Elizabeth Weintraub, Sacramento Short Sale Agent, 916.233.6759, Lyon RE

I closed a couple more escrows in Sacramento yesterday. One was in Natomas, which was a Wachovia short sale, and I represented the seller. The other was for buyers who had spent a long time looking at homes in Land Park until I suggested they consider a particular home that met their needs. The negotiations for that home were a bit tough because the buyers were not paying anywhere near the list price, and we ran into a snag at closing because the seller could not wire funds to escrow before the buyers' loan lock expired, but we closed on schedule.

This was a situation in which the seller paid to close. It wasn't a short sale. And the home wasn't upside down. It most likely would have sold for more if it had been priced right in the first place, but it wasn't. After a home sits on the market for a while, it begins to lose its desirability, especially in Land Park. When you have an overpriced listing and it's dated, Land Park agents often stop showing those homes.

I stood on the front steps, waiting for the buyers. It was a tad brisk, the sun was sinking, leaves twirled in the street. From the porch, I could see the home my former neighbors had renovated one street over. All the homes on this street are unique, filled with vintage details, oozing architectural detail, some dating back to the Roaring 20s. I imagined horse-drawn carriages clip-clopping down the street through the leaves. Then my buyers pulled up.

It's hard to know which person in a couple should receive the keys, so I always ask, because often it's not the person I spend the most time talking to throughout the transaction. When I handed the keys to the wife, her eyes teared up, and she had this expression on her face like her heart had stopped. This home was absolutely her dream, and it was now a reality. These are the moments that add the icing to the cake in my profession.

Her husband turned to thank me and said the reason they chose me to help them buy a home in Land Park was because being a Land Park agent is not just a job to me. They chose me because I am passionate about my job, because I love what I do and, apparently, it shows.

It made me think back to my childhood. When I was about 7, I turned a sandbox into a playhouse. Decorated it with curtains, and furnished it with miniature chairs and a plastic kitchen table. At that age, I used to grab scraps of drywall from nearby construction and draw floorplans in the street. One day my sister sat in the street clutching her teddy bear and watching me draw a house. I drew bedrooms and put in doorways.

After I finished, I wanted to go play in the woods, but my sister was reluctant to come because she didn't want to drag her teddy bear along. Hey, I told her, we'll just put your teddy bear in the bedroom and go. So, she left it in the street. Needless to say, it wasn't there when we came back.

Life coach experts say that if you're struggling with life decisions -- trying to figure out what kind of job you should do, what your calling is in life -- you should look at your childhood because the answers are there. I went into real estate full-time in my mid-20s. I've completed countless college courses in real estate, worked as a title searcher, escrow officer, real estate agent and real estate broker; I have owned my own brokerage in Newport Beach, years before moving to Sacramento and joining Lyon Real Estate.

I've been through down markets, rising markets, crazy high-interest rate markets, had good times and times that I struggled, but I could not imagine myself doing anything else apart from real estate. I think it's the best job in the world.

An agent asked me yesterday, "How come every time I call you, you're so upbeat and chipper?" Well, because I am doing what I love. Because I have a choice in my attitude. Because I can make a difference in other people's lives by helping them to sell or buy a home. And because after all these years, I'm good at it. Real estate is my calling. What's not to be happy about?

In this life, most of us learn to take the good with the bad. The bad is carrying a bag of used cat litter through the family room and having the bottom fall out of the bag. The good is reading Lyon Real Estate's Trendgraphix press release, which announced this morning that pending short sales are continuing to rise in Sacramento.

As a Sacramento short sale agent, an increase in pendings shows me that more banks are approving short sales. That's great news. In our MLS, we have 3 basic ways the status of a short sale before closing can be displayed. The first is an "active short sale," which means the home is offered for sale, probably at an artificially low price and subject to bank approval. The second is "active short contingent," which means the seller has accepted an offer and all parties are waiting for bank approval. The third is "pending," which means the bank has accepted the buyer's offer.

Illustrated in the chart above, in August of 2008, we had 217 short sales pending in the Sacramento area. By October of 2009, that number leaped to 953 pending short sales. With the exception of a slight increase in inventory last month, the number of homes for sale as a short sale has been falling since March. When we have fewer homes for sale and continued strong interest from buyers, we're in a seller's market, but that applies primarily to the entry-level market and not to the upper-priced homes for sale.

What I find particularly interesting is that the overall activity in the $200,000 to $400,000 market (of all homes for sale, not just short sales) is steadily increasing this year, while the percentage of homes that sell under $200,000 is falling. For example, in March of 2009, 34% of all home sales in Sacramento sold between $200,000 and $400,000. Last month, that percentage jumped to 40%.

Here is how the October sales activity in Sacramento breaks down:

• Inventory increased 2%
• Homes sold in Sacramento under $200,000: 54%
• Homes sold in Sacramento between $200,000 and $400,000: 40%
• Homes sold in Sacramento over $400,000: 5%

What this means for Sacramento home buyers is if you're planning to buy a home over $400,000, the market is wide open for you, and those prices are soft. But if you're buying a home under $400,000, expect to fight with other buyers for the same home, regardless of whether that home is a short sale.

Image: Trendgraphix, used with permission.

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.

My husband is a savvy shopper, always looking for bargains and buying stuff on sale. Thank goodness he's not into those big discount chains and coming home with armloads of toilet paper. I've been to homes where the bathtub was the only place left to stash an oversupply of toilet paper. But he does tend to buy larger quantities of an item when it's on sale.

He was thrilled when he discovered that Target over on Broadway had Fancy Feast on sale. Our older cat, Brandon, loves Fancy Feast canned cat food. Turkey and Giblets. Maybe he's a Thanksgiving cat at heart? He turned up his nose at the other types of wet cat food we've tried to feed him, all of which smell nauseating but appear to be culinary delights for a cat.

My husband was so thrilled with Target's sale prices that he bought a couple of cases of canned Fancy Feast. Except they weren't Turkey and Giblets. Some were chicken and grilled beef. Maybe he was hungry when he went to the store? His explanation was he thought that Brandon would like a choice among a variety of flavors.

No, he wouldn't. Cats dislike change. They don't need variety in their diet. Once a cat has established that he likes a particular type of cat food, that's what you give him. Brandon expects the same food in his bowl, day-in and day-out. It fulfills a basic need that he can count on. Until the day comes when he changes his mind, and then he will let me know because he'll stop eating it and demand something else.

People are resistant to change as well. Sometimes, the older they get, the more stuck in their ways they become. Few roll with the punches. Some gripe, complain, snarl. Many have a routine, and they repeat that routine day after day. Change can be frightening.

I'm sort of an abnormality and buck the tide. I embrace change. I'm constantly searching for ways to improve things -- by remodeling my home, remodeling my car, remodeling myself, even. As a Sacramento short sale agent, I'm also constantly looking for ways to improve communication and speed up the short sale process. I believe communication is key.

Which brings me to my point. I have created a link to my website that now displays, in real-time, the activity on my Sacramento short sales. I refer buyer's agents to the site, which has dramatically reduced the amount of time I used to spend on my cell yakking about them. Clients can go there, too, to check the status of their short sales. Plus, the link is accessible by my associates who can post updates on the site as well.

Best of all, it's free. Any real estate agent can set up a reporting system such as this and publish it to a website through Google Docs. Check it out. Just go to Elizabeth Weintraub's website and look at the lower-left menu. It's the bottom link, called Short Sale Listing Status.

Photo: Brandon, in his Land Park home, by Elizabeth Weintraub

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