It goes against convention, but the month of December is an excellent time to buy a home. Why? There are far fewer buyers to compete with in the wintertime, and sellers tend to be more motivated during the holiday season. This means the deals are better in December and January. If you're looking to get a fair deal on a nice home or condo, the winter season is an excellent time to buy. Of course every situation is different. Feel free to contact us to discuss your individual situation. 

Here are more specifics on why right now is an excellent time to buy in Madison and the surrounding Dane County area. 

Buyers Have Less Competition in December

It's much easier to get an offer accepted in December because there are fewer competing buyers. The MLS

It's a common misconception that you have to show your home to generate interest from buyers.  We're finding that there are ways to attract buyers in the early stages of preparing a listing, even before your home is ready to show. Take, for example, a listing we have at 2 Thornhill Circle, in Wexford Village. Before the home was even officially ready to show, the sellers had eight showing appointments lined up.

How did this happen? We used an effective selling strategy:
1. Have a Professional Staging Consultation
2. Finish Staging the First Floor
3. Professionally Photograph the First Floor
4. Make the Listing Available on the MLS and Online
5. Continue Staging the Rest of the House
6. Have the Rest of the Home Photographed and Filmed
7. Open the Home for

You've heard the saying, "location, location, location" when it comes to real estate. Where your home is located matters, and highlighting the neighboring perks can go a long way when you're ready to sell.

When we work with sellers, we help them prepare their home for listing. This includes staging it, photographing it professionally, and highlighting the home's best features. But marketing the home doesn't end there. We also focus on the neighborhood. What parks or trails are nearby? Are there key restaurants, shopping or a library within walking distance? These features are important to buyers. They often won't even visit a home unless they are sold on the location.

 We recently listed a home in the Midvale Heights neighborhood. The home is

If you're like many of us, you're probably thinking about your holiday shopping already, and preparing gift ideas for loved ones. This weekend, before the busy-ness of Thanksgiving takes over, Madison shoppers can head downtown and peruse a wide variety of beautiful and interesting artwork, available for purchase. Overture Center for the Arts and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA), are co-hosting the annual Holiday Art Fair. Shoppers can enter for a $6 fee ($5 if ordered in advance, children 12 and under are free). Artists from all over the nation will be showing their work, and selling items for gifting or personal enjoyment. More than 70 artists are included in this year's fair, and offer a broad selection of fine art. Booths will feature

Have you ever watched those HGTV programs and wished your home could be updated? Do you look around your home and wonder how to transform it for greater appeal? If you know that your current home is temporary, you could benefit from services to improve your current property- and prepare it for a future sale. All the while, you can enjoy the decor and staging that was prepared for the future listing.

One of our clients chose to approach their home this way. Two years ago they had us in to walk through their property in Midvale Heights. We offered suggestions for improvements and helped them stage it to show its best features. They completed the updates, and we captured photographs of this home, well in advance of it ever listing. Now, two years later,

Have you tried the Mad City Dream Homes app yet? It's available for both iPhone and Android, and can be downloaded at no cost. The app simplifies your property search and comes with some key functions to make targeting the right properties simple.

In this case, we're looking at how to search for homes by school district. You start by hitting the search button on the home screen (lower left). This takes you to a map (lower right). Click on the magnifying glass at the top to define your search.

Since school district boundaries don't always match the home address, it is convenient to search for the specific school district you are targeting in your search.  The app allows you to enter your preferred district, along with other information that is

When you list your home, you want to generate as much interest as possible. We're finding that featuring your home's strongest photo, inside or out, is an effective way to grab buyers' attention. The traditional curbside photo is fine, but it doesn't always tell the strongest story for your home. You might have a stunning kitchen - like our listing in Westmorland. We had photos taken of both the kitchen and the exterior. As you can see, the home is lovely inside and out. In this case, we've featured the kitchen as the first photo in the listing, because buyers will be more excited about this feature.

A home we recently sold in Faircrest is in a similar situation. The home has a gorgeous, modern kitchen. The exterior is very nice and well kept - but

Listing your home doesn't require an overwhelming amount of work up front. You can plan and prepare, with enough time to complete needed projects well. If you prepare well, you should be able to sell it quickly in the current market, and for a great price. In order to make a listing successful, our team puts this marketing plan together in bite-size pieces:

1. Work with a Professional Home Stager. Your listing agent may offer to pay for this service. We do this as part of our marketing plan for all of our clients. The home stager can go through your property, rearrange furniture, relocate decor and offer you good tips for maximizing the beauty and functionality of your home. The stager can also recommend paint colors, flooring changes or new light

Are you ready for Halloween? Ghouls and ghostly apparitions abound this time of year and if you need any help getting into the spirit Madison Ghost Tours has you covered.

For the last several years the group has organized tour groups around Capitol Square. From their website: "Discover the haunted history of Madison, Wisconsin with our 90-minute ghost walk around the state’s capitol. You can expect to meet the colorful characters, vengeful spirits, monsters, and stories of the people who love Madison so much that even death can’t stop them from staying in the city!"

The tour will take you from the Great Dane on Doty St., full of stories passed from former employees and management, past the Majestic Theatre where a strange figure has frequented the

Have you ever wanted a glimpse of what goes on in the science labs at the University of Wisconsin? This weekend, the UW is opening its doors to demonstrate what its faculty and students are doing everyday. And the best part? It's free and designed as a kid-friendly, hands-on experience.

The Wisconsin Science Festival kicks off with more than 89 locations offering science activities. At the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, visitors are told to bring their curiosity and enjoy more than 20 hands-on experiments. Schools from all over the region are attending Thursday and Friday. The weekend includes two days of activities open to the public from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Visitors will have the opportunity to build working robots, collect, stain and view their