Dane County Real Estate Blog - Expert Advice - Video Blogs

Why You Shouldn't Trust Zillow Zestimates

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.

I recently had a couple of clients whose Zestimate on their home was $681,000. However, it showed that same property had sold for $215,000 two years prior. Apparently, my clients had sold another property two years ago for that price, but it was nowhere near it and had nothing to do with their current home. For some reason, the tax information that Zillow obtained was applied to the information it had on their current home, which I assume greatly affected the current Zestimate.

So how accurate are Zestimates?

Zillow reports that the median Zestimate is off by about 5% of what a home sells for.  So, for my…

1648 Views, 0 Comments

Get Your Home Sold Quickly and At the Best Price

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.

If you want to get your home sold quickly and for the most amount of money, then I can help you do just that with these three tips.

1. The first is don’t wait. Get your home on the market immediately. Late March, early April, and May are when most of the Accepted Offers in our market occur. I know you’ve probably heard that June is the best month for getting properties sold, but that’s only because those are the offers that were accepted from now through May that close in June.

Now that we're approaching Spring and Summer months, most people want to find a house now and want to get closed as soon as school gets out.…

1450 Views, 0 Comments

A Quick 2016 Recap and Preview of the 2017 Market

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.  

What was the Dane County real estate market like in 2016? What can we expect for the rest of 2017?

In 2016, we set a new record for the all-time number of sales for single-family homes as well as single-family condos, finishing the year with 8,073 sales. December was also a record month with 17% higher sales than December 2015.

The best part? We accomplished this with a restricted amount of inventory. That restricted inventory put pressure on prices which resulted in an increase in the median sales price of about $13,000. At the end of 2016, we had a supply of 1.78 months of homes and condos. This was 25% less than…

1498 Views, 0 Comments

Winter is Prime Time for Buying a Home

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.

Today I'd like to point out some misconceptions that you may have as a homebuyer.

Why is now a good time to be in the market as a buyer?

1. Seasonality of pricing. During the spring and summer months, the median price is traditionally higher than during the winter. According to both Dane County data and data from the National Association of Realtors, you’re likely to pay less for a home during the winter versus any other time of the year.
2. Less competition. There are fewer buyers in the market at this time of the year that you'll have to compete against. When sellers have fewer buyers looking at their home, you’re…

1641 Views, 0 Comments

Should You Sell Your Dane County Home in Winter?

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report.
Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.

There are a few major misconceptions that home sellers have about the winter market.

If you watched my video above, you'll see that accepted offers in 2015 for single-family homes and condos in Dane County were at their peak in March, April, and May. December shows the fewest number of accepted offers. Take a look at the number of accepted offers and closings in the chart below. Closing occurs right around 50 days after the offer is accepted.

Judging just by these charts featured in my video, you'd probably point to March as the best time to list your house. The number of buyers, listings, and accepted offers starts…

1468 Views, 0 Comments

There's Water in Your Basement. What Now?

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report.
Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.
 

Recently, a homeowner asked me what to do since water started to intrude into his basement. I went to my expert, Jerin Zander from Zander Solutions, to talk to him about how to address water damage. *Zander Solutions is a waterproofing contractor that serves all of Dane County, as well as surrounding counties. His company also installs radon mitigation systems, which we will address in a future video.

If you have water coming into your basement, the first thing you need to do is figure out where the water is coming from. Water can actually enter your basement in many different ways. It can enter through the walls…

1945 Views, 0 Comments

Home Renovations - Best Bang for your Buck

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report.
Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.
 
What home improvements will give you the largest return on your investment? In some markets, you can get a return on investment of over 100% depending on the area of remodel. I'd like to discuss two areas that you should focus on.
 

1. Your curb appeal: Boosting your curb appeal can be simple tasks such as trimming some overgrown bushes, setting out a few potted plants, or replacing the siding. Your front door and your garage door are also considered curb appeal. The 2015 Home Value Report from Remodeling Magazine stated that replacing your front door yields an average of 108% return on investment. 

The first…

1614 Views, 0 Comments

Don't Neglect Your Garage When Selling Your Home

When you get ready to sell your home, every inch of it needs to be neat and tidy. Therefore, despite what most sellers may think, this includes your garage.

One of the most neglected areas of a house when owners are getting ready to sell is the garage. That’s a mistake, and today I'd like to explain why.

Take a step into the buyer's shoes for a minute. They know what they want in a home, so they look at homes they like. On the inside, they could check off all the boxes on their list. However, if they come and see a dirty garage, it might immediately turn them off.

Just like the inside of your home, the inside of your garage…

1483 Views, 0 Comments

Make Sure Your Dane County Home is Priced Correctly

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report.
Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.

How do you price your home? My team and I have a fairly simple system to make sure that you don’t leave any money on the table.

First, we figure out what the market is like in your area. In a seller’s market, there is less inventory than there are buyers and prices are rising. In a buyer’s market, there is more inventory than there are buyers and prices go down. In a balanced market, there is an equal amount of buyers and sellers - balanced markets usually don’t last long, though.

Next, we look at active comparable listings so you know which properties yours is competing against in your area. We also…

1416 Views, 0 Comments

July Market Update

One of the most common questions realtors get asked is, “How is the market?” Now that we have June's stats, let me give you an update. 

We are currently in a seller’s market, meaning sellers definitely have the advantage over buyers. This is measured by our level of inventory, or absorption rate. It’s a measurement of how long (given the numbers of sales over the past year) it would take all the homes currently on the market to sell if no more were listed or expired. While a balanced market is around 6 months inventory, we currently only have a 2.37 month supply in Dane County.

Compared to this time last year, we…

1580 Views, 0 Comments