The only person I've ever known who truly loved winter down to the core of her very soul was my mother. She adored winter. She loved the way the sun's glint reflecting off frozen windswept snowdrifts could blind a person. How sub-zero temperatures could cause metal earrings to sting one's earlobes and make the nostril hairs inside one's nose hang like icicles. She's dead now. That's what loving winter does to you.

Me, not so much. I'm not a big fan of winter. In fact, I grew up believing that California and Hawaii were among some of the best places to live in America. Notwithstanding how expensive Hawaii is, that makes Sacramento a dream destination with affordable housing and friendly people. We enjoy mild winters, too, a little snow in the foothills, but for most of the season, I don't even wear a coat.

The biggest problem with winter where I live in Land Park is frost. When those temperatures dip in to the 30s, some of the plants in my garden don't make it. Especially the cacti and succulents. I lost several gorgeous cactus plants last year, and am bound and determined it's not going to happen again this year.

Enter the picture: water wells. I had totally forgotten that we had a stack of these frost protectors in our garden shed. My husband and I used these to get an early start on growing tomatoes when we lived in Minnesota. They worked great. We could get a 30-day jump on everybody else by setting out our tender plants in late April and surrounding them with water wells. Didn't matter if it snowed or temperatures dropped, our plants were protected.

This year, I am protecting my cacti and succulents from frost and have already set up my water wells. See the photo above of my Land Park cactus garden. They look sort of weird, like aliens have taken over the garden, but I'm not losing my plants again this year. Here is a place where you can get them online. This gardening company calls them tomato teepees.

The water wells are made from plastic and feature individual chambers that hold water. So, if one of the chambers is punctured by a cactus thorn and leaks, the rest of them remain intact. They work by absorbing heat from the sun during the day and keeping the plants warm. The secret to filling them is to place a 5-gallon bucket over the plant, put the water well around it and, after it's filled, pick up the bucket. I'll report back in the spring.

Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub

I don't have any problem with multi-tasking except when facing certain types of death-related circumstances. While some people can't walk and chew gum at the same time, I routinely multi-task. It's often the only way to get things done during the day.

For example, I might be brushing my teeth while talking on my cell. It's easy. You can do it, too. You just move the Jawbone off your chin so it doesn't transmit the sound of robust brushing and talk with your mouth full of toothpaste. So what if some toothpaste dribbles down your shirt? It's a small price to pay for doing 2 things at the same time.

I often work simultaneously on 2 computers with multiple windows open. It would be nice if MetroList had the common sense God gave a chimp and worked on cross-platforms, but our Sacramento MLS requires an Internet Explorer browser, so I need to use a PC at times. MetroList doesn't interact well with Java. I'd say 10% of the time when I request a report from MetroList, it freezes, submits a Microsoft error message and then closes out my browser.

While I'm waiting for it to reopen, I can then turn my attention back to my trusty Mac and focus on another project such as firing off a heated email to MetroList, explaining that it needs to fix this problem, which I then delete because I know what the response will be. MetroList will say the problem is on my end, yet when I go to the office and use the computers in our workroom, I get the same error message. It's the price I pay for being forced to work in a PC environment.

Instead of focusing on the irritating nature of MetroList, I prefer to look at how fortunate I am that we have Apple in this world. My Mac Pro makes my life enjoyable and happy. And it gets even better. This month I'll be able to access WinForms on my Mac. Go WinForms. There is always a rainbow in a rainstorm if you look hard enough for it.

Case in point, while driving down Business 80 yesterday, I was talking to a Sacramento seller who is considering a short sale. I meant to exit on 26th Street but for some reason got off on south 99 instead. OK, I was writing down an address and driving. But in my defense, let me say that I wasn't looking at my notepad, I was looking at the road and probably writing on my thigh. The exit to 99 is one huge and very long curve. I said to the caller, "I have the distinct feeling that I should be focusing at the moment on navigating this curve on the freeway exit and should not be writing down your address."  She agreed.

She then told me that when she bought this home, she had planned to put down 20% but her agent had advised her to keep her powder dry and use that cash for repairs. So, she took out an 80/20 combo loan through Countrywide, and now her home is underwater. (Ack. Countrywide, the worst short sale to do.) Bear in mind, I pointed out, she would still be underwater whether or not she had put down 20% because values in that neighborhood have fallen more than 50%.

Moreover, it's actually a good thing that she had financed 100% of the purchase price. If she hadn't, and she had taken out a home equity loan for the repairs, she could possibly be facing a deficiency judgment on that second loan right now.

So, that was an excellent move. She has her former agent to thank for that suggestion. It's the silver lining in this situation. It could be worse. Suddenly, the caller felt much better about calling a Sacramento short sale agent. And if I can make my potential client's day better, you know what, mine is better, too.

Believe it or not, some home buyers are having a very difficult time buying a short sale in Sacramento these days. You might ask yourself, why is that? Is it because the Sacramento market has limited inventory, which is causing buyers to compete with each other for some of the same homes? Or because lenders are tightening the belt in underwriting and kicking out loans for the slightest discrepancy?

In part, but not in whole.

I propose that the 2 biggest problems buyers face in a short sale situation are pricing and patience. Some buyers don't want to wait for short sale approval because their buyers' agents, for whatever reason, did not properly counsel them and explain that short sales can take, on average, 3 to 4 months to get approved. As a Sacramento short sale agent, when I am working with buyers, as opposed to sellers, I suggest that buyers sign a short sale addendum, which contains a date that is 120 days out.

Some home buyers believe they can demand that the lender quickly respond to their offer. It's not gonna happen. Threats don't work. There is a procedure for the short sale process and, along the way, it can get delayed for reasons out of the listing agent's control. Negotiators quit their jobs, they may become ill or misplace the file, or the PSA, worried over its tax-exempt status, could issue autocratic ultimatums, which then require further negotiation.

The key is patience. Buyers who wait for short sale approval generally receive it. That's evidenced by the growing number of short sales I am closing in Sacramento.

As for pricing, sometimes buyer's agents do not look at the comparable sales or, if they do happen to glance at them, they can't interpret them. In many cases, the short sale price a buyer sees advertised is not the real price. Because unless the bank has already issued approval, known as an approved short sale, it's up to the bank to select the price. And that price is based on comparable sales. Knowing what the bank is likely to accept is not really a big secret or a scary, unknown factor.

An agent called me a few days ago, asking about the price her buyer may need to offer to get that short sale offer accepted. I suggested she look at the comps, because that's where the answer is, staring her right in the face. She argued that some of the homes in that neighborhood sold for less than my seller's sales price and the square footage of those homes were larger. Therefore, she concluded, our short sale price was too high, and she believed her buyers should offer less than asking.

Did she happen to note that a few homes with identical square footage and upgrades as the subject property recently sold for $25,000 more? I guess her eyes wandered all over those comps instead of zeroing in on the exact models. It's like this, say you've got 3 red apples and 12 green apples for comps. The home you want to buy is a red apple. Which is a comparable sale? A green apple or a red apple? Which homes do you think the short sale bank will use as comparable sales?

Now that homebuyers no longer feel pressured to buy a home before the home buyer tax credit expires (because it was extended to April 30, 2010), it seems that the market is a teeny bit quieter in Sacramento. Usually Mondays are the worst day of the week, phone-wise. My cellphone tends to ring constantly on Mondays, generally because buyers are out over the weekend looking at homes. But yesterday, it was eerily silent.

In fact, I mentioned to my husband over lunch that my phone hadn't rung once. Was the market slowing down? He asked me if it was turned on. Duh. Of course, it's turned on because it asked to connect me to my Jawbone. It's illuminated. It's on. See? I showed him my phone. Oh. No bars. Somehow, and don't ask me how, I had managed to turn off my wireless connection. Holy crap. Four hours of phone messages.

I often get asked by media whether the short sale market in Sacramento is improving or getting worse; i.e., meaning is it taking longer to get short sale approval or are the banks and PSAs starting to get their acts together. It depends on which banks we're talking about. If it's a Wachovia short sale, the length of time to wait for short sale approval is still the same -- about a week.

If it's a Bank of America short sale or, worse, the loan originated at Countrywide, it's at least 90 days but it could be 6 to 9 months before approval. Aurora used to be better than it is now. Last spring approval came from Aurora within 6 weeks. I've got a handful of Aurora short sales now that are dragging. Last week, an Aurora negotiator told me that the 60-day approval we expected to receive next week is being pushed to 120 days out.

Lovely. Because CitiMortgage, which holds a second on this property, just issued short sale approval. It is set to expire in 2 weeks. On this particular short sale, Aurora holds the first. I emailed the negotiator to ask him why CitiMortgage would give us only a 2-week window on the approval letter when we don't have approval from the first lender, Aurora. Because this is an all-cash transaction, the buyer could perform, but we aren't going anywhere without Aurora's blessings.

His response? Because we should have had approval from Aurora by now. What was he smoking? His response inferred that we somehow dropped the ball, which is nuts. As a busy yet organized Sacramento short sale agent, I manage the short sale process like a gorilla.

I sense that CitiMortgage is now disguising its approval letters. I mean, the thing looks like an approval for a certain dollar amount, but CitiMortgage is really asking for more money. In this letter, CitiMortgage demanded a 2-week escrow but will agree to extend if it receives an 11% premium on the short-pay. It's not a large amount, about $5,000. So the true payoff is about $5,550. A $550 difference. Which the buyer shouldn't have to pay.

We quickly amended the HUD-1 to reflect the true demand from CitiMortgage and sent it off to Aurora. And this is how an escrow that was slated for approval next week will be pushed to January. But hey, at least my cellphone is working again.

Part of my success in real estate is due to paying attention to my intuition and purposely scrutinizing the emotional impact of homes, especially as an agent selling homes in such landmark neighborhoods in Sacramento as Land Park and East Sacramento. These tree-canopied areas feature many older, classic homes, and each is generally unique, loaded with history. I can feel it. It's like a sixth sense or something.

If you don't get a vibe when you walk into a home, it's probably because you're not receptive to it. I think everybody has the ability to do it. Some people probably don't care.

I felt it years ago when I entered Notre Dame, that magnificent 13th-century Gothic cathedral in Paris. It was as though all the laughter and tears over hundreds and hundreds of years were still present inside those stone walls, preserved, yet faint. The massive volume of history lingering in that structure was almost overwhelming. Centuries of hope, fear, anger, lust and faith, all coming together in one spot. Simply incredible.

Now, my new listing in East Sacramento is not a cathedral, but it's brimming with history. This delightful cottage was built in 1930 and is located just east of 35th Street. This is a home in which I can sense much happiness over the decades. It's cheerful. It smiles at you from the curb. From its pretty red porch to the hand-crafted slated pillars and adorable white shutters, it makes you feel like you want to hug it hello.

Of course, it features original hardwood flooring and vintage light fixtures, but I predict that the layout of this home and its generous living spaces will hold a lot of appeal to East Sacramento buyers. Another welcome benefit is the size of the yard and its extra-deep lot. You'll discover many fruit trees, rose gardens and, yes, even grapes, with plenty of space for children to play and dogs to romp. You can also barbecue hot dogs and hamburgers with your friends on the raised wood deck.

It has 2 bedrooms, one of which boasts a built-in Murphy bed. So, you could use this room as a spare office and pull down the bed when company arrives. If you need a full-time office, the dining room at present is utilized as a home office. You're not giving up dining space if you use the room for that purpose because the living room is so huge it could easily accommodate a dining room table. Moreover, you'll find more room for a table in the massive kitchen as well.

To survive our hot Sacramento summers, the home has central heat and air, a feature that's often hard to find in this price range in East Sacramento. The pest report has been cleared, and it has a newer roof. You won't have to buy any appliances because it comes with a refrigerator, electric range, built-in gas oven and dishwasher. Best of all, you'll also get an inside laundry complete with a washer and dryer. No more trips to the laundromat. On top of that, there is a one-car garage, too.

It has everything a first-time home buyer could want in a home, including fresh paint and ceiling fans. You don't have to do a thing but move in and create your own family history in this fabulous East Sacramento cottage. Did I mention it's offered at an extremely affordable price? There is no loan; the sellers own this free and clear. It's been in the family for decades. No short sale, no foreclosure here. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916-233-6759 or your own East Sacramento agent for a private showing today.

See a virtual tour and more photographs of 1723 Santa Ynez Way, Sacramento, CA 95816

Offered exclusively by Lyon Real Estate at $314,900

East Sacramento listing agent, Elizabeth Weintraub, 916-233-6759.

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

Whenever my neighbor goes on vacation, she asks me to watch her house and pick up the mail from her front steps. This is such a quaint custom in Land Park -- throwing mail on the porch when there's too much or it's too big to stuff into the mail slot. Mail carriers in other parts of Sacramento often stick oversized mail inside the screen door, but not here. Our mail is tossed on the porch like a dead squirrel.

When my neighbor's husband was killed suddenly in a tragic car accident on the W-X freeway, my husband and I were there for her. We invited her grieving family over to our home for dinner, attended the funeral and the year-later celebration. We shared photos of our vacations, vegetables from our gardens and stories of our days.

I had listed her Land Park home a while back. After a few weeks of showings, she asked why her home wasn't selling, and I leveled with her. She needed to take down the paneling in the living room, remove her heavy drapes from the windows and install plantation shutters, take up the carpeting and refinish the hardwood floors, scrape the acoustic ceiling, and paint everything in tones of coffee and cream.

We took the listing temporarily off the market, she hired contractors and did the work. Her home was transformed. Afterward, I sensed that something was bothering her, so I asked what was wrong. She blurted out: "My home is so beautiful I no longer want to sell it." That's all right. I understood. I canceled the listing. It's common for people to feel seller's remorse. Besides, I was relieved she wasn't moving.

My neighbor called yesterday. She asked if I could take a break and come over. Something was up. We talked about her recent vacation. She showed me photos of her granddaughter. Then she dropped the bomb. It was prefaced by: "I don't want you to be mad," and I knew what was coming. Yup, her daughter in Los Angeles knows this guy, a friend of her uncle's cousin or something. He has a real estate license. About 1 in every 35 people in California has a real estate license.

There will be no for sale sign in the yard. And if he can't sell her home in a few months, she'll give the listing to me. This plan makes about as much sense as banging your head against a wall because it feels so good when you stop. Her daughter wants the business to stay in the family. After all, she says, this guy sold one home this year, a home south of Florin in a week. To her daughter, he's perfectly qualified to sell homes in Land Park because he is family. She doesn't believe they need a Land Park agent yet, much less an agent who has already sold $11 million this year.

You know what? Friends come first. Even misguided friends. I don't need to take every listing on my street. Seven years ago, when I moved to Land Park, I might have felt differently, but not today. So, I hugged her, promised to get her information on transferring her tax base and went home, feeling very sad that my friend is moving away. I'm going to miss her.

Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub

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