This Single-Story Pool Home in Roseville is Offered as a Short Sale at $315,000 - 02/28/10 08:51 AM
A certain number of buyers prefer a home with a pool, while other home buyers can take it or leave it. I suspect that's because some of those take-it-or-leave-it buyers have never owned a home with a pool and might think that taking care of a pool is too much of a hassle.
Well, if you've got deciduous trees over or near the pool, it can be more work than a pool that is located right out in the open. Or, if the pool is older, it might need to be resurfaced. But overall, pool maintenance is inexpensive. I know of … (6 comments)

Seven Red Flags About Program 3648 and Program HR 3648 Short Sales - 02/27/10 09:18 AM
Due to my high visibility online as a Sacramento short sale agent, I receive a lot of email spam, much of it centering on short sales. When I received an email from Program 3648, I deleted it, and all those that came after it. I mean, who calls itself Program 3648 or Program HR 3648 -- is this the X-Files?
But on Wednesday, I stopped to read one of these emails. The email aroused my suspicions because it talked about Administration Policy and promised full commissions on short sales, while naming a bunch of major lenders. I know that full commission … (70 comments)

Elizabeth Weintraub Picked Up 2 More Awards from Lyon Real Estate for 2009 - 02/26/10 09:36 AM
Lyon Real Estate always puts on a great annual awards ceremony. Even during a time when many real estate brokerages are hurting financially, closing up their doors, Lyon still takes care of its agents. Granted, yesterday's awards ceremony was not on par with the Cirque du Soleil act we enjoyed a few years ago, but it was still enjoyable.
They opened the presentations with a video, based on our theme of Winter Olympics. The Olympic flame was passed from one office to another, and we got to see our office mangers prancing through cubicles and running down sidewalks carrying a flaming … (16 comments)

Selling Homes in Land Park and Sacramento Short Sales Earned Weintraub an Award - 02/25/10 09:19 AM
The last time I won a third-place prize, I was probably about eight. Somewhere, I have an old newspaper. My mother was an editor in the 1950s at the Circulating Pines, which was a local newspaper in a suburb of Minneapolis. She put a story and a photo of my brother and me on the front page. I am holding in my lap a long-haired black cat named Spittsboo, sitting on the front steps of our childhood home in Circle Pines, Minnesota, next to my brother. He is holding a salamander on his shoulder.
I placed third in a pet contest. … (12 comments)

Putting Together the Pieces of a Short Sale Puzzle is Rewarding - 02/24/10 09:01 AM
Some mornings it's difficult to select one topic to write about. That's because so many things happen to this Sacramento short sale agent in one day. Since I generally write about my previous day's experiences, to pick just one situation is hard. I don't have time to write another book.
Do I write about the agent who sent me an offer on a short sale and included a copy of an earnest money deposit check dated in January? When I see red flags like that, I check my Supra website to see if the agent had even shown the property. Nope. … (11 comments)

Is a Monkey Negotiating Your Sacramento Short Sale? - 02/23/10 09:53 AM
Much of my work as a Sacramento short sale agent is handled through email. So, I almost had a heart attack when I turned on my computer this morning. My start-up programs loaded and I didn't have any emails. For a brief second, my heart about exploded. My immediate thought was my computer had malfunctioned, maybe my hard drive had been erased. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. I simply had too many emails coming in for the computer to immediately bring them up. I wasn't patient enough.
Many of those emails are one-liners that say: Thank you. Or will … (6 comments)

This Short Sale Has the Largest Lot For a 4 Bedroom in Natomas Northpointe at $189,000 - 02/22/10 08:40 AM
Sacramento short sale agents tend to form a list of favorite types of short sales to do, especially after we've closed a record number of them. The complexity of a short sale is generally based on the number of loans secured to the property, type of loan and the individual lender. My first favorite type of short sale, of course, is a Wachovia short sale. I work directly with the Wachovia short sale manager in Sacramento, and she makes my job pure joy. In fact, in the last two Wachovia short sales I closed, Wachovia gave the sellers big, fat, cash … (5 comments)

Sacramento Short Sale Buyers Have No Control Over a Short Sale, None, Zip, Nada - 02/21/10 09:47 AM
Hardly a day goes by that I don't receive an email from some frustrated short sale buyer asking me for advice on some transaction that I'm not involved in. Most of the scenarios are as follows: The buyer has been in escrow for months, waiting for approval, and nothing seems to be happening. They feel helpless, stymied, stonewalled and disheartened.
I know how short sale buyers feel, which is one of the reasons that as an experienced Sacramento short sale agent, I stay on top of my transactions. Not only do I post daily progress reports on my website that my … (11 comments)

I'll See Your Sacramento Closing and Raise You One Bank-Owned Home and Two Short Sales - 02/20/10 09:57 AM
At a young age, my father taught me three important things about life. How to bluff my way through a poker hand, catch fish by using a pole, line, bobber, hook and bait, and how to keep my head above water while swimming. In the case of the latter, he threw me out of the boat in the middle of the lake and told me to swim or drown. For added measure, he dumped our dog into the water. I didn't say he was a nice man.
Do you know what happens when you're in the water with a dog? The … (8 comments)

Urban Life Awaits You -- Downtown Sacramento 3-Bedroom Home for $329,000 - 02/19/10 09:28 AM
Let me just come out and say there is nothing like this on the market in downtown Sacramento. Here is a unique opportunity to buy that 3-bedroom, 2-bath home your heart has been searching for at an affordable price. If you crave an urban lifestyle, this is the home for you. Of course, it sits across the street from multiple-family housing but what doesn't in downtown Sacramento? That's part of the lifestyle. You get a mix of rentals, sometimes commercial, among residential homes. That's what attracts urban buyers to downtown.
Urban buyers want to live close to work, shopping and restaurants. … (6 comments)

Neighborhoood of Land Park Chosen for Yard Waste Collection Program - 02/18/10 09:29 AM
The City of Sacramento Department of Utilities has announced that Land Park residents are now eligible for the voluntary Containerized Yard Waste program. The way the City of Sacramento has set up the program, all the homes in Land Park are automatically enrolled in the program, unless you decide to opt out. Personally, I'm all for it, and I'll tell you why.
How many times have you been shaken awake by the annoying sound of that giant claw scraping the street? Do you admire the piles of dead leaves, tree branches and yard waste dumped in front of our Land Park … (6 comments)

Hyacinths are Blooming in Land Park, Sacramento - 02/17/10 09:02 AM
The problem for gardeners who live in places like Minneapolis is they are pretty much limited to pursuing their passion for only a few months out of the year. My love of gardening is one of the reasons I bought a home in Land Park, Sacramento, all those years ago. Living in Land Park means I don't have to grow seedlings on my dining room table for 12 weeks nor ruin the surface of said table. (Note to self: I still need to buy a new dining room table.) Living in Land Park means I can, for example, plant peas directly … (15 comments)

The Last Sacramento Short Sale Agent to Become a Free Dog - 02/16/10 09:28 AM
Two things in this universe that mean the most to me (outside of family and pets) are my MLS access and my Display Key. For what seems like an eternity now, I've been using a token, some screwy little device that continually changes a series of 6 digits, which I have to enter into a security box as my final step to access MLS. When MetroList first came out with this token, I discovered that it was possible to sign on to MLS without it by entering an emergency security word.
Every time I signed on without the token, I'd get … (10 comments)

Another Lincoln Crossing Short Sale Home is Offered at $208,000 - 02/15/10 08:45 AM
Buying a home these days is a little bit like buying a pair of shoes at Macy's. After listing a Sacramento short sale in Del Paso Manor last week, I stopped at Macy's in the Country Club shopping center on El Camino. Macy's was having a shoe sale, and I needed a few pairs of flat, brown shoes. Figured I'd grab them before the spring colors arrived.
The store was mobbed with buyers. There was one sales clerk to serve them, and he had one arm. OK, his arm was in a sling, but still. I picked up eight pairs of … (14 comments)

A Remarkable Short Sale Home in Del Paso Manor is Offered at $195,000 - 02/14/10 09:12 AM
Last Friday, I put first-time home buyers for Del Paso Manor into escrow. I had been showing them homes in this area for several weeks because Del Paso Manor was their targeted neighborhood. Del Paso Manor has the features they wanted: a neighborhood where homeowners know each other and are friendly, plus it's close to a park, schools, the Del Paso Country Club and the Country Club Shopping Center. Not to mention, Del Paso Manor is easily accessible from Highway 50 by going up Watt or Business 80 by driving down El Camino.
Yesterday, I took a new short sale listing … (4 comments)

The Friday Before Valentine's Day is Not the Best Time to Buy Candy at See's - 02/13/10 09:00 AM
I did a rare thing yesterday afternoon. I went to lunch with my husband. One of his freelance employers gave him a gift certificate to the L-Wine Lounge in Midtown Sacramento, so that's where we headed. Unfortunately, the L-Wine Lounge is no longer serving lunch, probably due to the situation with our state furloughs in Sacramento. So, we walked over to Celestin's Restaurant on K Street, which serves up fairly decent Caribbean and Cajun cuisine.
On the way, we passed 3 parking ticket payment machines. In all 3 instances, a person stood in front of the ticket dispenser reading the directions … (11 comments)

A Flood of Weintraub's Sacramento Short Sales Suddenly Have Approval - 02/12/10 09:11 AM
In an unexpected turn of events yesterday, I suddenly noticed that I have 9 Sacramento short sales in escrow. I usually don't count or track my sales, I just put them into escrow. All of these short sales are pending. A pending short sale is different from an active contingent short sale. When a short sale moves into pending status, it means the bank has approved the short sale.
Every day is like Christmas for me lately; because receiving a short sale approval letter is exciting. I don't care how many short sales I close over the years as a Sacramento … (12 comments)

Buyers Who Work With Elizabeth Weintraub Enjoy an Edge in the Land Park Market - 02/11/10 10:00 AM
One of the many reasons that buyers for homes in Land Park like to work with a Land Park agent like me -- apart from my sheer brilliance, snarky sense of humor, fastidious attention to detail and all-out modesty -- is because Lyon Real Estate routinely holds listings out of MLS for 72 hours. We offer these listings to our buyers before our competitors even know these Land Park homes are for sale. Yup, it's true, Elizabeth Weintraub's buyers often get first shot at buying a home in Land Park.
I walked through a soon-to-come new listing yesterday. This is an … (8 comments)

A Gambling Addiction Led to This Sacramento Short Sale - 02/10/10 08:31 AM
For a real estate agent, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, as it's referred to, is an important tool. If you've never read this book, it's fascinating because it explains psychiatric diagnoses and goes into excruciating detail. The DSM-IV is not exactly bed-time reading, but I do admit to having read parts of the book in bed.
As a Sacramento short sale agent, I work with a ton of people. Let's face it, much as I hate to say this, not all of them are without some sort of psychiatric disorder. I think real estate -- and … (10 comments)

Sacramento's Bank of America Short Sales Give Me Plenty to Blog About - 02/09/10 09:13 AM
Agents often ask me: how is it that I can write a daily blog? They want to know if I sit at my computer staring at a blinking cursor and wondering what to write. I suppose they wonder if I ever get writer's block. The answer to that question is in the negative, Spock. The thing that I struggle with on occasion is not that I have nothing to write about, it's which topic or situation I want to tackle. There are so many to choose from. Stuff happens every day. A lot of stuff.
The truth is I just write. … (9 comments)

Jim-Denny's is a Good Place to Go After a Funeral - 02/08/10 09:13 AM
Funerals make you hungry. Either that, or they make you cry. Last Saturday, I attended a funeral with my husband in downtown Sacramento. After the service, we went to Jim-Denny's Hamburgers Chili for lunch. This is a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that has been a 76-year tradition in Sacramento. We've been meaning to go there for years and, in fact, did stop by a few years ago but it was too crowded, so we left.
Now, if you go to a Catholic funeral, they generally feed you. But the funeral we went to was Lutheran. I actually have very little experience with … (11 comments)

Trying to Buy a Home in Sacramento Can Be Very Frustrating for Home Buyers - 02/07/10 09:57 AM
Whenever I leave the comfort of my home-based office, I try to plan my driving route to incorporate stops along the way so I can maximize my time. For example, if I need to drop off dry cleaning, I'll do it on my way to my midtown Lyon Real Estate office, rather than make a separate trip to the dry cleaners. That explains why I never have anything to wear.
Because I had to drive out the 99 freeway yesterday to put a lockbox on another Elk Grove short sale listing, I figured I'd stop at a few furniture stores on … (9 comments)

Do Sacramento Home Buyers and Sellers Want a Real Estate Agent Who Has Confidence? - 02/06/10 09:10 AM
For as long as I can remember, people have said that I intimidate them when meeting me for the first time. That kind of reaction is a bit puzzling to me. I mean, I'm no Darth Vader. I'm not a particularly threatening type of person in stature or appearance. People at the post office don't cross their forefingers and fall to the ground when they see me coming. Yet, I hear over and over that when people get to know me, their initial impression of me changes. I go from being threatening to gregarious, friendly and caring.
A Sacramento home buyer … (14 comments)

Reasons to Not Buy that Sacramento Foreclosure Flipper Home - 02/05/10 08:59 AM
The thing with buying a Sacramento foreclosure flipper home is you don't know what you are buying. A Sacramento first-time home buyer generally first views the home like this photo of pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream. The sellers might have staged that home. It can be enticingly beautiful but deceptive. You don't know what's under those granite counters and new paint job. You could press a fork into the pancakes and find it is raw in the center.
A home inspection won't necessarily disclose mold, but a buyer will be asked to sign a mold disclosure. The disclosure will inform … (11 comments)

A New Twist on Sacramento Short Sale Mortgage Fraud - 02/04/10 09:05 AM
All I can say is thank goodness Lyon Real Estate has hired a top-notch legal firm that its real estate agents can go to for advice. I realize the sentiment among agents in the real estate community is that lawyers always say no to questions because the liability is too great, but that's not necessarily true. Lawyers, believe it or not, try to find ways to make transactions close. But sometimes, it's impossible to find a work-around because the parties could be committing fraud.
As an experienced and trusted Sacramento short sale agent, it's my job to maintain my fiduciary relationship … (35 comments)

Although Sacramento Enjoys a Diverse Culture, Bigotry Still Exists - 02/03/10 08:49 AM
I get business one of two ways these days. Either people find me on the Internet or they are referred by previous clients. When I ask callers who found me on the Internet why they picked me, I often get the same answer. It's rarely because they believe I am brilliant, witty or experienced. Rats. They say it's because I have a friendly face.
If people are looking at the Lyon Real Estate website for Midtown Sacramento agents, my profile is all the way at the bottom. Because my last name is Weintraub, and it's sorted alphabetically. My office services primarily … (16 comments)

Sacramento Short Sale Agents Don't Get No Respect - 02/02/10 08:27 AM
There are days that I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. Well, not DEAD in the sense that Dangerfield is not around anymore. More along the lines of working my little tail off, only to discover that Sacramento short sale agents don't get no respect. We close transactions just like everybody else. But because we sell short sales, some people treat us like we're lepers.
You know what? I don't care. I'm not looking for respect. I respect myself plenty, thank you very much. My cats love me, and my husband is a saint. But don't come to me with an offer that's … (12 comments)

Some People Would Say if New Furniture Won't Fit in Your House, Why Not Buy a New Home - 02/01/10 09:20 AM
What I probably need is a personal shopper. See, I no longer clean my house, do laundry, grocery shop, prepare meals, mow the lawn, weed or water the gardens, run to Target, pay the bills -- those chores are done for me. And, it's actually a bit inconvenient that I have to put gas in my car myself. I wish we would go back to the concept of full-service gas stations.
I utilize almost every waking moment of my day focused on my hobby, er, occupation. I specialize in selling older, classic homes in Land Park, East Sacramento, Curtis Park and … (13 comments)

 
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Elizabeth Weintraub, Sacramento Short Sale Agent, Land Park, East Sac, Lyon RE

Sacramento, CA

More about me…

Top 1% at Lyon Real Estate #00697006

Address: 2801 J Street, Sacramento, CA, 95816

Office Phone: (916) 233-6759

Cell Phone: (916) 233-6759

Email Me

Broker-Associate at Lyon Real Estate, midtown Sacramento. Selling since 1974. Home Buying Guide at About.com. Sacramento short sale agent.
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Author Bio: Elizabeth Weintraub is a Sacramento real estate broker, author, home buying guide for About.com, a Land Park resident, and a Land Park agent who specializes in older, classic homes in Land Park, Curtis Park, Midtown and East Sacramento. Weintraub is also a Sacramento Short Sale agent who lists and successfully closes short sales throughout Sacramento four-county area. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put 35 years of real estate experience to work for you.

 


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