Blog

January 2011 Wisconsin housing statistics as well as  2010 year end  statistics are now available here: Market Update Jan 2011 .  We are very lucky here in south central Wisconsin to have sustained a relatively stable market in comparison to other areas of the country.

There’s many different theories on how much home you should buy. Some experts say leverage yourself to the max, others say limit your mortgage to a 15 year loan with payments less than 25% of your take home pay. My opinion tends to be somewhere in the middle of these two theories but a little Read More

In the past few years there’s been a flurry of new electronic devices such as laptops, cell phones, ipads, iphones, etc.  All these devices are suppose to make our lives more efficient; we can now look up a phone number or email address in seconds, we can keep our grocery lists on our phone, and Read More

As a Realtor, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the question, “When is the housing market going to bottom?”. Nobody ever knows exactly when we have hit bottom until they look back in history and see the statistics. Most of what you hear in the media is a broad generalization of our nation as Read More

For those of you that are business owners or landlords, this is a must read. There is new regulations for businesses and landlords to file 1099s. This regulation somehow snuck into the health care reform bill. The way I understand it is that effective Jan 1 2011 all landlords will be required to file a Read More

I’m a big advocate for not borrowing money. However, most of us borrow to own a home. Having a good credit score can help save you money on interest rates. Even a 0.25% difference in interest rate makes a huge difference over the life of a mortgage. Credit scores can even affect insurance rates, and Read More

2010 was great to us! The highlights of the year for us were getting engaged in January, a Caribbean cruise in February, a Harley trip to Colorado in June, our best real estate sales month ever in October, and don’t forget our wedding day! We also started going back to church and met some great Read More

The joy and stress of the holidays is almost behind us and fast approaching is the not so joyful stress of tax time. Taxes are something many of us dread. However, with a little bit of organization and preparation it’s not so bad. Start off by pulling out a copy of last years taxes. Browse Read More

In memory of our friend Cody Olson, who died a year ago today in a fire at the Silver Dollar Saloon in Blanchardville,  we’d like to give everyone a reminder about smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. On August 15th the a new smoke alarm ordinance went into effect for the City of Madison. Some people Read More

Many of you have probably seen our Facebook updates and are aware that we never actually made it to Haiti. Here’s our story of what happened. We set out for Chicago last Wednesday afternoon planning to fly to Ft Lauderdale, FL then to Port Au Prince, Haiti. By the time we got to Chicago American Read More