When is the best time to put your home on the market? Here's the short answer: by March 1st.

Each year the Madison real estate market quickly shifts from a buyer's market (in November and December) to a seller's market (in late winter and early spring). The graph below, which shows buyer activity by month, makes this abundantly clear. Although many local homes and condos sell each month, the house-hunting frenzy is strongest during the months of March, April and May. Now that we've made our way through the holiday season the market in early January is already heating up. We're seeing more showing activity right now than we did a month ago.

Madison Accepted Offers by Month - Homes and Condos

Why March 1st is a Great Time to List your Home

If you spend any amount of time looking for properties on the internet, it won't take long before you stumble across a few listings with some really suspect photos. Even in this day and age, there are plenty of listings out there which break many of the rules for good real estate photography. So much so that there is a website that is devoted entirely to the subject of terrible listing photos.

Check out the 3 sample listing photos below. How many rules does each of these pictures break? 

Bad Photo #1: Family Room

This photo was produced by an amateur using amateur equipment. The lighting is poor and the image is not crisp. The room is not professionally staged. It's full of holiday decorations and clutter. And is that Fido's chew toy on the

What does the new year hold in store for Madison, Wisconsin real estate? Based on our review of objective market data, we expect the 2014 Madison real estate market to be another good year for local home and condo sellers. Read on for more info:

2014 Madison Real Estate Predictions

1. Madison home and condo sales will continue at strong levels, but will decrease from the levels of 2013. The 2013 real estate market was a perfect storm for local sellers. Low prices, rock bottom mortgage rates, and several years of pent up demand combined to create a huge influx of buyers in 2013. These market forces are still at play in 2014, but not to the extent of the previous year. Our pending home sales data suggests strong but moderating sales in the months

Our Ballpark Estimator is a free tool you can use to estimate the market value of your Madison area home or condo. In fact it offers one of several ways you can use our website to learn more about the real estate market in your neighborhood. How does it work? The tool itself is very simple. 

Ballpark Estimator: How it works

1. You enter the address of your Madison area home or condo, as well as the number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, and the finished square footage. 
2. The Estimator then presents you with a list of 12 recent sales in your area. 
3. You select 3 of the 12 properties that are most similar to yours. 
4. The tool then presents you with a "ballpark price". The ballpark price is based on the price per finished square foot of your 3

We've been working to create a website that provides you with the very best view of the Madison real estate market at the local and neighborhood level. We've added many improvements to MadCityDreamHomes.com over the last few weeks, including many enhancements to our detailed property views. Our newest feature is the addition of neighborhood market information, which includes a summary of recent sales, active listings, and active listings with accepted offers. 

Take a look at the example below which shows a neighborhood market summary for a home in the Hill Farms neighborhood on Madison's near west side.

• The blue home icons represent current listings in the area with an accepted offer (this status is assigned by the listing brokerage within the

One of our team goals for 2013 has been to create a second real estate website that you will value for years to come. Our first website, DaneCountyMarket.com, is recognized as a great local resource for no-spin information on the Madison area home and condo markets. Our focus for MadCityDreamHomes.com has been to create a Madison real estate resource with the best available view of the properties for sale at the local and neighborhood levels. We have more work to do, but we're well on our way toward achieving our goal. Here's a quick update on our plans for building you a better website for Madison Wisconsin real estate.  

5 Steps to a Better Real Estate Website

1. Create Madison property guides that provide an in-depth view of homes and condos at

Let's suppose you and your agent have just listed your home on the MLS. You've followed these 5 tips for a strong listing, and you're off to a tremendous start. You've received 10 immediate showing requests and the early feedback is very positive. Buyers are loving your home; several are thinking of writing an offer. You like your odds for receiving a full-price offer, but can you leverage what you have into an accepted offer that is far, far above the list? Can your agent shoot for a price that is 3 percent above the list, 5 percent, or even more? The answer is yes, and here is how you agent can do it.

6 Tips for Negotiating the Highest Possible Selling Price

1. Be helpful and easy to work with. Buyers are generally open to negotiating with someone

If you've been thinking of selling your Madison area luxury or historic property, you've probably been wondering how your real estate agent can begin to tell the full story of your home through a standard MLS listing. After all your home has many more amenities and features than can possibly be communicated through the MLS. The MLS allows for only 512 characters of descriptive text, so how can your agent even begin to tell your home's story with this limitation in place?

This is both the challenge and fun of selling high-end and historic real estate. There are actually many strategies a good agent can employ to tell the full story of your home. A few of these tools are covered below.

Six Tools for Telling the Full Story of your Historic or Luxury

Thinking of selling your Madison home or condo? It's a seller's market this year and prices are rising. With lower inventories and increased demand, many Madison area sellers are learning they can win back much of their equity that was lost during the real estate downturn.

So how can you knock your sale out of the park? Below are 5 ways you can maximize your selling price in this year's market. The first two tips focus on market analysis. The last three tips involve specific marketing strategies.

5 Tips for Selling at a High Market Price

1. Know the months of inventory in your neighborhood. Your listing agent can assist you with this when he performs your market analysis for you. Neighborhoods with low months of inventory are prime locations for

We posted earlier this year how Downtown Madison condo prices were set to rise in 2013. As we make our way into the Spring buying season, we are in fact seeing prices rise in many areas of Madison, and especially downtown. The inventory of condos for sale in Downtown Madison is much lower than in previous years, and sales are up significantly. Consider these numbers for the first 3 months of 2013 which come from our review of data from the South Central Wisconsin MLS:

Dane County condo sales were up by a whopping 59% from the first 3 months of 2012, but even more startling downtown sales were up by 89%.  That's right, during the January through March time period, downtown condo sales totaled 34 purchases versus 18 the year before. We expect this pace