer transactions our team closed and how many were closed by the average agent in our office that isn’t on our team, it turns out that we closed 2.6 times as many transactions — or 160% more, depending on which statistic makes us look cooler :) .

We’ve improved our numbers with sellers in 2005 over 2006 as well, but there’s another New Year’s resolution in the making as I review our work with buyers, and that is, to let seller’s know we have 160% more buyers than the average agent!

Thank you to all the buyers and sellers who trusted us this year with your real estate transactions. We appreciate your confidence in us and your business, and I hope your new year is prosperous, safe, and successful!

South Land Park and Greenhaven, Sacramento Real Estate Market

The area known in the MLS as “South Land Park / Greenhaven” (here it is, roughly, on Google) includes that bulb of land known as the “Pocket Area” after Pocket Road, which runs in parallel to the Sacramento River. By zip code, it’s 95831 to the west by the river, and 95822 near Sacramento Executive Airport and Bing Maloney Golf Course.

You know, that reminds me, I really need to revise my community pages, because that sort of good geographical dope belongs there.

Meantime, on to the numbers.

The average home in South Land Park / Greenhaven listed for $404,726 in November, and sold for $398,895, or 98.6% of list. The median sale price was $350,500. Appreciation from last November was modest, at only seven per-cent appreciation on a cost-per-square-foot basis.

Some sixty-eight units sold last month, down only slightly from last November’s total of 78 units. Days on market are up from 24 to 42, and the ratio of expired homes to sold homes has increased substantially (as it has elsewhere in our area), from 10.3% last year (8 expireds to 78 solds) to 47.1% this year (32 expireds versus 68 solds).

Sacramento Area Real Estate Market: El Dorado Hills

El Dorado Hills real estate sales show the same sort of trends we’ve been examining in other local markets. We’re still seeing appreciation, but often in the single digits. Meantime unit volume is off slightly, and the most impressive characteristic of the market we’re seeing is a large increase in expired listings from a year ago. All of this plus increasing inventory bodes well for buyers, but poses problems for those buyers who have not made the adjustment to the new conditions.

Forty-seven homes sold in El Dorado Hills through the MLS in November, down from 64 in November of 2004. The average list price was $726,910 this November, and the average sale price was $715,495, or 98.4% of list. The median sale price was $650,000. Appreciation from November to November on a sold price per square foot basis was 7.5%.

Average length of time on market from listing to negotiated purchase agreement have increased, from 39 days last year to 54 days this year.

Coincidentally with our recent study of the Granite Bay real estate market, the number of expired listings has increased three-fold from last year. In El Dorado Hills, the raw numbers are 7 expired listings last year compared to 21 this year. When we divide by the number of “solds” we get an expired to sold ratio of 10.9% for last year, and 44.7% for this year — lower than Granite Bay, to be sure, but still something to keep in mind when selling.

Expired Listing Analysis Checklist

Following up on some of my articles on expired listings, I wanted to put together a checklist that I could use in a more formal way when working with sellers whose listings have expired. Here’s a preliminary form of the Expired Listing Checklist.

It ended up being a fairly long mother-of-all-cheklists sort of thing, so I didn’t think most folks would want to make their way through it online. I’ve recommend printing it out, and there’s a PDF version that would make for a cleaner printout.

My hope is that even sellers who don’t list with us or even sign up for the free expired liisting analysis will still be able to benefit from the checklist, since it’s a good brainstorming tool not only for the types of things you should be thinking about as a seller, but also for the services you may want your to be doing for you.

As always, comments and feedback are welcome.

Sacramento Area Real Estate Market: Cameron Park

In November, Cameron Park sellers registered a huge windfall in appreciation over the last year. Last November, homes in Cameron Park sold through the MLS for an with the average price of $204 per square foot. This November, the average was $254 price per square foot, a 24.6% increase!

The average home sold in Cameron Park in November for $524,641, or 99.4% of the average list price of $527,963. The median sale price in November was $475,000.

Still, at the same time that Cameron Park is a “late bloomer” locally in terms of great appreciation, the area is typical of greater Sacramento in experiencing slowing unit volume, longer selling times, and a greater number of expired listings. The expired to sold ratio has gone up from 20% last year to 65% this year. (Another way to look at that is that for roughly every three listings that sell, two listings expire).

Some other key indicators of a changing market include longer time on market, which in Cameron Park’s case went up from 40 days on average last year to 57 this year, and lower unit sold volume (30 units last year versus 23 this year). Inventory in Cameron Park is currently at 7 months.

Price Reduction on Vintage Park Home, 8656 Dedion Court, Sacramento


My REMAX Gold colleague, Chris McCullough, just let me know about the substantial price reduction the seller just did today on this awesome home in a great Sacramento neighborhood. (If you click through the listing details it may still show the old price for a day or two, but the MLS is already showing the reduced price of $389,900).

This home features comfortable living in Vintage Park. Your home is steps away from a very highly rated elementary school, just 1 block from the wonderful walking path/park that this neighborhood is known for, and just up the street from a new high school, shopping and the freeways. Minutes from downtown, this is the perfect home for your everyday needs!

Sacramento Real Estate Market – Citrus Heights

We all have our prejudices. When I think about “starter homes” or “first time buyers”, I often think about Citrus Heights. To me, this area brings together a good location with decent neighborhoods, coupled with older, somewhat smaller homes that are still within reach of first time buyers (at least by comparison to Midtown, for example, or suburbs such as Cameron Park or Roseville).

I bring this up to preface this Citrus Heights real estate market update, because I believe it explains why the numbers are somewhat less “soft” in Citrus Heights than elsewhere. For example, instead of being up around six months, Citrus Heights inventory is only 3.6 months — somewhat low by recent Sacramento County standards.

In other respects, the numbers are somewhat typical. Cost per square foot increased 12.6% from November to November. The average home sold through the MLS in Citrus Heights in November listed for $358,889 and sold for 98.7% of list at $354,226. The median sale price was $344,250, up 14.8% from a year ago.

The expired to sold ratio has gone up a good deal over the last year in Citrus Heights, though at a current level of 44.1%, the increase is not as dramatic as it’s been in other areas. Unit volume last November was 131 homes sold, while this November it’s 102 homes. Days on market are up from 23 days last year at this time to 37 this November.

Expired Listings 101

Five Dollar Bill

You gave a bill-salesman a 90-day listing on the bill above, and it didn’t sell, and the listing expired. Here are some of the reasons this might have happened.

  • You wanted six dollars for the bill. One of the bill salesmen told you it was worth five, another told you she could get you six because she “sells so many bills every year”. You hired the salesperson who told you she could get you six dollars.
  • You listed the bill for five dollars, but insisted that your bill seller not show the bill to anyone unless you were there.
  • You listed the bill for five dollars, but told your bill seller not to put a sign up on the bill, because you didn’t want the other five dollar owners to know anything about your business.
  • The bill was torn in half and had maple syrup on it. Your bill seller suggested $4.75 but you knew other bills sold for $5.50, so you agreed to list it for $5.25.
  • You owed $4.00 to a lender for the bill, and wanted to buy a bill for $7.00, so you felt you needed to get $6.00 for it, so you instructed your bill seller to list it for $6.00
  • Someone down the street got $10.00 for a “similar” bill with Alexander Hamilton on it. Based on that, you figured your bill should be worth at least $8.00.
  • You paid $20.00 for a wallet for the bill.
  • Eight months ago, people were getting six dollars for such bills. Your bill salesman told you that the most recent sales of such bills were for five dollars. You listed your bill for six dollars.
  • You list the bill for $5.00. Your bill salesman doesn’t enter any marketing data in the MLS, and puts up a sign in the yard and a flier box with no fliers in it. You get an offer at $4.95 and want to accept it, but your bill salesman writes a counter-offer asking for a different title company, and the transaction falls apart.
  • You wanted eight dollars for the bill. You don’t really need to buy another bill. You told your bill salesman to list it for $9.00 to “see what happens”.
  • Your bill salesman lives in Idaho.
  • Your bill salesman is a family member, who’s going to give you a break on the commission and list the bill for $6.50 for you.
  • You know bill salesmen get too much money for what they do, so even though many bill salesman are getting 5% and 6% to list bills, you save money by hiring Help-You-Sell-Your-Bill. You agree to pay them 3% total. They offer 2% to the bill-buyer’s agent, who won’t show your bill because they can get 2.5% and 3% to show other bills. Nevertheless, a buyer is interested and is ready to see your home, but you hired Help-You-Sell-Your-Bill, so your agent doesn’t show it for you, you have to show it yourself. You make an appointment to show the interested buyer your bill on Saturday. On Thursday they see another bill they like better, call the agent on the sign and see the bill that day, write the offer, and they’re in escrow on Friday. They don’t call to cancel the Saturday appointment, but when you call to ask why they’re not there they tell you how excited they are about the bill they bought. Aren’t you excited for them?
  • You wanted eight dollars for the bill. Your bill salesman suggested selling it for five. You listed it for $7.50 and told your bill salesman that if someone wants it they could “make you an offer”. No one makes an offer.
  • You wanted eight dollars for the bill. Your bill salesman suggested selling it for five. You listed it for $7.50 and told your bill salesman that if someone wants it they could “make you an offer”. Someone offers you $5.00 and you’re insulted by this “lowball” offer, so you reject it. Two months later you ask your bill seller if that buyer is still interested, but meantime they’ve purchased another bill for $4.90.

Affordable Living

John at Uneasy Rhetoric has an interesting thread going about affordable living, including some discussion of what the breaking point is between livable and just too small.

My own input on this is that of course it depends on who you are. I’ve had buyers bake me cookies and weep for joy over an 840 square foot first time home purchase, and other buyers who considered anything less than 3,000 square feet to be too confining.

When my wife and I bought our first home, we moved from a two bedroom 700 square foot apartment into a three-bedroom, 1700 square foot home, and we felt like royalty in all the space. Of course, we’ve since then managed to find enough stuff to fill up lots of the space, so it seems small.

I do believe that so long as Sacramento’s prices stay somewhat high, we’ll continue to see the estimate of what’s livable revised downward.

To be really philosophical about the whole thing, one might quip that there’s some constant, say 400 square feet, of livable space. The only thing that changes is how much stuff there is covering up the remaining square footage of floor plan, and how much debt one has to take on to pay for the structure and the stuff covering the structure. This is why life expectancy keeps increasing — if it didn’t, everyone would die before they finished buying their house and their stuff.

Sacramento Condo Market November 2005

As we’ve seen in all segments of the market, sales are down somewhat from last year, with more listings expired unsold. Condo sales are no exception to this general rule.

Condo owners saw their property values increase by 15.1% from November to November. However, since this year’s average condo was larger than last year, on a price-per-square-foot basis the appreciation was somewhat lower, at 12.2%. The average condo in Sacramento County that sold through the MLS in November listed for $264,007, and sold for 98.9% of the list price, for an average sale price of $261,088. The median sale price was $255,000.

This November’s expired to sold ratio is up, to 60.4%, compared to only 13.1% as for November of 2004. Days on market are up from an average of 27 days last year to 43 days this year. Unit sales for November were 111 units, down from last year’s 137, and inventory currently stands at 4.8 months.

Sacramento Duplex Market

The inventory of duplexes in Sacramento County grew in November as unit volume slowed from October. Forty-three duplexes sold through the MLS in Sacramento County in November, compared to seventy units in October and eighty-four units in November of 2004.

The average duplex sold in November for $441,400, or 99.2% of the average list price of $444,881. The median sale price was $423,000. The average sale price this year represents a 15.6% increase over the average sale price of last year.

Average days on market were up 28%, from 29 last November to 37 this November. The expireds to sold ratio increased even more dramatically, from a meager 13.1% last November to a hefty 86% this November.

On a personal note, this morning I was doing some searching for a client for duplexes including 3 bedroom units, and I saw many nice possibilities in that group. The upside of high inventory, of course, is lots of good inventory if you’re a buyer — you just have to weed out the turkeys as you do in any market.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Doo wop Chris Cringle and his Reindeers courtesy of Jeffo.

Granite Bay Real Estate Market

Granite Bay’s real estate market in November was barely changed in terms of the length of time it took to sell a home. What changed more dramatically was the chance of getting a home sold at all.

Twenty-one homes closed escrow through our MLS in November, as against 37 last November, a 43% decline in sold volume. This year’s sold homes were a good deal smaller, and cheaper, on average, but overall appreciation on a cost per square foot basis was still in the black at 4.5%. The average home in Granite Bay that sold in November listed for $925,258 when it was sold, and sold for $909,857, or 98.3% of list. The median sale price was $730,000.

Days on market for homes that did sell were down slightly, from 45 days on average down to 43. However, last November only five listings expired, while this November the number was fifteen. This puts the expireds:sold ratios for the two periods at 13.5% last year, versus 71.4% this year.

Inventory for Granite Bay as we approach the Christmas holiday is 7.2 months.

Sacramento Condo Listings

I’ve updated the condo listings by price that you can visit from our condo listings page. We get a lot of traffic there so we’ll try to get those listings updated as often as possible for you. Meantime remember you can always get more up to date listings either by requesting the email updates on that page or using the Search Page to run a live search. Our IDX data is updated six times per week, so it’s fairly current.

Toronto Realtor®’s Minutes of Fame Upgraded

Toronto Realtor® Fraser Beach recently enjoyed fifteen minutes of fame.

Fraser was so nice about linking back and giving me a reciprocal honorary mention, that I wanted to make sure his minutes of fame were upgraded. His Toronto Real Estate Blog really is a gem both in form and content, so you should check it out.

Now, as to the minutes of fame upgrade, I think it’s only fair that since Fraser’s from Canada we use metric minutes on this thing. (Also: nobody’s talked about the metric system in a million years, so I thought I’d resurrect that wonderful debate about it.) Let’s see how that would convert…

10 hours in a metric day, 100 minutes in a metric hour, that’s 1,000 metric minutes per day, versus 60×24 = 1440 English minutes. So Fraser’s got fifteen English minutes, which I make out to be about 10.417 metric minutes. I’m sure this mention here adds another five metric minutes or so. Converting backwards, let’s see: 22 minutes and 24 seconds, more or less.

I’m getting more postmodern every other day. Fortunately on my off days we still have some real estate content, don’t we? Anyway, Fraser, thanks for the links back and Happy Holidays / Merry Christmas as the case may be.

If Your Listing Has Expired

I promised here recently to say a few words about expired listings. The market updates we’ve been working on lately have shown some pretty hefty increases in the number of listings that expire as a ratio of those that sell. In our most extreme example, Pollock Pines, we saw the ratio jump from 0% in November of 2004 to 91.7% in November of 2005. In other markets there’ve likewise been dramatic results, though none perhaps quite so glaring as this.

If you’re a seller, and your listing has expired, that’s the first thing you need to understand — you’re not alone. So you shouldn’t let the setback of an expired listing deter you.

When I was first learning how to work with sellers whose listings have expired, we were taught to ask this question: “Do you still want to sell?” Sellers should ask themselves that question as well, because in most cases, expired listings are fixable. I should say, if a seller wants to sell badly enough, all expired listings are fixable.

A great tool to use to help you if your listing is expired is one that we routinely use when working with these sellers, an expired listing analysis. What this consists of is going over your listing — in the first instance by looking at what appears in the MLS. We can often learn a lot just by looking at the listing itself. For example, we recently looked at a listing we found in the MLS that was on the market for a year, and it was a really tragic case, I think, because clearly it was not the seller’s fault at all that the listing had expired. In this case, the home was priced competitively when it was listed, so based on price alone (the most important factor), it should have sold. But there was no lockbox, making the property hard to show. What’s worse, the agent for the seller was from the Bay Area, and the home was in Placer County. So not only did you have to make an appointment with an agent, you had to make an appointment with an agent who was three hours away.

In our expired listing analysis, we use the same basic P.A.C.E. method that we outline in our seller’s library to systematically review your listing point by point.

In this market it’s crucial to have all four elements of that method — Price, Agent, Condition, Exposure — going for you if you want to make a sale. In the no-lockbox case above, the problem was mostly one of Exposure, and it was compounded to a terrible degree by having the wrong Agent. By wrong here, I mean at minimum not close enough to do the listing justice.

In other cases, the culprit is clearly price. In those cases, firing the agent may give the seller a certain I’ve-made-a-change warm fuzzy, but unless the seller is also willing to price their home correctly, the new agent may also fail. For example, our team prides itself on the Agent and the Exposure components of the method above — we’re local, full-time, experienced agents, and we expose your home well through both our Internet Network and our cross-MLS participation. But to be perfectly honest, if you have your home five or ten or 25% overpriced, I could own Google.com and still have a hard time getting your house sold.

Home Pricing Quiz

What is the bill below worth?

What is the bill below worth if you fire your banker, and another banker tells you he can get you six dollars for it?

Five Dollar Bill

We’ll have more to say on this bill in the future.

A Short Post to Fix a Technorati Bug

For some reason, Technorati hasn’t seen this site get updated in seventy-some-odd days.

Don’t tell my wife or my teammates, though. They think I’ve been typing my fingers to the bone.

Anywho, I think I may have a fix for this, and this post is just to test it out. Stay tuned….

Sacramento Bee Writes Article Fit for Bear

I was eating a nice Japanese meal today when I spotted a free-for-the-reading Sacramento Bee, and noticed an article about Sacramento’s declining real estate sales. As much as I hate linking to premium content where you have to sign in to get the goods, here’s the almost free for the reading online version. You do have to register but other than that you can still enjoy it gratis along with your tempura, if you happen to be eating tempura.

If not, maybe you can imagine yourself doing so, at least tempurarily.

I do agree with some of the article’s conclusions — that buyers today have much more power in the transaction than a year ago, for example — but I question some of their use of the data. For example, they’re relying pretty heavily on drops in the median sale price, whereas to my mind what’s most important to look at are changes in average sale price — or better yet — average sale price per square foot. The reason is simple. Let’s say that in November the average home size for sold homes in a given area is 1800 square feet, then in December the average home size for sold homes is 1600 square feet. It’s quite possible that December’s average sold price could be lower even though prices are going up, simply based on a change in what happened to be on the market that month. Of course, square footage isn’t the whole story, we could also get into actual and effective age, lot size, etc., etc.

One of the conclusions I agree with is that the Sacramento market has declined more than other California markets.

“The number of regional homes resold in November dropped 21 percent from a year ago, ranking among the sharpest declines statewide. In the Bay Area, for instance, November resales fell 12 percent from a year ago, while they dipped just 3 percent in Southern California, DataQuick Information Systems reported.”

For more details on how the Sacramento market compares to the bay area, compare my market reports here with any of the reports on my Oakland Blog. Some areas there are actually doing better this year than last in many respects, a fact that I have been quick to blame on the vegetarians..

Rocklin Real Estate Market Update

Rocklin’s real estate market showing for November was marked by slowing sales numbers. A total of 67 residential units sold through the MLS in November, down from 103 units during November of 2004. The average home listed for $473,528 and sold for 98.6% of list, selling at an average sale price of $466,973. The median sale price was $430,000.

Homes appreciated 13% from November to November on a sold price per square foot basis. Average days on market have “appreciated” as well (though sellers appreciate that less), from 26 days on average last November to 40 days on average in November of 2005.

What’s significant for home sellers is the number of homes that expired. Let’s look at the numbers in depth. Last November, 103 homes sold and 11 expired. Total homes on market, 114, with 10.7% as many homes expiring as selling (i.e., 11/114 = .107, or 10.7%). This November, the corresponding numbers were 67 homes sold, 41 expiring. Total homes coming off market was similar, at 108. This year’s expired to sold ratio however was 61.2%.

Sadly, the homes that expired were not overpriced, on average, by very much, listing for only about $4.92 per square foot more than their sold counterparts. We found one tragic case where the agent was in the bay area, no photos were in the listing, and no lockbox was installed — even though the home was priced well.

Live Chat with Sacramento Realtor®s now available

You may have noticed a new button in the upper right hand corner. We’re trying out a new live chat system so our visitors can talk to a Realtor® online. Of course, you can still pick up the phone, or if you like working with email you reach us that way, too.

This is something we just implemented, so we’d love to have any feedback on the system that you’d care to give, either through our comments here, or through the Live Support system itself! Who knows, if you click the button, you may be the first web site user to reach us through this new interface.

This isn’t something we’ve seen on a lot of Realtor®’s web sites. I suspect it’s because most of us aren’t at our desks most of the time, and staffing it with someone without a license would be silly, since the person couldn’t really help out much. In the case of our team, well, that’s just it, we’re a team, so there’s more than one of us who can be staffing this. And in my case, I’m here doing marketing chores most days anyway, working on the blog and new sites and the like, so it makes sense. to make this available.

Folsom Real Estate Market

Folosm’s November real estate sales were typical of the region in general. Sixty-six homes sold in Folsom in November, down from 90 in November of 2004. The average list price was $530,337, with the average home selling for 99% of list, at $524,867. The median sale price was $502,500.

The average sale price increased 11.6% over the last year, but this year’s homes are smaller on average. The sold price per square foot increased 14.8% from November to November.

With 357 listings available, inventory currently stands at 5.4 months.

The number that most plagued Folsom sellers in November is one we’ve seen elsewhere as well — a large increase in the ratio of expired homes to sold homes. In November of 2004 that ratio was 3 exprieds to 90 solds, or 3.3%. This November, in contrast, the number has grown to 37 expireds to 66 solds, or 56.1%.

Bonne Zoolologique

My favorite French-Sacramentan web site, Amelie est Bonne, recently gave us some good winter Sacramento Zoo coverage, complete with a giraffe movie.

My guess is the giraffes are having a bit of fun and trying to keep warm. Imputing them with nuttiness is just a bit of holiday anthropomorphism. Writegrrl, I can probably fix that image bug for you, apropos nothing. Well, maybe apropos the usual tail-wagging around the literati in the hope they’ll see past the checkered jacket.

Testing Out Comments Again

Thanks to the other John L. over at Uneasy Rhetoric (if you’re keeping score — he’s the good one, I’m the evil twin), I’ve located some anti-spam software for my comments. I’ll work on installing that next, but I needed to call your attention to the fact that comments are back up in case you were itching to say something. Also, I wanted a post I could comment to with test posts without looking like I was my only friend.

Pollock Pines Real Estate Market

Pollock Pines sellers had a tough time closing escrow in November compared to November of last year, but those who did realized a 22.5% appreciation.

Only twelve homes sold in Pollock Pines in November, compared to twenty-seven that sold in November of 2004. The average sale price was $355,792, or 98.7% of the average list price, which was $360,617. The median sale price was fairly close to these numbers at $364,250.

Readers of this blog are probably familiar enough with what I’m going to say next: days on market are up, the expired to sold ratio is up, and inventory is high.

You’re right, I’m going to say it.

Actually the days on market number is not to bad, having increased from 33 on average to 41. Inventory is “worse” — at 8.6 months.

But if there’s one single place where the buyer’s market devil is in the details for Pollock Pines, it’s in the number of expired listings. Old Beelzebub seems to have rubbed his cloven hoofprints particularly over these numbers. Last November, no listings expired in Pollock Pines. (Sure, something might have expired while pending, but those often turn to solds so we don’t even count them). So the expired to sold ratio? You guessed it: zero. Goose egg.

This November, in contrast, eleven listings expired while twelve listings sold, putting the expired to listings ratio at 11/12, or 91.7%. Ouch. Might as well flip a coin!

I’ll try to have more to say about expired listings in a future post.

Get More Exposure for Your Listing Through The MLS Alliance

Earlier this week I attended the mandatory training for a new Realtor® board I joined, the Bay East Association of Realtors®. I joined this board a few weeks back because I was working on my Oakland real estate site and wanted to start placing referrals out in the Bay Area.

Of course, almost everything we do has unintended consequences, and in this case I think there are some really cool unintended consequences if you’re thinking about using me as your listing agent. It turns out that — for Sacramento County at least — the East Bay MLS has a way to add listings from Sacramento County, which in turn would expose your home to more Bay Area Realtors.

Don’t all agents do that?

Let me back up a minute. Contrary to popular belief, there’s not a single “MLS” (Multiple Listing Service) covering the whole world or even the whole State of California. Instead, there are a bunch of little regional MLS companies covering different areas. A web site like Realtor.com that looks like a national database is actually pulling data from a large set of regional databases. But other than that, those regional MLS databases don’t mix.

So when you hire an agent from this area to list your home, your home gets placed in the local MLS — known as Metrolist, and that’s great! Just by doing that, the listing data is available to all our local buyers agents, and it goes up to web sites like this one, and it gets a listing on national sites like Realtor.com.

But let’s say a Bay Area agent is looking for a home for a buyer who might be moving or investing here. If they look on this web site or Realtor.com, then sure, they’ll find your listing. But what if they check their own MLS (maybe out of convenience, or maybe because they want to find out something they care about like how to show your home or what they’ll get paid if they bring a buyer for your home)? Well, if they look in their own MLS, they won’t find your listing, unless you happen to be a lucky seller whose listing agent is a member of both boards.

Hint hint: that’s me!

Why doesn’t this happen automatically? Well, lots of local MLS companies have reciprocal arrangements with other MLS companies. Lots do, but Sacramento doesn’t. But the neat thing is, the Bay East Association does have such an arrangement with lots of other boards, through an arrangement called the MLS Alliance. This alliance permits agents from many other counties to view each other’s listings.

This means that if you can get your home listed in both Metrolist and any MLS Alliance area (such as the Bay East association I belong to), it will get better exposure to all the agents throughout the mlsalliance area.

The table below shows the counties where buyers agent will most likely be able to view your home if you list with any agent. It also shows the additional counties where buyers agents will be able to view your home directly through their own MLS or the MLS alliance if you list it with me:

Agents this county can see your listings in their MLS? List with most area agents List with me
Sacramento Yes Yes
Placer Yes Yes
El Dorado Yes Yes
Yolo Yes Yes
Stanislaus Mabye, if they belong to Metrolist Yes, through Metrolist and MLS Alliance
San Joaquin Mabye, if they belong to Metrolist Yes, through Metrolist and MLS Alliance
Merced Mabye, if they belong to Metrolist Yes, through Metrolist and MLS Alliance
Alameda No Yes – directly through their local MLS
Contra Costa No Yes – directly through their local MLS
San Benito No Yes – through MLS alliance
San Francisco No Yes – through MLS alliance
San Mateo No Yes – through MLS alliance
Santa Clara No Yes – through MLS alliance
Santa Cruz No Yes – through MLS alliance

Dirge of a Salesman: Sacramento People and Culture

I’ve been thinking about some of my experiences in the local Sacramento community of bloggers. Much of that has been really positive, such as the kind words and friendship I’ve received from John and Maya.

Of course, leave it to my psychotic heart of hearts to focus on the snubs, disappointments, and experiences that were less than warm and fuzzy.

At minimum, there’s a certain disconnect between those of us who blog in connection with a commercial enterprise and those of us who have the dedication and the past-five-o’clock awakeness to do it for fun. I recently wrote to a fellow who runs one of our local blog directories, Sacramento Top Yada Yada. He was a nice enough guy, and it’s his directory, after all, so he can do whatever the heck he wants. We discussed that my commercial blog was excluded unlike some other commercial sites like Xenophilia’s, which is a rock band whose site has booking information. What I came away with was that a wide latitude is given to “people and culture”, and Xenophilia is so much more than a rock band.

Well, sure they are. For example, as far as I can tell they’re the premier Internet resource for information on how to take a picture of your finger and make it look like someone’s butt.

Clearly, then, I’m outside of the Sacramento people and culture mainstream. Even though I’ve come a long way from my first few hungry days in the business, I’m as yet too concerned with my image to publish any real haute couture stuff about transforming one body part into another.

See, I’m such a lowly commercial blogger that I would have thought couture in that sense means “culture”. It turns out it means sewing.

Ich bin eine Philistine.

Less charitably, one might imagine me in my checkered sportcoat and white shoes. “Get your houses here. Get your red hot houses here.”

“You know how those salesmen are.” The trick to saying that sentence correctly is to screw the face into an ever increasing paroxysm of disdain as one approaches the word “salesman”. Don’t forget to follow up with a post about how to tape grape to your head and make it look like a body part, to flaunt your postmodern credentials.

Elk Grove Market Update

Our market update covering Elk Grove’s November 2005 Real Estate Market is available. There was a bit of a downturn in November, as shown on our 2005 price chart.

Reciprocation by Faint Praise

Well, it turns out I my blog really is a blog, not just a “real estate company pretending to be one”.

That has to be one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me since “you don’t sweat much for a fat person”.

At least it wasn’t: “You have the right to remain silent.”

I hate that one.

Sacramento Real Estate Prices by Zip Code

Continuing our earlier table of Sacramento real estate prices by zip code, here are the averages for homes sold through the MLS for the last six months (i.e., May 1, 2005 to May 30, 2005). This time we’ve arranged the order from least expensive sold price to most expensive. That “DOM” by the way stands for “Days on Market”. This is the average time (calendar days) from the time the home was listed in the MLS to receipt of a negotiated purchase agreement. In other words, it’s the time a home is on the market before escrow opens. A rule of thumb for the total selling time is to add thirty days to this number — very often thirty days is the agreed upon escrow period, though like everything else it’s negotiable.

Area Name (MLS) Zip Units Sold Square Feet Avg Sale Price DOM
Sacto Arden-Arcade Creek/Vicinity 95815 219 1178 $275,803 28
Sacramento Elder Creek/Fruitridge 95820 400 1132 $279,398 29
Sacramento Elder Creek/Fruitridge 95824 231 1177 $280,310 27
Sacto Foothill Farms 95842 380 1182 $291,453 27
No Sacto/Natomas/Del Paso Heights 95838 394 1234 $295,460 28
East Sacramento & Vicinity 95817 167 1096 $301,547 29
Sacto Arden/Arcade Creek/Vicinity 95825 234 1250 $311,263 28
Sacto Franklin/Freeport/Vicinity 95823 758 1417 $320,695 27
No Sacto/Natomas/Del Paso Heights 95836 2 1267 $322,000 6
Sacto South Land Park/Greenhaven 95822 394 1312 $326,482 27
Sacto Rosemont/College Greens/Mayhew 95826 359 1347 $330,980 24
Sacto Arden/Arcade Creek/Vicinity 95841 164 1430 $335,468 32
Sacto Rosemont/College Greens/Mayhew 95827 161 1401 $343,543 20
Sacto Franklin/Freeport/Vicinity 95832 154 1552 $351,716 29
Sacramento Florin & Vicinity 95828 676 1534 $351,810 28
No Sacto/Natomas/Del Paso Heights 95833 381 1454 $370,729 24
Sacto Arden/Arcade Creek/Vicinity 95821 217 1493 $374,658 26
Sacto Antelope 95843 637 1631 $388,753 23
Sacramento Downtown/Midtown 95814 42 1394 $405,019 34
No Sacto/Natomas/Del Paso Heights 95834 240 1776 $424,831 24
Sacramento Florin & Vicinity 95829 381 1871 $460,767 26
Sacto So Land Park/Greenhaven 95831 288 1858 $465,258 25
Sacramento Downtown/Midtown 95816 99 1380 $480,427 30
No Sacto/Natomas/Del Paso Heights 95835 526 2157 $503,333 28
Sacramento Land Park/Curtis Park 95818 189 1530 $525,174 27
East Sacramento & Vicinity 95819 156 1456 $529,427 28
Sacto Arden/Arcade Creek/Vicinity 95864 249 1807 $544,609 28
Sacramento Florin & Vicinity 95830 5 2225 $685,000 35
Sacto International Airport & Vicinity 95837 6 3041 $820,333 38

Roseville Real Estate Market Update

Our sister site in Roseville has published the latest update on the Roseville Real Estate Market. One highlight from that is something we’ve since seen in other areas as well (and will soon be publishing in detail). The ratio of expired listings to sold listings in a given period has been going up fairly consistently for the local area markets we’ve been examining.

What this means is that it’s becoming less and less true that homes are selling like hotcakes, and that therefore anybody with a yard sign and a mallet can get the job done. As more and more listings expire unsold, it’s more important than ever to do a small number of things extremely well. We have a whole section on this in our Seller’s Library — we encourage you to give that section of our site the once over if you’re thinking about selling — whether you’re using us, another agent, or trying to do it “FSBO”.