Elizabeth Weintraub, Sacramento Short Sale Agent, Land Park, #00697006 Lyon RE

My husband said I was going to put this photo in my blog this morning. I don't know how he knew that. It wasn't my intention when I shot it. But this dog is just such a cute little thing. He's about 5 months old. My husband knows me so well. Yeah, I gotta share this photo. It's just too adorable. He is a schnauzer mix, maybe with chihuahua. I love dogs who are not purebreds because they are so unique. Not another like them, for the most part. But I love all dogs, big ones, small ones and those in between, purebred or not.

As a Sacramento short sale agent, I cannot have a dog. I am not home enough. It would not be fair to the dog. Cats yes, but not a dog. Plus, I have enough responsibility in my life. My short sales. They are pretty much all consuming and eat up most of my time and energy. When I am up at 5 AM, it's to write a blog, not to walk the dog. Certainly not to walk the dog in the rain. Every time it rains I am thankful I do not have a dog.

My neighbor across the street has dogs, and I can play with them. Plus, as I so often tell my clients, I am not at their house to list a short sale. I am there to interact with their pets. You can't have enough pets in your life. And you can't pet enough of them.

Unfortunately, this does not stop the occasional hate mail I get about selling a home with pets. People just don't get it. They think I am against having pets in your home, which is the furthest thing from the truth. I just want your house to sell. Not everybody shares my feelings and your sentiments about pets. Those who don't can sabotage your sale.

When I retire, I will let a dog adopt me.

Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub

Some short sale agents in Sacramento might forget whom they represent. In case you're wondering, if you're a listing agent, it's the seller. Because a listing agent has fiduciary with the seller and because MLS requires it, all offers received by the listing agent must go to the seller. Doesn't matter if it's a lowball offer. Doesn't matter if the buyer's agent pecked it out with a dead chicken's foot dipped into blood, all offers go to the seller.

I try to prepare my sellers for the onslaught of offers they will receive. It shocks some. But I send all offers to the seller because that's my job.

The problem that can happen is when a property attracts a lowball and the seller takes that lowball. Why would the seller take a lowball? Especially a lowball the seller does not believe the bank will accept? There are reasons. Maybe the property is close to auction. All bets are off at that point. Maybe the home is difficult to comp, and the seller wants to see what the bank will do. Maybe the seller is just plain tired of buyers traipsing through, you never know.

But the fact remains a lowball offer is a dangerous offer to send to the bank. As a Sacramento short sale agent, I advise against it. Because you can waste a lot of time if it's headed for rejection. Then, you're going back on the market, changing from active short contingent to active short. This makes buyers wonder what's wrong with the property.

But sometimes a lowball can pay off. Especially if that strategy attracts a higher, market value offer. In all real estate transactions, including short sales, the seller has the right to accept a backup offer. There is generally no point to submit a second offer to the bank. I rarely do it, if ever. It's just plain stupid for the most part. But if the offer that is submitted has almost a zero chance of acceptance, it can make sense to send a higher offer.

Buyer's agents, here is a tip for you when calling on status / progress of active short contingent listings. The question to ask a listing agent is whether the seller is happy with the offer that is submitted to the bank. Don't ask if the seller wants a backup. All sellers want a backup because backups don't really mean anything except to put a buyer's name into second position.

I had one such episode happen last week. A buyer's agent submitted a very-close-to-market-value offer on a home that was active short contingent. The seller was in escrow with a lowball offer, which almost never happens. The seller authorized his agent to send the new offer to the bank. But first, I suggested that we give the existing buyers the opportunity to match it. They got first right of refusal, which was only fair. But the buyers rejected it. This means if it had been the bank demanding a higher price, those buyers would have fled like termites exposed to sunlight. We were better off without them.

And see, this is what makes me a good short sale agent.

Would this home have sold at the same price if we had left it on the market and did not take that initial lowball? Maybe not. People seem to want what other people want.

For more information, read: If a seller accepts an offer, can another buyer outbid us?

What makes people choose a certain real estate agent? God knows we've got enough of 'em in California, for example. With so many agents, what criteria do people use to select the right agent? Well, I'm gonna tell ya. Nine times out of 10 they pick the agent who is there at the time they need an agent. I'm serious. You could be a joker, a smoker, a midnight toker who gets her lovin' on the run, and they'd pick ya.

As a Sacramento short sale agent, I run an ad in the Sacramento Bee every week. Except for yesterday because the Bee messed up and didn't print it for some reason. Gotta love those graphic guys over there. Other agents tell me it's a no-hands-down choice in the Bee among the other agents who advertise. I'm the best agent, my peers say. It would appear that I have more experience than anybody else.

You can't go anywhere online without finding my smiling face chatting about Sacramento short sales. I hold a number of top spots in Google searches for short sales. That's probably because I've written more than 100 articles about short sales, which is almost as many deals that I closed last year.

So why does anybody pick me as an agent, I wondered? Well, a few days ago, a buyer called to say she wanted to work with me and my team because we're girls. Meaning, we're not guys. In her mind, I suppose, we're not even women, we are girls. Why? Because guys are just so guy-sy. There's that reason and then the fact her guysy-guy did not give her a preapproval letter. I figured we'd give her guy-sy-guy a referral fee, and we checked into the situation. There are always two sides to every story. Turns out, her FICO is below 600.

Other people pick me because they think I am Jewish. It's my husband's surname. I relate to Jewish people. Some people say I have a kind face, and I probably do. I believe I'm a kind person. Still, others say they like the fact that I grew up in the Midwest and not California. As though my childhood instilled a different sort of ethics / integrity, although I don't think it's all that different from anybody anywhere else who grew up in the 1950s.

You just never know why a person picks an agent. I'd like to believe it's because I'm the best damned short sale agent in Sacramento, but that doesn't always come into play.

If I am to alienate anybody with my blog this morning, let's start out with a joke I heard. OK, a conservative, a moderate and a liberal walk into the bar. The bartender says Hello, Mitt.

Now we move to lawyers. First, let me say that many, many of my clients are lawyers. I'm not really sure why but I imagine it's because I tend to think first, act second. I don't go around clicking on every "like" button I see. But maybe it's because I like lawyers that I have so many as clients. Or, perhaps we have too many darn lawyers in the world, just like real estate agents.

Did you know that in California almost one person in every 35 people has a real estate license? That's a disgusting number!

Some of my clients hire a lawyer to do a short sale. Some do it upfront and others do it toward the end. I encourage it. For one thing, I am not a lawyer. I can't give legal advice. I can't tell you how many times a client has told me she understands that I can't give legal advice but . . . what about this, that, or the other thing? She's not asking for advice, she's asking for my opinion. Sorry, she's asking for legal advice. I can lose my real estate license for giving legal advice. Do you want me to lose my license, is that what you are suggesting?

I have no qualms sharing with short sale sellers what kind of red flags they should look for, what might possibly happen. And then I say, "Get legal advice because you can't count on anything I just told you as I am not qualified to give you legal advice." Go talk to a lawyer. What is $200 or $2,000 or whatever as compared to the rest of your life? As compared to a deficiency judgment? As compared to thousands of dollars in taxes?

One of my clients asked yesterday why her best friend spent $900 for a divorce but my client's short sale, because she hired a lawyer, cost her three times as much. She wanted to know which was more work. A divorce or a short sale?

Hands down, I'm telling ya, it's the short sale. I would know. I've been divorced 4 times. As a Sacramento short sale agent, I've closed tons of short sales, and a short sale is a lot more work than a divorce. A short sale involves a lot more people. It's more painful. It's more time consuming. But at least -- unlike a divorce -- you're only gonna do it once. So, do it right.

If I think you need a lawyer, you can bet I will tell you. Not every seller in California does, unlike other parts of the country in which lawyers are mandatory. We have SB 458 and CA Civil Code 580e in California. Plus, some short sales are easier than others. But every short sale seller needs legal advice. You can't get legal advice from your short sale agent. If your agent tries to give you legal advice, you better fire your agent.

There are a lot of agents in Sacramento who watch what I do and copy me. I'd say these guys are pretty smart. Because what I do works. I prove it over and over. As a Sacramento short sale agent, I like to believe I'm fairly competent and good at my job. So, if I tend to set the standard for what a short sale agent should do to be successful, that's OK. I don't mind agents using my methods. I freely share because we're all in this boat together.

Last year I did almost 100 transactions. I'll probably exceed that number this year. Every time I close a short sale, I learn something from it. I analyze it. I think about it. I figure out what caused problems during the transaction and come up with solutions so I don't have to face those situations a second time. Call me silly, but this process makes sense to me. Why would I want to repeat a headache?

I'm not one of those agents who bangs her head back and forth in doorways because it feels so good to stop.

One of the larger problems I've seen lately originate with the preapproval letters from lenders. They've always been sorta worthless, but some of them should never have been written. It's way too easy for a mortgage broker to type a borrower's name into a template and print out a preapproval. There is no guarantee that the mortgage broker has qualified the borrower in the least. It doesn't mean the borrower has filled out a loan application. It doesn't even mean the mortgage broker has checked the borrower's credit report.

And don't get me started on mortgage brokers who try to wear two hats and work as a real estate agent, too . . .

Nobody wants to go through the waiting period for short sale approval and get rejected in underwriting. Not me, not the sellers, and not even the buyers. But it happens more often than you would imagine. And sometimes, the file is rejected or kicked out of underwriting for simple red flags that should have been noted at the time of the preapproval letter. Things like low FICO scores, derogatory credit, not enough time on the job.

I work darn hard for my sellers. I submit offers the bank will take. I produce short sale approval letters drawn from blood, sweat and tears. We survive the home inspection without repairs. But when that file goes to underwriting, my sellers and I want to be relatively assured that all of our efforts were not in vain. We want to close. We don't want to hear the buyer has been rejected by underwriting because the buyer was never fully qualified to buy a home in the first place. I know how those REO agents feel when they require preapproval letters from a major lender over a mortgage broker, and I know why.

That's why we request a full DU (desktop underwriting) from the buyer's lender to accompany that short sale offer. It doesn't disclose everything, but it gives a pretty good snapshot. Did you know that a desktop underwriting finding can result in a preliminary Fannie Mae approval even though the FICO scores might be too low to qualify for a conventional loan? It's true. You can't just assume because the buyer has a DU approval that the buyer will be approved, either. You need to read between the lines, apply critical thinking.

Many mortgage brokers do not even run a DU prior to issuing a preapproval letter. How do I know that? Because I have a desk full of preapproval letters with dates that precede the DU. What does that tell you? They're putting the cart before the horse. Not on my watch.