When it comes to selling your location, how can you effectively highlight your neighborhood amenities in only a few words? One excellent method is to produce aerial photos with pin drops, like the photo below. With this approach, buyers can view at a glance your home's proximity to local schools, parks and neighborhood attractions. 

Aerial maps are one of the many tools we use to customize our marketing for our Madison area sellers. If you'd like to see a customized marketing plan for your own home, condo or investment property — just reach out. We'd be happy to show you what that looks like for your own property. 

(aerial photo courtesy of Step Inside Media)

When we begin the listing process with each seller, we customize a marketing plan for their home. One of the most exciting tools we have is creating a virtual “dollhouse” tour with the help of Step Inside Media.

Click on the “Virtual Tour” link when you browse our listings at madcitydreamhomes.com/listings.php

This type of virtual tour allows you to “walk through” the home as if you were touring in person, room by room. You can turn around and view your surroundings in 360 degrees. This is a useful tool for buyers who are out of town or for serious buyers who want to look through the property again before making an offer.

Check out one of these virtual tours, in collaboration with Maverick Homes, with some spooky

Our office on Monroe Street is always open for buying or selling consultations. However, we often hold these consultations at our clients' favorite coffee shop or a nearby public venue, too. If having a meeting at a familiar spot feels more comfortable to you, or fits better into your schedule, we are happy to accommodate. 

Our consultations are never meant to feel stressful: we don't bring a contract, and we don't charge a fee. We are here to listen to your goals and give you our honest, professional advice on how to reach them. 

Reach out if you're ready to take this first step.

It's time for a big shout out to our clients, LeAnn and Roger, who just sold their Madison home for $620,000 after paying $550,000 for it just over a year ago. That's 13% more than their original investment. Not bad at all for the cold month of January. 

The keys to success? Here are a few insights:

#1) Smart cosmetic updates

A little fresh paint, some new cabinet hardware, and a few new light fixtures -- all based  on the recommendations of the Mad City Dream Homes team. Mad City Dream Homes provided the contractor recommendation, too. 

#2) Professional staging

Thanks to the artistry of Debbie Lea and Shelley Lazzareschi, LeAnn and Roger's home stood out as a showcase listing and attracted a tremendous amount of traffic during the holiday

I'm Tracy Kapela and I'm the photographer and visual media specialist for the Mad City Dream Homes real estate team. Here are a few of my favorite listing photos that I've taken in 2020 so far.

Kitchens

The kitchen is often thought of as the "heart of the home", so I try to show as much of the space as possible so you can see yourself in there and get a feel for how the flow could work for you.

Living/Family Rooms

The entertaining area is also one of the most important spaces that buyers want to see, so I try to focus on showing windows, fireplaces or any other feature that is unique to each house.

Dining Rooms

Formal dining rooms can have special features like beamed ceilings,

Do you know someone who needs to sell their home and under challenging circumstances? We’ve helped many different types of sellers over the years who’ve needed extra levels of attention and support.

Helping sellers when they need it most

Some of the sellers who need a special level of support from us are clients who’ve lived in their current home for many years. The prospect of preparing a long lived in home can be overwhelming. For these sellers, we recognize both the physical and emotional facets of a home sale - and we’re ready to support them through all the phases of the selling journey. For instance, we work with organizing/decluttering specialists who can make sorting and editing a house full of memories a simpler process. During the home

Congratulations! You’ve just signed your listing contract and put your home on the market. You’re excited and a little nervous about the prospects for your sale, and you’d like to know whether or not your listing is on track as your marketing plan unfolds. So how do you know if your listing is moving in the right direction? Here are 3 forms of feedback that will help you answer this question.

Three types of listing feedback

Here are the 3 types of feedback that will help you track the progress of your listing.

#1: How many showings is your listing generating?

This first form of feedback comes down to whether or not your listing is generating enough showings in order to attract an offer. Here are a few guidelines you can use to evaluate

Killer listing photos motivate buyers to act quickly and schedule immediate showings. That's why our number one priority for every listing is to capture beautiful photos. Sometimes that means a second or even a third photo shoot is necessary to get the listing photos just right. This was the case with our new listing at 148 Inverness Circle in Bergamont. 

This home has some wonderful views of the surrounding countryside, but the weather during our first two photo shoots didn't cooperate. So we scheduled a third photo shoot and captured these beautiful balcony views. 

148 Inverness Circle Balcony Views

All of these panoramic views were captured from the back deck of the property.

148 Inverness Circle - More Exterior Photos

We

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