Sacramento Real Estate Blog

It’s been a long time since I wrote the material in the seller’s library. In fact, to give you an idea about how long, we have a statistic in there about 75% of the homes in MLS actually selling during their listing period. To be fair to both sides of the argument, first of all, even in the sellers’ market when we were writing, if a home sold later (i.e., during a second or third listing) that probably demonstrates a higher success rate. On the other hand, lately we’ve been back firmly in buyers’ market territory, with the number at something more like 50% or often less.

Even though we’ve changed our market, however, the principles are still the same. As I put them in the seller’s library, the principles are PACE — the right Price, a good Agent, showable Condition, and excellent Exposure to buyers.

To be brutally honest, you could strip out Agent, Condition, and Exposure. I’ve talked to many successful brokers with many more years in the business than me, and every time I talk to one, they all say the same thing that I said right here: price is king. What we mean when we say this is that the other factors need to be ruled out, of course, but they’re not defnitive. By this I mean, if your price is right, you can fix any of the other factors. And if your price is wrong, you can’t possibly do any good no matter what you do to the three other factors.

Since sometimes it’s hard to see things with an example based on reasonable data, let’s see if we can make it clear by posing two ridiculous extremes. Let’s say you have a 1700 square foot home in Sacramento County somewhere, and it’s a normal home with no oil fields underneath or anything. I can guarantee you I’ll get you a signed purchase agreement in less than one hour on this house. No problem at all. You just have to be willing to price it at $5.00, and I’ll buy it right now without asking any further questions. Let me just fill out the paperwork — now sign here.

Is that example ridiculous? Of course it is. No one’s going to sell a home to me for $5.00.

Let’s take the other side of ridiculous. Let’s take the same normal 1700 square foot home. Now we’re going to hire the top five listing agents in Sacramento County to work together on it (by some sort of magic that we’re allowed to use in ridiculous examples), we’re going to have it staged, professionally landscaped, remodeled, preinspected, all the work done, painted, new flooring — the whole nine yards. So the condition will be immaculate. As for exposure, we’re going to take out a one minute Superbowl ad about what a wonderful home it is, so millions of people will see it. And the price? A mere three billion dollars.

That home won’t sell. Firing those five agents and hiring ten more won’t fix it. Hiring Steven Spielberg as the producer for your Superbowl Sunday ad won’t fix it. A solid gold kitchen countertop won’t fix it. (At least, I don’t think it will — how much does a sold gold countertop weigh?).

What’s true when you reduce the argument to an absurdity is also true with more concrete examples. The numbers we need to discuss if you’re willing to sell are what homes have been selling for in your neighborhood that are similar to yours (and we need real comps selected and evaluated by a human being, not that Zillow nonsense) how much inventory there is, and similar factors.

The good news and bad news if your home isn’t selling is this: It’s the price. That’s good news, because it means you can control with absolute certainty whether your home will sell. That’s bad news, because the market price may not be the price you want, think you need, or are willing to sell for.

If your home isn’t selling, it’s the price. There’s a price at which your home will sell. It’s somewhere between where you are now and five dollars. Since starting at the five dollar range and working up is plain dumb, I recommend taking five percent off wherever you are now and seeing how the showings go.

Repeat the treatment until cured.

Can I get your home sold for you where your agent has failed? You bet I can. In fact, I just did.

You’re welcome.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Vicki Babcock to Elite Properties. Vicki and I go back a bit — especially in Internet time. (For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, Internet time is kind of like dog years).

When I began my career in real estate at ERA back in 2002, Vicki had already passed the twenty year mark in the business. Of course, I found that out later. I first met her only as this really pleasant, low-key agent in my office. Vicki has this way of putting everyone she meets at ease in about a minute and a half — if you last that long.

Fast forward to 2004, and Vicki and I were becoming friends and had moved on to REMAX Gold to launch the Real Estate Plus Team together, which I felt (and still do) was a great success. Two years later still in early 2006, when I decided that with the stress of the market I needed to go it alone again, Vicki took it in stride and — like any really good friend — was able to look past my imperfections, so we continued to work together to get things done for our clients whenever we could.

So anyway, here we are in 2007, and I am really grateful for the good fortune that has come to me. In fact, the way 2006 unfolded, I really feel a lot like Forrest Gump. I just sort of stumbled around trying to get by in a changing market, and the next thing you know I had this team of exceptional Realtors® working with me. Now with the addition of Vicki we’ve more than doubled our collective real estate experience, and welcomed back a really fine agent and friend.

So who was the luckiest man on earth. Lou Gehrig?

I think it’s me.

I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion lately about whether now is the right time to buy, or later. Understandably, many buyers are hoping to hit the trough of real estate prices, just as in the sellers’ market of 2003-2004, many sellers were hoping to hit the peak. It’s always interesting to me to see how people behave, especially when it involves my profession.

I find myself talking at cross purposes sometimes with folks who are putting off buying, and I’ve noticed that sometimes people who are waiting to buy think my job is to talk people into buying now. I heard one such fellow remark sarcastically, “Of course, if you’re a Realtor®, now is always the right time to buy.”

Well, I’m sure that for some Realtors® who have a more dominant personality and agressive selling style, that is how they see their job — talking people into buying things. It’s certainly not how I see my job, however. Rather than talk a small number of people into buying something, my goal is to reach a large number of people, then find the section of it that’s ready to buy right now or in some foreseeable time frame and help them get it done.

However, sometimes it seems as though people who’ve figured out that October 22nd, 2008 at 9:32 PM is the “right time to buy” are waiting until that precise moment — or whatever moment they’ve decided on. Often they also seem pretty determined to share that date with others. They seem to want to develop a consensus about the “right time to buy”, as though the right time to buy were some weird celestial phenomenon that will occur at some well known time and that everyone in the Northern Hemisphere will be able to view simultaneously, presumably while sharing a Coke and a smile.

So I bring this up to clarify my role with respect to the people who want to buy (or sell) a home now, and the others who believe in — and want you to wait for — the residential solstice. Let me be clear: my job is not to convince you to buy. In fact, if you need to be convinced that now’s the right time to buy, that’s really good, but I’m not the guy to do it, and please, whatever you do, please-o-pretty-please stay out of my car. My wife and daughter and I can use that Sunday to go to Borders. I have an agent — who I love dearly — on my team who’s way more of a convincer than me, so if you need convincing I can refer you to her, if she’s not already booked working with people who’ve already convinced themselves.

If, on the other hand, you want to buy “now” (more or less) but want to spend some time working on it so you get the right home, then count me in. I have no trouble going out for one or two or five weekends to find you what you want, and then another month working on the paperwork, inspections, and closing with you. That’s my job. It’s a privilege to help, and if I do it right I can get paid a commission for it from time to time.

If you’re not ready to buy yet, that’s terrific! There are [mumble mumble] billion people on the planet, and only a handful are going to buy from me in a given month. I don’t even mind if you share your prognostications about “the right time to buy” with others here — whether you read it in the Wall Street Journal or something by Nostradamus. It’s all good — it’s just a little weird. When’s “the right time to get pregnant”? Is it February 22nd, 2008, or does it vary by the individual woman and happen as an ongoing thing?

Of course, if you’re thinking about buying and wanting to understand the steps better, that’s a bit of a different matter. I’m working on an email seminar if that’s the position you’re in. Or if you’re ready to buy now, call me and we’ll get it done!

There’s nothing right or wrong if you’re not ready to buy now, it’s just you’re not a client — sort of by definition — until you are, or at least, until you’re considering it. So, in my opinion, now’s a great time to buy for clients, and a lousy time for everyone else.

But who knows? Maybe I’m wrong and it’s October 23rd, 2022 for everyone. I hope not, though. I’d like to stay busy in the meantime.

I wanted to thank everyone who’s been participating. Mark, I apologize if I was a little heavy-handed in the loan thread — you brought up some good corrections to Jen’s article in terms of pricing, but I wanted to err on the side of standing up for Jen since it was her first post here and I wanted her to feel welcome now that the Internet comes on computers.

I also wanted to thank all the colleagues who stopped by recently with many an encouraging word. Did you know that encouraging a blogger is one of the seven technological acts of mercy? Why aren’t those listed in this article, I wonder? It covers the corporeal and spiritual acts.

Probably the reason is this: They didn’t have nerds yet when they made up those lists. At least, they didn’t have nerds as we know them today.

Well, no matter, here for your convenience are the Seven Technological Acts of Mercy:

1. Encouraging a blogger.
2. Teaching C++ to a Visual Basic programmer.
3. Correcting the misinformed without recourse to a heavy rock.
4. Forwarding that email that someone else should see.
5. Stepping through it in the debugger.
6. Reminding someone to save their work periodically.
7. One way links.

Happy Friday. No biting!

I’ve updated the listings for Sacramento County condos, and duplexes, as well as our list of new homes in El Dorado County, Placer County, and, last but not least, Sacramento County.

Also, if you’ve seen those pages lately, I have to apologize for the bug that crept in to the new home and duplex pages, in which the link to the listing details wasn’t working. That’s been fixed now, so please check it out and let me know if you run into any problems.

Enjoy!

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.

Rosemont is one of my favorite areas in many respects, partly because the current listing Vicki Agregado and I have is with one of the nicest people I’ve met in this business, and partly because I think its neighborhoods contain many beautifully well maintained homes (as well as some recent luxury condo conversions), yet at the same time, the area is affordable compared to many other parts of town. If you’re not familiar with the area, Rosemont is basically the area of Sac in the zip codes 95826 and 95827 that lies along Highway 50 in the area south of Fair Oaks and Carmichael and north of Florin.

Like most areas in Sacramento, of course, Rosemont has become more affordable over the last eighteen months as prices have been falling. From December of 2006 to December of 2007, the average selling price for a home in Rosemont (95826 and 95827 combined), dropped 8.1%, from $339,532 in December of ‘05 to $311,932 in December of ‘06. At the same time, however, buyers this year purchased a slightly smaller home, on average, so some of this drop is an artifact of the changing size. Because of this, average price per square foot dropped less dramatically, only 4.2%, from $226.20 per square foot in December of 2005 to $216.77 in December of 2006.

As we’re seeing in most other areas, the ratio of listings that expire to those that sell has risen during this time. In December of 2005 the ratio was 25 units expired versus 45 units selling, for an expired to sold ratio of 25/43, or 58.1%. This year 37 units sold while 36 sold, for an expired to sold ratio of 97.3%.

Again, Rosemont’s area is roughly typical for Sacramento as a whole. Most of its indicators compared somewhat worse than Downtown and but better than Land Park and Greenhaven, for example.

There’s been a lot of ink spilled lately over the real estate market. Some of it has been real ink, such as the many articles that have appeared in the Sacramento Bee over the last eighteen months while prices have been coming down and sales have been dropping. A lot of it has been metaphorical ink — really bits living on a hard drive somewhere — and I’ve been responsible for much of that in the Sacramento area, as have many other blogs with more or less differing takes on it and different readerships. SacramentoLanding comes to mind.

What’s really interesting to me as a professional in this business is to watch how “the market” and the individual transactions in it interact. On the one hand, there is no “real estate market”, at least not in the same sense as there is a grocery market where you can walk in and chat with the grocer. When we talk about “the market”, we’re not talking about a place where you go to buy things, we’re talking about a collection of data about individual real estate transactions. The real estate market is a set of numbers, a bunch of statistics that some boring bean counter (often me!) sees fit to format in the form of some sort of article, or heaven forbid, some sort of TV show.

I hope it doesn’t make it to TV. I honestly do. I prefer The Daily Show.

So these individual transactions that you can sum up and pop into a spreadsheet aren’t any kind of place, they’re “just an idea”, one might say. (You know, like marriage. Or money. Or religion. “Just an idea”. Nothing to get excited about. Move along, folks…). Yet it’s interesting to see how the idea is both made up of individual sales and feeds back on itself. When buyers and sellers think the market is going up, that’s how they tend to behave. Buyers are more apt to yield to price pressures from sellers, and sellers love the idea of looking at comparable sales (”the comps”), and tacking $25,000 to $50,000 onto the price for their homes special and unique features — often something pretty stunning like storage under the stairs or stainless steel finish nails.

No wonder buyers like me best. Perhaps that was a little glib.

When the market’s going up, sellers wake to the heady smelling salt of money in the air, and are delighted to hop on board and raise prices. And when it’s going down, buyers look at recent price reductions. Sometimes they’ll pick out a home that’s priced below market value and cry, “what have you done for me lately?”, knocking another $25,000 to $50,000 off the price.

Actually I’ve never had a buyer really say “What have you done for me lately?” out loud. That was a dramatic embellishment. I just wanted to show the sellers who might be reading this that I am, horror of horrors, fair and balanced.

So the market’s not a place, it’s just an idea, and it’s not happening now, it happened in the past insofar as some data got published, and it happens in the future insofar as buyers and sellers are always wanting tomorrow’s price today. Well, more to the point in this market, I suppose, sellers are wishing for yesterday’s price. Colleagues, have you heard, “But I had it appraised six months ago for $ xyz bazillion dollars”. Meantime buyers are picking out their homes and trying to apply the price as it will be six months from now.

Think of it as a Star Trek episode (circa “Next Generation”). You have these two entities — humans, let’s say — and someone has sprinkled them with chroniton particles (yes, I do watch the show), so they’re out of “temporal phase”. The sellers are living in 2004, let’s say, and the buyers are tooling around somewhere in February of 2008. Meantime here comes old Johnnie Lockwood on January 24th, 2007 (for example). I try to remove enough of these chronitons to get these people into phase and meet somewhere near the present day. If I can do that, I can get paid. So I do my Realtor® magic, which sometimes works, and sometimes fails.

Sorry, I can’t go into technical details as to how I work this, but basically it involves using the ship’s deflector dish and a neutrino beam.

No, I’m just kidding. Actually it’s nothing so glamorous. I’m really more like Lieutenant Uhura, chatting with my Klingon counterpart, Lieutenant Gorp (for example). So I write up some paperwork and transmit it to Lieutenant Gorp, telling him that Captain Kirk is prequalified for $480,000 and that’s what he’s offering. Then Lieutenant Gorp sends back that his Captain will take nothing less than $522,350. And I’m thinking to myself, “Dang, don’t these Klingons know how to use round numbers?”

Well, anyway, you get the general idea.

1-2-3-4 !
Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today
Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today
And don’t worry ’bout tomorrow, hey, hey, hey
Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today

Elite Properties is delighted to announce that we have hired an outstanding Sacramento Realtor®, Susan Norris. Susan is one of the hardest working agents I’ve ever met, and she has a truly optimistic attitude that makes her a joy to work with.

I first met Susan when she was working for REMAX Gold in Sacramento, and I was working for REMAX in Cameron Park. At the time I had a listing on a duplex, and I met Susan when she represented the buyer on the transaction. Susan is a real estate investor herself, so she brings that valuable experience to bear when representing her investor clients. More importantly to me at the time, Susan struck me as an agent who did a fine job for her client without a lot of the egotism that sometimes plagues otherwise efficient agents in our business. Where other agents would create problems, Susan was always open to solving them so that the transaction would have a smooth, enjoyable, and successful outcome for everyone involved.

Because of this, when I later created a team at REMAX and then went off on my own as a broker, I often relied on Susan to handle some of the overflow for me when I would get especially busy. She always did a fine job of connecting with buyers, showing them what they wanted them to see, counselling them on their options, and helping them close escrow on the home of their dreams.

Unlike many of us, Susan doesn’t live in the suburbs, but instead has a home located pretty much in the heart of things in East Sacramento. She grew up in the area, and because of this and her many years of experience both as a Realtor® and investor, she knows the inventory in Sacramento County extremely well, but like all the agents in my company she’s not afraid of a little bit of travel to get the job done for a seller or buyer. Her humor and goodwill are infectious, and I consider it a huge win for the company as well as a personal pleasure to have her as part of the Elite Properties team.

FOR THE FIRST TIME HOMEBUYER:
START PLANNING AHEAD!

I have found that most first time homebuyers decide that they want to buy a home on a whim. However, this makes it harder to qualify to purchase a home. Here are some steps to prepare to buy a home:

• Build your credit. The CalHFA (California First Time Homebuyers program) requirement is a 620 FICO score. Many first time homebuyers don’t understand how to build up their credit. Here are some tips:
  • Have at least three revolving accounts. For example, a car payment and two credit cards.
  • Keep the balances of your credit cards at about 30% of the maximum limit. (I.e. if your credit card has a $500.00 limit, then keep your balance around $150.00 and continue using it and making payments.) This shows consistency in repaying your credit.
  • Keep your accounts open. Many people close their accounts after they pay them off, but it is much more beneficial to leave them open. The credit bureaus consider the length of credit history. If you continue to close all of your credit cards after you pay them off, you will have no lengthy credit history. So hold on to those store credit cards and maybe just use them every Christmas and pay them off before the next holiday season. Also, the more available credit you have, the better your score will be!
  • Make your payments on time. Collection accounts will stay on your report even after you pay off the balances! Avoid these derogatory accounts at all costs. Should you get them, pay them off as soon as possible. If you are thinking about purchasing a home, either wait to pay these collections off until after you purchase or a year before you are planning on buying a home. The reason for this is that it will make them active when you pay them off and will actually lower your score. So if you wait a year after paying off your collections and let them be closed and seasoned, they will no longer hurt your score. Make sure you rebuild your credit after having collections by making new active accounts.
• Save some money! CalHFA, and most banks, require that borrowers have two months of reserves. Reserves include the mortgage payment, taxes and insurance. Let’s put this in perspective. Let’s you were going to buy a home for $250,000.00, which is a realistic price for a condo or older home in the current market in Sacramento. The most popular program for CalHFA is the interest only plus program that has a fixed rate of 6.250% for thirty five years, of which the first five are interest only. This allows for first time home buyers to get used to having a mortgage payment and to have time to increase their income before the payments increase. They interest only payment on a $250,000.00 house will be $1302.08. The taxes will be $260.42, the mortgage insurance will be $177 .08, and an estimated $50.00 for hazard insurance. An estimated monthly payment for this home will be $1789.58, so you will need to have roughly $3579.16 in your bank account for at least one month before you get into contract to purchase a home. Let me clarify some of the terms that I mentioned above.
  • Interest Only payment: This means that when you make a payment you will only be paying off the interest owed on the loan. Many buyers are misinformed about whether or not this is good for them. With the recent change in the market, people are concerned that they will not gain equity in their home if they are just paying interest. My response to this is that if you are buying a home to live in and will be there for a couple of years, you will gain equity. Real estate is the most solid personal investment one can make. In cases of investors I do not suggest that people get into interest only loans, because they usually want to just sell them for a profit in less than two years. However, for those who are really wanting to live in their home and stay there until they are ready to buy a bigger home, interest only loans are a wise choice for those who are beginning their careers and their lives. Consider that real estate values typically go up over longer periods of time, and that you as a borrower will probably be making more money in the next five years. This CalHFA loan program would be perfect for you. Also, keep in mind that interest paid on a mortgage is a tax deduction!
  • Property Taxes: This is a county imposed tax that is required for all property owners. This pays for fire protection, roads, school, and other county maintained services. This is calculated as 1.500% of the purchase price, so for the estimated purchase price of $250,000 you would owe $3,125.00 per year. As a first time homebuyer you are required to put them in your monthly payment as impounds. This means that we will make it a monthly payment of $260.42.
  • Mortgage Insurance: This is an insurance required by most investors when the LTV (loan amount versus the value of the home) is greater than 80%. With CalHFA this is required, but this will cover you as the borrower in case there is an instance when you can’t make your mortgage payment. For those first time homebuyers that have no down payment and have to borrow 100% of the purchase price, they can refinance when they gain equity in their home to a value of 80% and get rid of their mortgage insurance. On a positive note, as of 2007, this mortgage insurance payment is now tax deductible (within certain income limits). This is calculated, depending on which company you use, as 0.850% of the loan amount. This is $2,125 per year, and the monthly payment will be $177.08, for the loan amount of $250,000.00.
  • Hazard Insurance: This is required by all lenders. According to my preferred company, Liberty Mutual, this covers your property against damages to the structure and the property except those exclusions that are disclosed (i.e. floods and earthquakes but these can be added to your policy). This basic coverage runs about $70.00 per month. You can contact Liberty Mutual to find a more precise estimate at 1.800.660.0351 ext 264.
• Meet with your Realtor®! After you meet with your mortgage consultant and get qualified, then meet with a Realtor®. It is to your benefit to work with just one! Then they can get a sense of who you are and the best fit for you! Your Realtor® can help make the search a lot more streamlined! Moreover, the cost of your Realtors® services is paid for by the seller, whether you use a “dual agent” by going through the listing agent or whether you use a more independent buyer’s agent who’s working directly for you. In a way, you’re paying for the service either way when you buy the home, so you might as well get the representation.

I hope that you have found this helpful! If you have any further question, don’t hesitate to ask me! Jyee AT metrocitiesmtg DOT com or call me at 916-929-1271.

I wanted to officially welcome Theresa Boardman’s St. Paul Real Estate Blog to our blogroll.

I found out about Theresa through her posts on The Real Estate Tomtato, which is far and away the best blog about real estate technology out there (and I see recently that REBA agrees with me — congratulations, Jim, well earned [and probably well publicized, too, but I won’t hold that against you :)]).

This especially brilliant Theresa Boardman article recently struck me as the only post I’ve read recently by a real estate blogger that made any business sense, and when I visited Theresa’s blog, it further struck me that she’s bucking the trend in the real estate blogging community in a big way, because her blog is about (wait for it…) REAL ESTATE.

It’s not about [IPhone hate speech deleted — thanks, Jay] the future of search or IPhones or Zunes or such anti-professional topics as how much my real estate license isn’t worth, by golly, it’s about Real Estate in St. Paul, and there are a bunch of pictures of what we in the business call “houses”.

Heck, I bet if you called her she’d even help you buy one.

Professionalism. What a concept.

Yesterday I started writing about a buyer email seminar series that I’m putting together with the help of Jen Yee at Metrocities Mortgage. We’re starting to make a modest amount of progress on that effort, and have secured a URL to host it, but there’s really nothing to show there yet except for a repeat of yesterday’s outline and a few still-cheesy graphics.

Meantime, at the risk of upsetting another friend who helps me out tremendously in my business, I should point out that Linda Spafford has a draft of some info for first time home buyers that we hope she’ll also be making available some time, though I know Linda also has a lot on her plate these days so that may be for future.

For the buyer seminar, we do have a deadline / tentative launch date, which is February 28th, and within a couple of weeks we hope to have de-cheesed the site to start pre-registering buyers who are interested in getting the material when it’s available.

The point of this seminar will be to reach buyers who want to have access to the same the sort of help and counsel that Jen and I would give them if they were already working with us, without having to commit to meeting us face to face. In that respect it’s especially appropriate for first time buyers, but we plan to have enough information in there to make it worthwhile even if you haven’t bought in awhile or want to get more in depth about the buying process without actually sitting down with an agent. For example, we’ll have some information there about what you should be thinking about when you negotiate your price with a seller, and what sort of bargains the current market may offer (for example, short sales and REOs).

To some extent we may also be publishing some of that information here as well, but since it’s a seminar series, it really lends itself better to a non-blog format, even if just a static web site. We’re publishing it a seminar series instead in the hope of providing a sort of “low risk” entry into using our services. At the same time, we’re going to try to put together some really high value content, and so in that respect it’s not appropriate for this Web 2.0 Daily Drivel format either.

One of our lenders has some Powerpoint buyer presentation slides that she’s promised to provide for our use, so we can convert it into HTML and launch an email buyer seminar. I just thought I’d brainstorm some ideas here, so this post is more a set of notes on how such a seminar might look than an article in itself. I’ve been wanting to create such a thing for the longest time, and given that the “discount newsletter series” has proven to be the wrong offer twice, now’s a good time to try it out.

I’m thinking a six to ten email series would be about the right size, and it should more or less cover the following general topics:

1. Your Credit Report. Important privacy issues you may not be aware of. Free credit report offer. Ordering your free credit report. What to do if you score is low.
2. Qualifying for a Loan. How to get prequalified. Difference between prequalification and preapproval. How much does it cost, and when do you have to pay? Benefits of being prequalified / preapproved before you shop. Different types of loan programs. Special programs for first time buyers.
3. Searching for Homes. Using Internet search tools. Understanding where the data comes from. Finding foreclosures, short sales, and REO properties. Understanding the pros and cons of foreclosure properties versus a typical MLS listing. Researching neighborhood and school information.
4. Using a Realtor® Benefits of using a Realtor® What is “Agency”? The benefits of using a Buyer’s Agent. Should you exclude your Buyers Agent’s listings from your search? When you should consider a Buyer/Broker agreement, and when you should avoid it. What to expect from your agent. Who’s really paying for this, and when?
5. Narrowing it down. Understanding what’s really important to you. Getting more facts. Making your decision.
6. Understanding Real Estate Prices. Using your Realtor® for comparable sales. Pros and cons of automated pricing systems. How is price determined? Three important facts you should know before you negotiate with the seller.
7. The Real Estate Purchase Agreement, your offer to the seller. What other paperwork will your Realtor® ask you to work on at this stage? What are the costs, and when are they paid? When and how do you get more information about the home? Your inspection period and right to cancel. Understanding your rights and responsibilities before you write the offer. Sample offer form.
8. The escrow period. What is an escrow? Who pays for it? How long does it last? What happens during escrow? Things your Realtor® will be doing. Things you need to be doing.
9. Closing and moving. When and where do you sign paperwork? When do you get the keys? Avoiding closing delays, and ensuring a smooth close and move. Understanding closing costs before you close.
10. After your move. Questions for the seller? Utilities and services. What to do if there is a problem. Using your home warranty. Using your Realtor® after the sale.

I wonder if Gary Woods has any word on the Internet’s next thing. I’ll have to ask him some time.

I find myself really wishing I knew what the next thing was, and wanting to get my hands on it.

Blogging was the next thing once, back in 2003 or so when I was first creating this site. It was exciting back then, because there were only a few of us around, and those I knew at that point got along pretty well. The rest of the turkeys in the flock had yet to sort themselves into a pecking order, so my unenviable position in that disreputable heirarchy wasn’t yet obvious. What was once a job I liked, a chance to spend thirty minutes turning Excel into escrows, is now more of a crowded, smelly, middle school cafeteria, reeking of spilled milk and teenage excess, unpopulated by adults.

There are days when I find myself wishing I could just put up a web site and link to a bunch of cheesy-looking, slow-loading, Advanced Access web sites paid for by my out-of-area colleagues. But those days are of course behind us, and we’ve yet to discover the Internet’s next thing. I’m not even sure I’m reading the right people, so the Internet’s next thing is probably already at least eight months old and I haven’t started working with it yet.

So until I find out what it is, I suppose I’ll just have to keep trying to keep a positive attitude, spit out as many market updates as I can, and try to duck when the boys at the next table start shooting paper clips with rubber bands. I’m sure five years from now I won’t even remember having been here.

It’s been awhile since I’ve grappled with any general numbers for Placer County, other than posting the monthly market updates on my Roseville site. I probably should do more, now that I have a couple of clients who are actively looking in Roseville, but there’s so much of Sacramento for me to keep up on and stay competitive in, and meanwhile if I do have any spare verbiage time there’s the new blog in El Dorado and Amador that could use the occasional push.

Partly it’s knowing that Placer county has taken something of a beating in the numbers. Whether this is because it was too high to start with, as I recently opined for Land Park, or just what’s going on is tough to say. (I should try factoring out Lincoln one of these days — I suspect there’s major devaluation going on there, but at present that’s just a guess. Next post, maybe).

So it’s hard to write about Placer County because quite frankly I fear the bubble bloggers might smell my fear and bite me, and then at the end of this movie I’ll have to kill the head bubble blogger or else I’ll be chasing people and eating them all day long.

Oh, wait, that was “Dawn of the Dead”, wasn’t it?

OK, Placer County. Prices are down a lot. Inventory is higher than Sacramento or El Dorado, but not all that bad. Unit volume is quite strong compared to last year, only off by 7.8%. The expired to sold ratio is a whopping 120.1%. Bummer.

That was the minimalist version. OK, you bubble zombies, come and get me!

The average sale price for residential properties in Placer County is down 8.6% from last year (hey, that’s single digits — take that you varmints…), from $513,447 in December of ‘05 to $469,264 in December of ‘06. The median price dropped 7.6%, from $460,000 to $425,000.

I should check out Lincoln, but Lincoln is especially unsettling. I suspect there are bubble bloggers sleeping out there in some of the vacant mansions owned by bay area speculators. I don’t even go to Lincoln any more unless someone pays for my garlic and silver bullets, and even then, I only go in the morning if I have plenty of gas.

Looking at the Land Park, South Land Park and Greenhaven areas of Sacramento (zip codes 95818 and 95822), these areas saw a sharp decline in price from December to December. Let’s look at the numbers first before we indulge in some wild-brain punditry. The average price per square foot dropped 9.0% from December to December in these areas, from $278.84 in December of 2005 to $253.63 in December of 2006. Since this year’s home was slightly smaller on average, the actual averages look even larger. Average list price in December, 2005 was $390,650 versus $351,021 in December 2006, a 10.1% drop.

Your tongue twister for the day: “Bubble bloggers bemoan double digit drops.”

At the same time, the median price in Land Park / Greenhaven was off by 7.5%, from $352,250 in December of 2005 to $326,000 in December 2006.

Unit volume is down somewhat less dramatically, 21.2%, from 66 sold units last December to 52 sold units this December. The expired to sold ratio made it into what we consider “seller’s market” territory this year, moving from 36.4% last December to 76.9% this December.

The last time I was working in Land Park, I was pretty struck by the size of the drop, which seemed to me to be bigger than in other areas. However, I wouldn’t want you to conclude from that opinion and the numbers above that Land Park is not a desirable area. Quite the contrary. I think what happened in Land Park is that, when the feeding frenzy of 2002-2004 took place, Land Park numbers shot up even higher than the surrounding areas. I recall at the time being in a sort of awe at how much Land Park sellers were getting for their homes. Now that the numbers are on their way down, of course, especially overvalued areas like Land Park have further to fall.

Of course, to be honest, this doesn’t fully explain what I’ve seen downtown, and it certainly doesn’t explain why the real bargain basement areas also shot up so dramatically. Anyone who’s honest usually has to end up admitting that there’s more in the complex ebb and flow of the local numbers than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Were it not for Shakespeare, how would anyone ever write their way out of an article?

Home sales in downtown Sacramento in December were brisk, with more units selling this year than last, and roughly the same number of expireds. This year’s average home was significantly smaller than last, bringing average prices down substantially, while the average price per square foot rose during the period.

This December, the average home downtown (95814 and 95816 combined) sold for $425,503, down 9.1% from last year’s average of $467,927. At the same time, however, this year’s crop was a good deal smaller. At 1255 square feet, the average home sold this December was 19.6% smaller than last year’s 1560 square feet. As a result, during the same period, sold price per square foot rose 13%, from $299.95 last December to $339.05 this December. As you might expect with smaller homes, the median sale price was also down this year, from $410,000 last December to $388,000 this December.

Two other indicators show strong continued demand in the downtown area. First, the expired to sold ratio is virtually unchaged from last year (73.3% last year to 75% this year). Secondly, during the same period, our downtown unit volume increased some 33%, with only 15 units selling last December versus 20 this December.

Some bubble.

OK, you’ve gotten financing, found the home of your dreams at a price you can afford, and now you want to negotiate the best price with the seller. Your next step is to have your Realtor® submit an offer, a process we affectionately know as “writing it up”. Actually that term is a bit of a historical legacy from the days when Realtors® used to craft the offer by hand from books of boilerplate contract. These days, writing it up most often means filling out the California Asscociation of Realtors® “Residential Purchase Agreement”.

You would think that filling out a form would be a trivial matter, but as with everything, the devil is in the details. A well crafted, “clean” purchase agreement can mean a difference in several thousand dollars of savings to you. A poorly crafted one can cause you to lose money or have your offer be rejected, or cause other problems.

Every agent no doubt has their own take on the best way to craft a purchase agreement for their clients, and our individual styles vary somewhat. Furthermore, as a consumer you should understand that the terms of the agreement are all negotiable. Do you have good income and credit but no money saved? Well, then, your purchase agreement to the rescue, we’ll ask the seller to pay closing costs. Want a bargain and can close quickly? That may work, too, and we can write it up that way. So there can be quite a variation between one offer and the next, and if you have special needs, often your Realtor® can suggest ways to incorporate this into the offer somehow.

Even though all the terms of the purchase agreement are negotiable, however, many agents either explicitly or intuitively follow a path that I think of as the “Principle of Least Surprise” (you can’t Google that as far as we know, since I just made it up). The idea is this: as a buyer, chances are you want to negotiate a good price on the home. You want the price to be fair at least, or, better yet, as low as possible while still getting an accepted offer. What we like to do in this (extremely common) case is recommend that you keep the rest of the terms of the offer as “standard” as possible. The idea is that, since you’re surprising the seller and her agent on price, you want to surprise them as little as possible elsewhere in the agreement. This can help prevent the seller from feeling that you’re asking for everything and the kitchen sink, and keeps the core of the negotiation where it often legitimately belongs: the price of the home.

So, while negotiating on price, you want to keep the rest of the offer consistent with local tradition. This is actually one important reason for using an agent who is local to the area you’re buying in. (Aside from the colorful idea that we “know where the bodies are buried”). For example, in Sacramento County, sellers typically pay the full cost of the Owner’s title insurance policy, while the escrow fee is usually split 50/50 between buyer and seller. In El Dorado and Placer County, in contrast, sellers and buyers traditionally split both the escrow fee and the fee for the owner’s title policy. In the bay area, sellers and their agents are used to having all or many of the inpsections done before opening escrow, whereas here in the greater Sacramento area, the pest inspection, whole house, and other inspections are done once escrow has been opened.

Understanding how an “unsurprising” offer should look and the differences in local custom can help you and your Realtor® craft the offer that’s right for you, and help to get your negotiations with the seller off on the right foot. For this reason, you should consider selecting a real estate agent with a few years of real estate experience who’s familiar with the area in which you’re buying. Local familiarity becomes even more important later when it comes time to provide you with disclosures, but the advantages of using a local agent begin even before the purchase agreement with things like neighborhood knowledge, access to the MLS for comps, and having the area-appropriate lockbox key to make your appointments for you.

I was going to write a little something about the Placer County real estate market, but I just picked up a message from a client of mine who I’m going to show some homes to tomorrow. I didn’t know that’s what I’m doing, because I called a few times this week to try to confirm the appointment with no answer, but now that it’s the evening before, lo, a message has appeared. So I thought instead that I’d try to tackle a list of ten misconceptions we as Realtors® have about the world, since I’d just bumped headlong into one of them that I’m partcularly apt to suffer from if I’m not careful:

1) “I can schedule my time, because clients will schedule appointments in advance.” Some folks do schedule and keep appointments quite well, of course, and usually the guy who call’s you for the first time 20 minutes before he arrives in town is a pretty poor prospect anyway. But often you find out what you’re doing pretty late in the week, a day or two at most before you do it, and often those folks who only give you a day or two to prepare for them turn out to be pretty serious.

OK, so now all I need is nine more, and I got myself an article, there, fella!

2) “I can qualify a buyer based on how they behave.” Many of my absolute best clients have been people who went against whatever prevailing notion I had in my head of what a good client was. For example, I had to bite my tongue about the young couple who upset me when they wouldn’t get in my car but instead wanted to follow me. I knew they wouldn’t buy anything, because they were so “stand-offish”, but I told myself I would just be courteous and see what happens. What happened was this: they bought the first condo they looked at. It was a “one-stop-close”, the sales equivalent of a hole in one.

3) “I have to sell myself before I sell the house.” No, no, no, no, no. Clients aren’t buying me, but they might be buying a house. Focus on the houses. Offer to take the clients to them. Offer to take them back. Offer to call the other agent to get ahold of the seller if they have questions. Offer to do research on the house and the neighborhood and the comps for them. Offer to take them back out again for more houses until they find something. If they find something, offer to write it up. If it falls out, offer to go out again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

None of this has anything to do with me personally. This is not cavalcade of stars, and I’m not Brad Pitt. I’m not even Dustin Hoffman.

4) “Clients are reading my blog, so I have to publish engaging content.” Good old Jim Cronin, a nice fellow who does a better job of putting up with me than anyone else in the real estate blogging community, tends to fall victim to this one repeatedly. I think the reason he does is that for him it’s true — his clients do read blogs, because his clients are blog authors (by definition). My clients have no interest in me, and — by extension — my blog. See #3, above. My clients are looking for a house, Jim’s clients are looking for clients who are looking for a house.

I actually disproved this one to my satisfaction once upon a time. I checked the stats lately, and disproved it again. My conversion rate to an activity that will lead to a sale is better than forty-five percent for my home page. For my blog, it’s less than twenty-one percent. For people reading my blog in an RSS reader, the numbers appear to be surprisingly close to one tenth of one per cent.

5) “My blog is a way to establish myself as an expert, so clients will use me.” This is a variation on the theme in #3, above. Actually to some extent it’s true enough, but you’re establishing yourself as an expert in the eyes of an algorithm, in order to get an opportunity to be an expert once a client finds you. But being an expert, recall from point 3, has nothing to do with you. It has to do with what you can impart to clients about houses, house prices, and the process of buying or selling a house, which is what you’re helping them do (otherwise they’re not clients — see how simple?).

6) “Social networks are a great way to get business.” Pared down to it’s essential dumbness, we used to state this when I was nineteen as “I drink, therefore, I am”. Sure, everyone gets one or two transactions from their “sphere”, and your broker likes to tell you to work your sphere so he can get a tasty split on those one or two deals (times 1000 agents — that ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it). No, a great way to get business is to spend half your business life prospecting. I prospect, therefore I don’t starve. A party with a bunch of Realtors® is a party with a bunch of Realtors® Sure, you should go to parties if you want, they’re fun. But they’re not work. Ditto MySpace, MyBlogLog, and ActiveRain, or, as I like to call them, MyLovelyWife’sSpace, YourBlogLog, and PassiveBrain, respectively.

7) “Consumers have a choice about where to search for homes.” My erstwhile imaginary friend has a lovely article about this, which has earned critical approbation from my perennial actual enemy. To some extent this one is true enough, too, but it’s irrelevant to marketing. The point about marketing is to get them to choose you. It’s not to “brand you as an expert” (see number 5, which is just a variation on number 3). I can brand myself as an expert by talking about all the different ways a buyer can search for a home in Sacramento. I have a business to the extent that I own a substantial share of a number of the ways.

“Buyers choose you for your expertise.” No, buyers choose you because they found you somehow connected to the thing they want, which in the case of Real Estate is a house. They stay with you if you deserve it. You deserve it primarily to the extent that you’ve gotten over #1, #2 and #3.

9) “Treat a buyer right and they’ll always come back to you.” No, treat some buyers right and they’ll always come back to you. If you haven’t lost a client to a competitor, you haven’t been in the business long. This isn’t personal — see #8. Someone else interposed themselves between “your client” and the thing they want.

10) “There are ten things in this list.”

I utterly enjoyed working my business this week. The traffic to the site has been very encouraging indeed if you’re looking for early signs of what 2007’s market may bring. As measured by daily unique visitors, traffic this month is higher than for any month out of the last eleven, and some 23.3% higher than the average during that period. On Tuesday the call and email volume got to be so high that frankly I got a bit grouchy (you know, chocolate is great, but too much chocolate will make you sick), so I had to hand off taking the calls to one of my referral agents for a few days to catch my breath.

I had a transaction in Folsom I was nursing this week that didn’t come together, so we’re going out to look at more homes tomorrow in El Dorado Hills and Elk Grove. These clients, by the way, are looking for something newer, four bedrooms or five preferable, 2,500 to 3,000 square feet, up to about $580,000 list. They need to have a bedroom and full bath downstairs. If you’re a seller just thinking about selling such a thing, call me and we might be able to save you money with a private (non-MLS) transaction: (530) 672-9160. Of course, if you prefer to list your home in the MLS to take advantage of that huge buyer pool, plus take advantage of exposure with a company that gets lots of Internet buyers through many different consumer friendly sites, we can get that done for you, too.

Several other clients are in the getting ready stages, and my team’s transactions are coming along nicely as well. Bridget is doing a fantastic job by any definition you’d care to apply, and as a broker and sales manager, I probably couldn’t have asked for a better first hire. I finally hunted down the cheat sheet for transactions that I’ve been saying our profession should publish for about a year now. It’s been there all along, I’ve just relied on others when I had questions.

I’m always amazed at the extent to which Realtor® education is good in the realm of general background, yet skips over many important fundamental “mechanical” elements of the job we do. It would be as if you let a surgeon go through medical school (though it’s nothing hardly that intense), and without a surgical internship you handed him a scalpel and said, “Here, go out and see if you can find some patients and I’ll show you where to cut.”

And many in our profession leave early, because they don’t have the patients for it.

If there’s a lowest common denominator pun to be had, I hope you’ll feel you can count on me.

And speaking of how much I enjoy lunch with colleagues, I had a great one recently with one of the Sacramento area’s other Realtor®-bloggers (there are getting to be about four or five of us, by my last count), Julie Jalone and her husband, Michael. Julie mentioned our outing as well recently. Julie and Mike share a lot of good quality market data and other thoughts on a couple of different blogs, including Keep it Real In Sacramento, and we had a great time.

Next one’s on me. I hope it’s soon, next week or two maybe.

I’ve been spending some time in the real world lately, sometimes affectionately known as “meatspace”.

Most people live there, in the real world. You remember people, those relatively hairless great apes that belong to the same species as you (with apologies to the devout), many of whom lead rich, full lives with little or no exposure to keyboards. Actually, I give that reminder not so much to you, as to me. As a former software developer, it’s easy enough sometimes to fall into old habits and Geek Out. (Which by the way should be sung to the tune of “Freak Out“!) In the software underworld I once inhabited, we called each other “Geek” as a compliment, not with any disparagement at all. We boasted about our pale, pasty skin, and called it “monitor glow”. Women crossed the street and giggled when we passed.

We were bit twiddlers.

Well, not so any more. Today I spend more and more time in the real world, both job related time in this “people business” of real estate, and some recreational time with recreational meatspace great apes.

I love lunch with my colleagues. That has to be my favorite thing, next to closing escrows or relaxing with the family or wrestling with the dogs on the floor. Yesterday I enjoyed a great “recruiting lunch”, meeting with two somewhat newer agents who are going to make an outstanding success in this business, with or without me (hopefully with). I enjoyed that a lot. Today there was more of a social gathering going on, with Ed, who has this great listing, and Jen Yee, who is one of our preferred lenders.

That was quite the time as well.

Later on this week there’s yet another lunch with another colleague.

I don’t usually get this many. Usually a two-lunch week is a great week. Back when I was a nerd, we used to have five-lunch weeks all the time. (Nerds NEED lunch, because that’s their only time away from the ankle bracelets that bind them to their keyboards). So now, I get all excited over a two-lunch week.

This week is a three-luncher. Be still my beating heart.

I’m working with a buyer who recently had some questions for his lender about PMI, or Private Mortgage Insurance. In the course of discussions with him, I ran across two good articles about PMI.

The first article has an especially clear discussion of PMI in the beginning part of the discussion, though I’m not sure I agree with the latter part of the article (beginning with “The Value of an Investment in Home Equity”). I haven’t formed an opinion on that part, but I cite this resource mainly for the good information at the beginning of the article.

The second article that stands alone in its entirety somewhat better, but is a little more general in scope, is the informational article at Bankrate.com, that talks about PMI and what some of the alternatives are.

My take on PMI is that it’s important for consumers to understand these things about it:

• If you need to borrow more than 80% of the value of a home, as many people do in California, PMI is one traditional (and sometimes still good) way to get this done.
• PMI protects the lender, not you! It does not insure you against anything should you default on the loan. PMI is a premium that protects the lender against the higher risk that they incur when lending you a larger percentage of the purchase price.
• More recently the mortgage industry has come up with alternatives to PMI such as “second notes” (see Bankrate’s discussion of the 80/10/10 plan). In many cases, the total payment for such a scenario is lower than it would be for the cost of a loan plus PMI. Also, assuming you don’t get a prepayment penalty on the second loan, you have the option of paying off this second (higher interest) loan, on an accelerated schedule if you wish.

This terrific Beazer home is one of the best priced homes in this terrific neighborhood in Cameron Park.

Here’s the Google Map if you wanted to drive by it to check it out from the outside on your own, but better yet, why not call my good friend, the listing agent, Ed Aldrich, at 530-957-0899 for a personalized showing? He’d be happy to take you out to see it, or you’d rather work with a buyer’s agent on it, you’re welcome to give me a call at (530) 672-9160 to see this and competing houses. If you tell me about this special offer, I’ll throw in a 1% incentive rebate on this house or any other home we tour if you purchase it through me.*

So what are you waiting for — give one of us a call or get in the car and go check it out for yourself!

* Offer good for new customers only who meet me through this ad, and not valid if combined with another offer.

I would be interested in input that potential buyers and sellers reading this blog may have about topics they’d like to see covered or questions about real estate they may have.

I’ve noticed over the years that often the main readers of this blog are colleagues and search engines, but I may be wrong about that, and if so, I’d sure like to connect with my readers who are in the market about concerns you may have or questions, especially if you’re having trouble with this site or feel there are some info or links it should have and doesn’t.

This also means if you want me to cover a specific area in terms of a market update, I’d be willing to do that. I pretty much pick areas I’m familiar with or interested in covering for those, but that’s not how it has to be — feel free to suggest an area you want to see and I’ll do an update for it.

Otherwise you’re at my mercy as to what I come up with, and now that this blog is back on topic that could get pretty boring.

“Comp that house” might be fun. The Broker versus Zillow. Guess my price.

Anyway, it’s getting to be pretty late on an already slow news day, so I’m very much open to your ideas.

In my spare time over the last couple of days I’ve been working on getting you the “winners” and “losers” in terms of average price gains / losses over the period 2005-2006 for selected Sacramento communities. These are whole year numbers for each community, sorted in descending order by average price gain (or loss, as the case may be and often is). The numbers include all residential properties, including single family homes, halfplexes, condos and the like, but excludes income generating properties such as duplexes, halfplexes, etc.

Of course, statistics being the fair weather friend that she is, sometimes the average price gainer is the median price loser, or vice versa — but often the two coincide somewhat.

I’ve selected twenty-two communities, partly because by that point my fingers were getting tired of the data entry, and partly because by about community number 21 I realized that if I stopped at 22 I could use “Catch 22″ in the title — which is clever but doesn’t really apply to anything.

As always, real estate is a local phenomenon, folks. It varies from zip code to zip code and neighborhood to neighborhood. It’s always fun to paint with a broad brush — in rose colors if you’re the National Association of Realtors®, or in jet black if you’re a bubble blogger, but the truth on any given day on any given block is likely to upset the generalization. (”All generalizations are wrong.”)

Anyway, here are the numbers. Looking good there, 95816!

As always, this is based on MLS data which in turn aggregates data from multiple sources, and is believed accurate but has not been verified.

Sorry if your community was excluded — if you want me to run it and it’s missing from this list let me know.

Wherein the existence of halfplexes is further demonstrated by clickable thumbnails and listings.

Here’s a halfplex listing (actually that proof will only be available until the listing gets sold).

More to the Cartesian point than the fact that MLS shows 183 actives (which is more of a Baconian argument), here we go: because I think, therefore I am, and because God would not deceive me into believing halfplexes exist and because I have a clear and distinct idea that halfplexes exist, halfplexes therefore exist.

Q.E.D.

All proofs end with Q.E.D.

Let’s take a quick look at the inventory numbers for residential income property and see how different types stack up, and also how the inventory compares to straight residential property. Before I even open up MLS, here’s my prediction: Multi-unit residential income properties will have higher inventory, except perhaps in the 5 units and more categeory, than either single family homes or condos.

It’s nice to set yourself up as a straw man. Let’s see if I’m right. I’ll use average sales data for the past 12 months as a baseline, and compare it to current actives. This will be for Sacramento County, based on current MLS numbers as of today:

OK, well, I was almost right, except I got the 5-unit plus category wrong. Sure enough, residential income property’s inventory rises linearly with the number of units, and the 5-unit plus category is not an exception to that rule. Don’t ask me why I thought it would be — I’ve seen similar numbers before but I guess I naively assumed that apartment complex investors would have adjusted their prices by now to make things happen.

This study confirms the idea I’ve heard taught before that single family homes are in a sense the most “liquid”, being the easiest of all categories to sell in any market. I also suspect that a large part of what’s making up the inventory are investor-dumped properties, as a result of which the investment property categories are faring the worse.

What’s nice to see are the low numbers for halfplexes. I suspect that the low cost of entry for these homes coupled with the absence of the HOA fees that one pays in a condo, together with the small supply overall, accounts for the fact that the inventory numbers here are almost as low as they are for single family homes.

Well, it’s been a particularly long and stressful day, but I’ve made some progress toward achieving the goal I mentioned the other day of getting this forum back on topic, even while trying to put my clients’ purchase agreement together on an absolutely gorgeous home in the Parkway in Folsom. I am always energized when I work with clients who are just wonderful people — their energy and excitement makes the rigors of this job worthwhile.

There were some technical hurdles in effectively maintaining this web site that I overcame as well, but those are pretty esoteric and boring, frankly, so let’s not go there.

All in all, happiness is a weekend with great clients that ends with an offer. Bridget I know has made some great progress in her business, turning around a transaction that was giving her some worry, and I hear we might also hear the pitter patter of little escrows from a referral agent that does a great job for us as well and may be joining us formally in a couple of months.

To those of you I owe a response to, sorry if I’ve been a little behind. I will do my best to catch up tomorrow!

I was getting ready to publish some average and median price change data, and in the course of it I found I needed to massage several of the community names for a table. Since I was in the middle of a copy/paste anyway, I thought I’d share with you this table that shows how the MLS views Sacramento County. This is massaged only slightly for readability, with “Sacto” in some cases replaced with “Sacramento”, and the MLS area codes have been converted into zip codes (don’t ask).

Naturally one of the ways we as Realtor®s can search for properties for you is by any combination of these areas. However, one of the fun things about being a Realtor® is how many different ways we can set up search (well, maybe that’s just fun if you’re a nerd, but there, the shoe fits perfectly).

For example, we can search by a radius from a given address or MLS number, a technique I often use when running comparable sales or for buyers who don’t want to be too far out from Such-and-Such. Moreover, if you’ve searched on this web site much and clicked through on property details, you’ve probably noticed that for simplicity’s sake, our search engine here only allows you to search for some of the fields that are in the MLS. (By the way, I didn’t intentionally limit it, that’s just the way my service provider set it up, but I do agree in general with their design choices). Our Realtor® MLS search, in contrast, pretty much allows us to search on any field in the MLS, so if you just have to have a three car garage and only a gas stove will do, we can do that. However, with that, a word of caution for you if you’re asking me or another Realtor® to do this:

• If the field isn’t in the MLS, or if it’s only included in marketing comments or another full text field, you may not get everything you want.
• Not all Realtors® have the right combination of nerdity and experience to know where all the information is. I’m a pretty major nerd, and I’m still learning after four years where they hide some of it.
• As always with computer databases, the search results you get are only as good as the data. Especially in the case of fields that are optional or that allow multiple values, we’re at the mercy of the listing agents, who may or may not have entered the correctly or at all. Of course, we can also follow up with calls and visits etc., but naturally that takes longer to do.

Anyway, without further preamble, here’s the list of MLS Areas in Sacramento: