2010 September | Sacramento Real Estate

Archive for September, 2010

Star Trek Exhibition at The California Air And Space Musuem

Today I took my daughter over to McLellan Air Force Base in North Highlands to visit the California Air And Space Museum. If you haven’t been out to the Star Trek exhibit there and you have a touch of geek in you (not that anyone on the Internet would fit in that category, mind you), you should definitely get over there. You can walk through the guardian of forever or have a picture of yourself taken in the captain’s chair. There’s your beloved real estate broker even as we speak playing Captain, with my daughter in the role of Lieutenant Uhura.

Bolding sitting around in a Hawaiian shirt.

One definite disappointment however was that they didn’t allow photography in the exhibit, lest anyone take photos that cost significantly less than what they were charging. However, a camera is still worth toting along so you can take snapshots of other parts of the museum where photography is allowed. You don’t want to miss your chance to take a picture of a Titan rocket after all, do you? I didn’t think so.

If Sacramento has a downside, ít’s that it’s not well known for having lots of cultural attractions. Indeed, one of the interesting things about Sacramento is that when you ask them what there is to do here, we often reply “well, we’re close to San Francisco and Lake Tahoe.” But that said, every once in awhile you uncover a gem of a place.

I found out about the exhibit by chatting up the check out clerk in the supermarket the other day. You wouldn’t think by reading me that it pays to be verbose, but sometimes you get lucky.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Save Lives for Halloween: Sacramento Real Estate Twitter Clean Water Challenge

Trick Or Treat

You can help me save a human life by following me on Twitter. Actually, I estimate that you can help me save between two lives and eight lives, depending on how you add it up.

Some of you may have seen the “Clean Water 4000 Lives Donation Button” on the right where you can donate money to build wells for people who are without access to clean drinking water, and you may have seen my earlier article about how giving another human being clean water to drink amounts to a charity “no-brainer”.

So how is following me on Twitter going to save human lives? Well, all by itself it isn’t, but here’s the challenge. If someone follows me on Twitter between now and Midnight, October 31st, 2010 and either mentions me (@JohnLockwood) or Direct Messages me with the words “Twitter Clean Water Challenge” somewhere in the message, Elite Properties will donate 25 cents to Water Aid America, and I’ll do it up to 1,000 times (i.e., I’ll donate up to $250).

WaterAid estimates that they can build a well to provide clean drinking water that costs, on average, $30 per person who needs it. So optimistically, $250 would save eight lives. (The WaterAid statistics page is worth reading). What happened in England in the 19th century when they improved sanitation and access to clean water is that on average, life expectancy increased 15 years per person. So if you imagine that someone in a third world country might live to be 60, you could pessimistically estimate that we’ll “only” be able to save two lives this way.

What a failure that would be, “only” saving two lives in time for Halloween. Bummer.

So again, to participate, you don’t have to give any money. All you have to do is:

Follow me on Twitter (@JohnLockwood).
Send me a message their with the words “Twitter Clean Water Challenge”, so I’ll know you’re following me as a result of this challenge.

“But John, I’m already following you, what can I do?”

As Ned Flanders would say, “well that is a dilly of a pickle”. (Stupid Flanders). OK, here’s what I’ll do, we’ll add another $50 to the pot for the people already following me, so if you’re following me already just send me a Twitter message with “Twitter Clean Water Challenge” in it. If I reach my target for that group and new followers, that’ll mean ten people will have clean water who didn’t have it before, or you could say that together we’ll ransom 150 years of human life. Not bad.

Hey Wait a Minute — Isn’t This a Completely Self Serving Way to Get 1000 Twitter Followers?

Well, it is a way to get 1,000 Twitter followers, that’s absolutely true. The dirty little not-secret about this real estate site is that it’s run by a Realtor(r), and we as a group are notoriously fond of popularity contests. As far as Twitter is concerned I feel like I’m losing this contest big time, because so many of my colleagues tweeted and retweeted and Foursquared their little hearts out much more than I have in recent years. As a result, I just passed the 400 follower mark, while many of my colleagues are enjoying followings in the thousands or tens of thousands.

So are we saving lives here or just trying to help Lockwood promote his business? The answer to that question depends on how cynical you’re feeling today. The truth is that, while of course it’s a promotion, it’s also an attempt to do something good – because if it were just about working the numbers I’m sure I could buy a lot more than 1,000 followers for $250 bucks. Indeed, spending about two minutes on Google, I found one site that will sell me 2,200 followers for $177.00 – or about 8 cents each.

So in a certain sense, if I were strictly mercenary about it, I’m overpaying. But then again, one could say that people who care about other people are intrinsically more valuable.

Maybe This Will Help You Feel Less Cynical

Given that $30 can add 15 years to one person’s life expectancy, and that at 25 cents per follower I need 120 followers to get to $30, what that amounts to is that each and every participant in this challenge will individually save 45 days of human life.

If I’ve learned one thing about people in my years in real estate, it’s this: everybody loves a bargain.

So yes, it’s true I’m a salesman, and like the sleaziest salesmen you can think of, let me say this: Boy, have I got a deal for you!!

And here is that deal: by writing four words and doing a couple of mouse clicks, you’ll give a fellow human being 45 days of life.

Come Back To Learn More

I’ll be blogging (and, of course, tweeting) about the progress of the challenge as we go along, so please stop by again to see how it all turns out. I’m curious myself.

And oh yes, in case your curious, of course I’ll follow you back.

Anybody thirsty?

A Tale of Two Salesman – How to Win and How To Lose Customers

Recently I had experiences with two salespeople that reinforced my view of what we in the sales profession should and shouldn’t be.

The Great Experience

The first salesman earned my business and “sold me” (i.e., didn’t prevent me buying) something I didn’t already have, a smart phone. It should come in a few days. His name is Evan Souza, and he manages the Verizon Store near the Borders Across from Citrus Heights Mall. He’s a good guy. You should see him if you need a phone.

I walked into his store interested in the DroidX. He greeted me and once I told him what I wanted to look at, he let me play with it for a few minutes then asked me if it would be alright with me (note: he didn’t insist on it) if he showed me some of the features of the phone. I agreed, and he did, and clearly he knew the product well. I really liked the phone but I wanted to sleep on it for awhile and told him I’d make a decision soon. He said something like, “That’s fine, let us know if we can help.”"

Did you notice how he just sold me on buying the phone from him. How? Simple: He sold himself by not selling the phone. You can call this just being nice, or maybe you can call it “The Golden Rule”. If you want a “salesey” explanation you can call it “the paradox close”" because it both is a close and isn’t at the same time. It’s closing by not closing. So I got his card and promised that if I decided to buy one I’d buy one from him.

A week or two later I returned to the store because I wanted to see the phone one more time and make up my mind. I asked for him by name and he was behind the counter working with some of his employees. He greeted me and assured me that anyone in the store could help me. So I returned to the phone and played with it some more, and I had a question that I asked another salespeople there. He answered my question courteously and then he shut up. I had now been paradox closed twice by the same company.

Now don’t get me wrong. All this would have failed if the product had been a loser, but this was a wonderful product – nice big screen, an easy-to-use way to enter notes and emails (Swype rocks!) – pretty much exactly what I wanted. But here’s the thing: I could buy the same phone on Amazon.com or any one of probably a dozen stores in the area. But I didn’t do that – I got my credit card out and bought it there that very day. It arrives Monday. I’ll let you know what I think.

My Horrible Experience

The other salesman managed to prevent me from every buying anything from him again after I’d bought something from him once and had previously been quite happy with it. To avoid unnecessary cruelty I’m not going to mention him by name, but the background is that he owns the company that sells a software product that I already own and until recently was quite happy with. Now I wouldn’t recommend you buy it on a bet, because if you do, [NAME REDACTED] might treat you to one of his special business-killing letters, which I reproduce in part below.

The subject of his letter (minus my company name and registration info):

“Please let us know why you didn’t upgrade”

Word of honor, I’m not making this up. This is a teaser line in the negative sense, because it prompted me to ask myself, “Hmm, I wonder who this idiot could be?” His letter continues:

We noticed that this license was not upgraded to v10. We’d really like to know why.

You’d “really like to know why” I didn’t upgrade my product? What compelling voice inside your tiny little head whispered that I was somehow obligated to hang around your web site waiting for the next version of a product I already own so I could give you more money?

We take user feedback seriously!

Fair enough. Here’s my feedback. Run, don’t walk, to this charm school and beg them to take you on, paying them whatever hazardous duty rate they should demand of you.

Please reply to this email to let us know why you did not upgrade to [Software Product Name] Version 10.

Oh, I’ll do better than reply to the email. I’m going to contrast you in a blog post to someone who knows how to treat people.

But my “favorite” part of his email is coming up. He’s already irrevocably lost my business, but the point where he becomes truly flame worthy emerges here:

Also, please let us know if you would like a response back. If so, we will respond, but please allow us a few days to read and reply to all the feedback we receive.

His “thought process” on this must have amounted to “Obviously, I’m going to be incredibly swamped with a huge volume of people standing in line to explain why they’re terrible customers, but if you do manage to make it past my incredible stupidity and do what I clumsily asked you to do, I’ll get back to you when I feel like it.”

Mistakes I’ve Made

I’ve made lots of mistakes in my sales career, especially early on before I mastered some of the technical details of real estate transactions and before I learned to shut up and listen to the client. The second mortgage on my house is a product of the “success” I had during my first year in the business.

I started to make more money than I spent on gas when I finally took off the jacket and tie, relaxed, and realized that a good salesman was simply a good person who uses knowledge in a specific area to help someone decide to own – or not to own – a product that can benefit them. So now that’s what I do. And I’m so proud of my agents because that’s what they do, too.

Of course I still make my share of mistakes with people, but when I do I try to fix them right away. I hope that even on my worse day I was never as bad as the guy in my second example. And I hope that at least nine times out of ten I’m as good an example as Evan Souza, from whom you should buy a phone if you’re looking for a phone.

If you’re looking for help with your real estate transaction, we’re here to help you with all the knowledge and skill we can bring to bear. When you work with us to buy or sell a home, we don’t hound you forevermore asking you to refer us, but we do work very hard to try to earn them from you naturally.

Elk Grove Real Estate Market Update: August 2010

As elsewhere in Sacramento county, sales and prices are beginning to stabilize in the city of Elk Grove. Homebuyers are showing a renewed interest in short sales and foreclosure sales as well as non-distressed sales have fallen. 229 homes sold in all of which 40.6% – the majority – continue to be foreclosure sales but a close second are short sales at 38.9% of all real estate sold. The rest 20.5% are non-distressed sales. Foreclosure sales fell 27.3% year over year while non-distressed sales fell 24.2%. Short sales rose 46% year over year as buyers and REO banks are perhaps on the same page for the first time in a long while.

Average price per square foot also stabilized at $113.83 which is 1.1% higher than it was a year ago. Then it was $112.55. Average sales price for a home in Elk Grove is now $246,358 which is 2.3% lower year over year. It fell from a high of $252,062. Median sales price fell 5.4% for the same period from $242,000 to rest at $229,000 currently.

As Elk Grove starts reducing its short sale inventory, the numbers begin to look better – overall inventory is at 2.9 months, short sale inventory under half a month, non-distressed at 1.4 months and short sale inventory at 7.7 months.

Drinking Water For Children Dying of Thirst? Charity rating: No Brainer

I’m not always one to fall for every cause that comes along. When PBS telethons come on, for example, I have no qualms whatsoever about changing the channel. But I recently received this message in my inbox, and because it was too easy to use my voice here to pass it along and to urgent a plea to ignore, I reprint it with only minor modifications from the original.

There’s a widget in the right sidebar you can use if you want to make a donation. And if you’re wondering, yes, already I did.

Over 4,000 children die each day due to illness from lack of clean drinking water. Our goal at BlogCatalog is to "shake you up" and unite you with other bloggers so that we can solve this problem.

Bloggers along with Bloggersunite, WaterAid America & others are working together to bring clean water to people who are dying because of dirty, unsanitary water.

Isn’t it unbelievable that over 1 million children a year die because they don’t have clean water; when a well can be built in a town for a few thousand dollars. WorldAid does this. They have simple solutions to this big problem. Bloggers can help and many already are helping.

If you haven’t joined or blogged about what they do, let’s help them do their jobs. The results are measurable and have a direct impact on whether a child lives or dies.

It’s so simple, and if we unite, and contribute we can help another person who isn’t as fortunate as we are. For far less than an iPhone, a mobile phone, when we come together as bloggers, as the "new media", we can save 1 million children’s lives each year.

Please make a difference and visit

http://www.bloggersunite.org/event/wateraid-a-burden-for-thirst

Pending Sales Rise

While we have been covering closed sales on this website in three categories of bank owned homes, short sales and non-distressed sales and have also been tracking housing inventory, one other indicator of how the real estate market is doing is the pending sales index. The Pending Home Sales Index is a leading indicator for the housing sector, based on pending sales of existing homes. A sale is listed as pending when the contract has been signed but the transaction has not closed, though the sale usually is finalized within one or two months of signing.

With reference to pending sales, there seems to be some relatively decent news. Following a sharp drop in the months immediately after expiration of the home buyer tax credit, pending home sales have modestly risen, according to the National Association of Realtors®. The pending homes sales index rose 5.2% to 79.4 based on contracts signed in July. It is however still 19.1% lower than it was in July 2009.

NAR chief economist, Lawrence Yun, however cautioned that there would be a long recovery process. “Home sales will remain soft in the months ahead, but improved affordability conditions should help with a recovery,” he said. “But the recovery looks to be a long process.”

Sacramento County Real Estate Update: August 2010

While I’ve been busy tending to kids almost all day long lately (and if you missed it, I’m taking up full-time mothering as my new profession at least for now beginning at the end of this month – reference John’s earlier post.) things in the Sacramento real estate market have not been stagnant although this month’s market update seems not too different from that of August 2009. Let’s take a closer look.

1596 homes sold in all in the month of August. 38.5% of these were foreclosure sales, 26.4% were short sales and the rest 35.1% were non-distressed sales. Buyer interest in short sales has risen since a year ago and correspondingly foreclosure sales have fallen. REO sales fell 24.3% while short sales rose 27.9% year over year. Non-distressed sales remained almost unchanged for the same period. Unit volume fell 7.4% year over year.

Average sold price per square foot is almost the same as it was last year. It is currently $120.25. Last year, average sold price per square foot was $118.98. Average sales price remained almost unchanged at $198,397 this August from $197,464 last August. Median sales price sits at $175,000 down 2.8% year over year from a high of $180,000.

Inventory in Sacramento county is currently at 4.5 months.

Sacramento Real Estate Blog: A Social Media Late Bloomer

It’s been difficult to fit any Real Estate Blogging into my little schedule this week, between two jobs, chatting with friends in other countries, pilates, other exercise, and trying to sleep a bit. Once upon a time to blog here religiously every day – of course that was before one job and the rest of it started to come together.

“Keepin’ ya busy?” Yep.

One other thing that I find impinging on my time is something I thought would never matter: Twitter. OK, let’s face it, I’m still not sure if it matters, but I let it impinge on my time anyway

I am finally starting to understand Twitter. The reason I didn’t really understand it before is that I kept thinking of it as where the content goes – and of course, from a content perspective, it’s a disaster. To put it in terms that probably won’t show up on an S.A.T. exam any time soon, “Content is to 140 characters as a full course meal is to a piece of corn stuck between your teeth.”

Twitter isn’t about content. Twitter is how many people follow you.

Ok, ok, before you get out the flame throwers, let me back up from this stark and cynical position and say some kind words about Twitter, in case it isn’t just purely a popularity contest.

Twitter is about:

Practicing kindness and generosity on relative strangers. You can say that’s from a Buddhist perspective, or say it’s from a Real Estate Sales Perspective. Time will tell.
Tweet-ups, wherein real people actually meet each other face to face. I haven’t been to one yet. See the litany of time constraints, above.
Chatting pleasantly.
And oh yes, how many people follow you.

I was away from Twitter after barely setting up an account for several years, and was surprised to find almost 200 followers, presumably from RSS feeds from this and other blogs. This started me on the relentless pursuit of more followers. Ready, set, go man go.

How to win Followers on Twitter…

(… as told by someone who has a very small number himself, especially in Realtor® terms. Realtors® love a popularity contest.)

Be nice. Of course, if what’s-her-name drops by you can be rude, but generally, be nice.
Mention others constantly. Make lists, to be able to tell others you added them.
Be interesting? Not sure that matters, unless you have a TON of time to devote to that approach.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

So Twitter doesn’t matter much. But remember, we shouldn’t get so caught up in what matters to us most that we neglect to spend time on that which is truly insignificant.

And with this in mind: follow me on Twiter.

The Sacramento Real Estate Gal Catches a Terminal Case of Motherhood

This weekend I learned that Purva Brown — your intrepid real estate reporter who has done a terrific job of keeping Sacramento’s oldest Real Estate Blog alive – will be leaving Elite Properties at the end of the month.

Purva was always great to work with. For example, I always appreciated the fact that she was able to put up with irate anonymous commenters better than me during those first dismal days of the real estate downturn – before the real estate downturn turned out to be “the good old days” before the real macro-economics freak show that was to come.

I’m very grateful to Purva for keeping the business going for me while I was out working in the software industry. What am I saying – I’m still out working in the software industry, but now I have two jobs. I think given the aforementioned recession, having two jobs is a bit ostentatious. But please don’t hold it against me. I try to be more lazy – I really do. I can’t help it if I’m lucky.

Fortunately for me, this second job is made a good deal easier by the fact that I have very talented agents working for me.

Well, we all wish Purva the very best. Now where did I leave that fax machine? . . .

Mortgage Delinquencies Continue

The Associated Press recently reported that one out of every ten mortgages had at least one delinquent payment this summer. The Associated Press quoted a report from the Mortgage Bankers Association which stated that 9.9% of borrowers fell into the category of second-quarter delinquencies as of June 30th, 2010. This is an obviously worrisome sign especially after delinquencies dropped slightly last year.

If you are a homeowner whether you are behind in your home mortgage payments or are concerned about upcoming problems making your mortgage payment a good place to start is the Making Home Affordable website. You might be able to get your bank to work with you to modify or refinance your mortgage or accept a short sale.

Although the number of homes in the foreclosure process fell slightly, other reports show that there were weaker than expected home sales this July and sales of new homes are at their lowest point since the government began keeping records in 1963.