West Sacramento, CA

Is it a good time to "Buy Up" in West Sacramento? This question has been discussed a lot recently, and my answer is absolutely! There are small pockets comprised of mainly 2bd/1ba homes under 1500sqft-- namely The State Streets, Woodmore Oaks, and occassionally Linden Acres where homes are selling between $175k and $200k. The competition is fierce because of a lot of interest from mainly first time homebuyers who qualify for $200k or less. One of the great things about these neighborhoods (besides being beautiful, tree lined, established areas) is there are no Mello Roos assessments, which keeps the monthly payment lower when impounding taxes.

At this time, sellers in The State Streets and Woodmore Oaks have a lot of competition to purchase their homes. At the same time, they can get into a newer, larger home for $225k on up in Southport. In the $210k - $375k price range there is less competition among buyers. In fact, I recently helped a buyer close on a 3bd/2ba for $195k in the Bridgeway Islands neighborhood of Southport. In the Bridgeway Lakes neighborhood, 2500+sqft homes are going for $275k and up and there is even less competition for these homes. In the Parella Unit, Newport Estates, and River Landing it's the same story.

So, is it a good time to buy up in West Sacramento? YEP! You can get a newer home with no worries about outdated electrical and plumbing, more square feet and storage, contemporary floorplans, dual pane windows, lifetime roofs, and all the other great features of a newer home. Note: on most of these newer home communities, there are Mello Roos assessments, but not all. So, if you're a buyer thinking of selling your smaller home and getting into a larger, newer one or your an out-of-area Realtor looking for a referral agent, I am the West Sac expert, ready to help you through the process! Happy New Year....

Hey, sometimes it happens. You get locked out of your house. I've done it twice and have put a system in place so it never happens again. The first time I tried to crawl in my second-story window. Except my ladder wasn't high enough, and I had to jump from the top rung. Not to mention, tear out my screen. I could have killed myself.

The second time I was taking out the trash late at night. The trash can was in my attached garage. I wasn't appropriately dressed to seek help, either, because I was wearing a nightgown. Opened the side door to the garage, and when I heard it click behind me, my heart sank. I knew it was locked. Did I want to sleep in the cold garage? Or did I want to knock on my neighbor's door and ask him to kick in my back door? I suppose it could have been worse; I could have been naked.

Last night, the seller of my new West Sacramento short sale listing called. Her home was on Lyon broker tour yesterday. An agent, in an attempt to secure the home, no doubt, locked her door to the garage. The seller, I discovered, doesn't carry a key with her. She had already driven over to our Lyon office in West Sacramento, but the lights were out and the place deserted.

I called an agent I know at the Lyon West Sacramento office, but received her voice mail. I thought about jumping in my car and driving over there myself, but it would have taken me at least 20 minutes from my home in Land Park.

Instead, I pulled up the Lyon website, plucked a friendly looking face from the West Sacramento office and called a Lyon agent at random, Patt Kregelo. Patt was driving home from the grocery store, 5 minutes away from my listing, and she offered to run over there. I added that if she hadn't yet seen this home, perhaps it would be a good time to preview it, but Patt had frozen food in the car. See, this is the thing about our vast network of Lyon real estate agents, even if we don't know each other, we stick together. Thank you, Patt, if you're reading this, for helping me out. I really appreciate it. So does the seller.

For the rest of you, though, to avoid getting locked out of your own house, you should hide a key somewhere on your property. If you don't have an extra key, get one made today and hide it. Consider a place in the garage. For about $30, you can attach an outside wireless garage door keypad, which will let you open the overhead garage door by entering a code on the keypad.

You can also give a key to your neighbor. Or buy one of those fake rocks for keys, put the key inside and hide the rock in the garden. Just let me say that I've already had a reason to use my hidden key. The trick for me was remembering where I hid it. Plus, if you don't think that you'll ever get locked out of your house, just wait.

As I was driving to West Sacramento yesterday to take a listing in Bridgeway Island, a buyer's agent called. Just for the record, I wasn't pulling a Maria Shriver, I was wearing my Jawbone. He asked about a Sacramento short sale home that I have listed and wanted to know how much his buyer would have to offer to buy it.

I explained that his buyer would have a running chance if the agent ran the comparable sales and based the purchase offer on the comps. This is the same procedure an agent would use for a listing that is not a short sale. The agent got huffy with me. "I'm an old man," he said, "and I've been in the business for 46 years. I don't have time for this."

His poor buyer. He's apparently working with an agent who doesn't have time to do the job the buyer hired him to perform. This is where the adage: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" comes into play. So I thanked him profusely for calling me, and was as polite as I could be while following a cement mixer down Jefferson.

Here is a new listing in West Sacramento. It's a 4 bedroom, 2 bath, with vaults, boasting almost 1900 square feet of pure joy, especially if you own pets. That's because the living room, dining area, kitchen and family room have upgraded ceramic tile floors. The tiles are larger than 12-inch, but I didn't measure them to determine if the tiles were 16-inch or 18-inch. The home was built by Forecast in 2001. It's a desirable one-story on a cul-de-sac with a view of the greenbelt.

The interior is absolutely immaculate. It's in move-in condition. The kitchen has an island, the counters are ceramic tile and there's a breakfast nook that overlooks the incredibly landscaped back yard.

You'll love the spacious master suite, which is almost 20 feet. Plus, it has outside access to the back yard. The master bath has double sinks, ceramic tile floor, a separate tub, shower stall and a huge walk-in closet with organizers.

As I was leaving, the seller mentioned that she found me at my Homebuying About.com site when she Googled "short sale." When she read my article -- which ranks #2 at Google, right behind Wikipedia -- she discovered that I was a Sacramento short sale agent and was delighted when she realized that my office is in Midtown. See, Lyon Real Estate has 18 offices in the Sacramento area, and we have an office in West Sacramento, too. So, this seller gets the advantage of a For Sale Sign on her lawn that sports our West Sacramento office phone number, and she gets her home on tour with our Midtown office over the river, plus my cell phone number on a sign rider. Dual coverage. It doesn't get any better than that.

3044 Sherman Island Road, West Sacramento, CA 95691

Offered as a short sale exclusively by Lyon Real Estate at $235,000

Elizabeth Weintraub, 916.233.6759

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

Are you thinking of buying a condo? Have you ever considered a loft? This is the new up-in-coming way of living Downtown Sacramento and in West Sacramento.

Recently, I helped a buyer buy a new loft from a builder in West Sacramento at Ironworks. The reason why you want to make sure and have representation by a Realtor and not the builder is that you can get more frankly, when you are represented. My recent home buyer got a heck of a deal and loves living in his new loft.

Currently, I have a second home buyer who was interested in purchasing a condo Downtown Sacramento but when I showed him these great looking lofts in West Sacramento he decided to have me negotiate the best deal for him at Ironworks. Smart idea...he too is getting one heck of a deal.

You can see a video by clicking Ever Considered Buying a Loft?

I suppose one of the reasons I am such a prolific blogger is that I spend so much time on hold working on short sales. I am currently negotiating six of them (with a total of 10 loans between them), so several times a week I spend a couple hours listening to hold music trying to get through to Loss Mitigation. I try to be as productive as possible, and often times in the absense of emails to respond to, listings to look up, home evaluations to do, Trulia Questions to answer, news to read, and websites to play on, I do a brain dump into my blog. It is almost theraputic.

Last week, I closed another one of my short sale listings after a very tumultuous time on the market. We were in contract a total of 3 times with 3 different buyers before one stuck. I had approval from both lenders within a couple weeks of receiving our first offer...I had tirelessly communicated with the buyer's agent while I was working with the lenders. The day I received written acceptance, the buyer's agent told me they had gone into contract on another property. ARRGGHH!

So, back on the market we went. A week or so later we had another offer...of course the approvals I had received from the lenders had an expiration date that presented an unrealistic time line for this new buyer, so I worked hard to get an extension. After about 2 weeks of waiting, that buyer got restless...2 days after that buyer cancelled, I received new approvals from the lenders. Again, ARRGGHH! I felt really bad for the sellers, who were trying to determine when to move...what a crazy up and down ride for them!

Back on the market...within another two weeks we had yet another offer. Again I had to go back to the drawing board with the lenders. Two weeks later I had written approval from the lenders - but this time they wanted the buyer to close escrow in 13 days (that's really fast!). The buyer threatened to walk away, saying that there was not enough time to close the escrow. After wrangling with the lenders, they agreed to extend the close of escrow...it finally closed escrow on November 7th.

One of the most frustrating elements in short sale transactions for me as a listing agent (aside from countless hours on hold), is the fact that you never really know if the buyer for your property is coming or going. The longest short sale negotiation I have done to date was 5.5 months, and that buyer really wanted the house and patiently waited throughout the entire process, while I have worked on others that were approved in just a couple weeks where they buyer skipped out. One thing I have learned to prep my sellers for is the fact that getting and KEEPING a qualified buyer is one of the most critical pieces in the transaction...and it is a piece we have zero control over. Luckily, I have worked with some wonderful clients who understand this and appreciate my efforts.

Well anyway, in the time it has taken me to write this post, I learned that one of my short sales was just recommended for approval!...woohoo!!!