Blog Archives

This week in our home building process the basement floor was poured, and the framing started. It’s amazing how fast thing seem to go when they get to this point. It seems like we went from a hole in the ground to a house in a matter of a week! We also finally got our Read More

This week in the home build, the foundation was back-filled, and the underground plumbing was installed. I climbed down into the basement to take a peak at things today. I was a little puzzled when I couldn’t find any interior drain tile around the footings. Then I found a cut section of the footing forms, and Read More

Prices are still low and so are interest rates, but sales in the Madison area are up for 9 months straight! This is a definite sign of improvement in the real estate market. The amount of action we’ve seen in the past 6 weeks has been incredible. We’ve seen several multiple offer situations, we’ve put Read More

It was pretty exciting early this week with the home build. The foundation was completed and a temporary electrical service was installed. After the forms came off the foundation though, there was no action the rest of the week. The foundation needs several days of curing to solidify enough to back-fill against it.The back-filling will happen this coming week, Read More

The build has begun. This week, we closed on our lot, the builder scraped it, leveled it out, surveyed, dug for the basement and footings, and poured footings. By the end of next week, hopefully we’ll have a full foundation. Stay tuned.

There are still many conflicting reports out in the media on the future of the real estate market . Although, we are starting to hearing more positive stories on the national economic and real estate outlook. The question is, what is our local market doing? According to this chart based on statistics from the Wisconsin Read More

Yesterday we closed our final scheduled house sale of 2011. So, it’s time to look at our year end statistics.  While there is still doom and gloom all over the news about the real estate market, we were blessed with a great year. Through November, the total number of home sales in Dane County was Read More

I know you’re probably thinking, “multiple offers”? Really? In this real estate market? It’s not as rare as you may think. In this market there are many bank owned foreclosures and motivated sellers who have priced homes to sell. In some cases pricing is so low, the property generates multiple offers and parties negotiating up. Read More

Property taxes are a big factor when purchasing a home. Your property taxes could be 35% or more of your mortgage payment. Even if you’re retired, debt free, and paying cash for a home, property taxes could be a significant chunk of your annual income. We have heard comments from some buyers and sellers such Read More

After 11 years of owning investment property, I’ve made some great decisions, made some mistakes, experienced an up market, and experienced a down market. After all this, I’ve developed 5 core rules of buying investment properties. Most of these rules can be applied to any type of investing too. Educate yourself Learn all you can Read More