Building A Greener House

If you have not wasted enough time playing Mansion Impossible, I got a new one for you.

My Sustainable House is a game, but super educational about the building a greener home process. Have a little fun, learn a little bit and if you are up to it, come back and post your score. I got a 742.

h/t- www.treehugger.com

Good Time To Buy A Home In Madison

Want to know if you should buy a home or condo in this Madison Real Estate market 

We are inspired by NBC going green last week, so The Gardyn will go green this week. We might recycle some posts and all our font will be green.

Recycled Post from Is now a good time to buy real estate?

That depends. That question would be equivalent to walking into a doctor’s office and asking “Is now a good time to have a surgery?” The doctor  would want to know if you are sick, injured, or ill. She would want to do tests, exams, and scans. She would not do a surgery if you are healthy. Your health and body are unique to you. So is your position for buying real estate. Like the doctor, I would have lots of questions. I would do a needs analysis with you. I would refer you to talk with a mortgage lender. I would find out about your situation. The truth is, now is a great time to buy for some people and an awful time to buy for some people.

Suze Orman, famous financial expert author and talk show host, gives a great exercise in her book, Suze Orman – For the Young, Fabulous & Broke. She calls it “Play House Before You Buy A House”.

Given all the extra costs of owning, you need to be plenty sure you can handle the bills before you take the housing plunge. Put yourself through my six month “play house” test.

• Figure out the cost of homes. Use a mortgage calculator to estimate your basic mortgage costs.
• Add 40% to that sum. That is your home ownership cost.
• Subtract your current monthly rent from your home ownership cost.
• Set up a new bank account and deposit that difference in the account on the first day of every month for six months.

If you pay $1000 in rent but your home ownership cost (including all the extras, taxes, maintenance, etc.) is $1,271, you need to deposit $271 a month into your test account. If you miss one payment, or if you are consistently late in making the payments, you are not ready to buy a home. If you can handle the extra payments, then you’ve got the thumbs-up to start looking for a home to buy. By the way, in playing house, you’ve also beefed up your down-payment fund. In the previous example, you would have saved up $1,626. in six months.

By the way Madison real estate buyers,

• interest rates are still low-that means low montly payments
• housing inventory is up-that means more selection and choices

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FSBO Madison Tips on Marketing and Exposure

We are inspired by NBC going green last week, so The Gardyn will go green this week. We might recycle some posts and all our font will be green.

From FSBO Madison Needs One More Photo, Atleast

NRT Inc., the largest residential real estate brokerage company in the nation conducted a study which found that the average consumer wants to see a minimum of 6 photos of a house before they will contact the listing agent about it.

FSBO’s using the FSBOMadison site are only allowed to upload 5 photo’s.Your FSBO listing might be one photo short of having that buyer pick up the phone. As a FSBO how do you decide what photo’s to upload and what photo’s to leave off? I see some of my fellow Realtor’s not do much better though. Even though Madison area Realtor’s are allowed to put 9 photo’s on a listing for sale, I see properties with less.

*FSBO Tip-Create a separate photo webpage online with a link in your FSBOMadison listing directing would be home buyers to see more of your home. Interior photo’s-good. Exterior-photo’s-cool. Night time photo’s-awesome. Seasonal photo’s-outrageous. Neighborhood photo’s-now you just have too much time on your hands.

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Madison Blogger Wonders If She Should Have Bought Her Kids A Condo

Ann Althouse, law professor wonders, “Should you buy your college kid a condo?”

A lot of people do these days, and it might make financial sense. Obviously, there are problems with the housing market that affect the decision these days, but generally, I wish I’d thought of doing this when my sons were in college. A big problem is that older folks who like condos don’t like student neighbors. The lower priced the condos are, the more likely they’ll be chosen for students, and the more likely they’ll have badly soundproofed walls and floors. But it would be nice if there were some condo building designed for students, that the parents would buy and then sell to each other every 4 years.

Take a look at the video of real estate guru Barbara Corcoran and what we wrote back on August 17th,

If you are driving around the UW-Madison Campus area right now, you will see that students are moving in. Moving into their dorms and moving into their housing. The UW Madison campus is buzzing again.

Real Estate guru, Barbara Corcoran gives advice on how to,

“Make a profit and get a surprise on graduation day.”

FSBO Madison Needs One More Photo, atleast

Local For Sale By Owner Real Estate site, FSBOMadison.com does a high volume of business.

From their own website they promote,

“777 homes listed in 1999, 1100 in 2000… and on up, to over 2000 in each of the past 2 years.”

That’s pretty impressive!!! It was a hot seller’s market in Madison and a great time to make a quick sale. Right now, today, in the present, the market is correcting itself. Home Sellers in Madison, using a Realtor or going FSBO, need to do more to sell a home. A lot more.

Exposure is key. What you do with that exposure is key also. Being seen is not the same as being noticed. If you are going the FSBO route, you have to do even more to get your property exposed and noticed. One of the best ways of getting noticed is with your photo’s. I call it the Ebay Syndrome. People want to see pictures when searching for real estate online. No pictures. No interest.

“A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words”

NRT Inc., the largest residential real estate brokerage company in the nation conducted a study which found that the average consumer wants to see a minimum of 6 photos of a house before they will contact the listing agent about it.

FSBO’s using the FSBOMadison site are only allowed to upload 5 photo’s.Your FSBO listing might be one photo short of having that buyer pick up the phone. As a FSBO how do you decide what photo’s to upload and what photo’s to leave off? I see some of my fellow Realtor’s not do much better though. Even though Madison area Realtor’s are allowed to put 9 photo’s on a listing for sale, I see properties with less.

Just doing a search tonight on the Madison MLS, I saw properties with 3 photo’s, 1 photo and some even with ZERO.

At Edyn Real Estate, we have made the commitment now, that every listing will have 9 photo’s on the MLS. On our Keller Williams listing page we will do 20. On our Gardyn listing page we will do a minimum of 20, if not more.

We realize that a home buyer will still want a showing, so they can feel and sense the property, but we believe that more photo’s will help the home buyer notice it enough to schedule a showing.

*FSBO Tip-Create a separate photo webpage online with a link in your FSBOMadison listing directing would be home buyers to see more of your home. Interior photo’s-good. Exterior-photo’s-cool. Night time photo’s-awesome. Seasonal photo’s-outrageous. Neighborhood photo’s-now you just have too much time on your hands.

By the way-this blog post, purposely does not have any photo’s.

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Questions A FSBO Should Ask A Buyer

Why Can’t A Home Buyer Search For Pet Friendly Properties?

When searching for a property, why are home buyer’s not given an option for pet friendly property search criteria?

I asked Pearl, my French Bulldog that question, here was her response-

I know it doesn’t matter so much when a buyer is searching for a single family home. A buyer searching for a single family home can do a search for homes that have a fence, large back yard, etc. etc.

But what about a home buyer that is searching for a condo?

I looked on Realtor.com – Trulia.com – Zillow.com – GoogleBase 

These are some of the top national real estate home searches. If you are going to search locally, you only need the Edyn Real Estate Map Tracks.

I looked on all those sites and could not find a search criteria for a perspective condo buyer that wants to search for condos that allow pets. With 64.2 million American households having pets, this kind of search criteria seems like a no-brainer to me.

Pets are such a big apart of many households. They are our children, our friends, our companions. When my buddy, Nugget passed away a few months ago, I was devastated. It took me a some time to recover and I still miss him everyday. We didn’t feel we could ever replace Nugget, but we knew that there was something missing in our hearts and in our home.

Even Cooper, the Chihuahua seen with Pearl in this picture, was sad about the passing of Nugget. Pearl and Cooper have become best friends now, however Cooper is still not wired right, no matter how many Dog Whisperer tricks we try on him.  Our pets mean a lot to us and we have talked about maybe buying a condo in the future. Of course the condo would have to be pet friendly.

The property would have to allow pets first, then location, then bedrooms, then amenities. It seems to me that other pet-lovers would have this order of priorty when searching for a property also.

If you are a pet owner, how do you prioritize your search  requirements? Is it frustrating that you can’t search online for a pet friendly condo?

By the way, as Realtors with access to the MLS, we do have the ability to search for pet friendly condo. If you would like us to do a search for you, contact us here or email us edynrealestate@gmail.com

Do your own real estate home or condo search here

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West Side of Madison Home Prices. Going Up or Down?

Taking a look at the Madison West single family and condo home prices.

Check this out. Besides a dip right away for Madison West condo prices, which can probably be easily explained, prices have had a stable, consistent rise. It might not be much, but there it is. Moving up. Moving forward.

Now check out Madison West single family home prices. WOW! If I didn’t turn on a TV once in awhile, or read a newspaper I would think the real estate market was pretty healthy. The average single family home sale price has been above $300,000 on Madison West side since May.

I have been talking to many  homeowners lately that have been trying to sell their home, either, FSBO or with a Realtor, and have not been able to. The homeowners response to me wondering if they want to get it back on the market with Edyn Real Estate is, “Not at this time. We are going to wait for the market to get better.”

Folks…you could be waiting, for the market to worse.

Do you want the numbers for your local neighborhood? Market trends, average days on market, averages sales price? Email us edynrealestate@gmail.com

Do you want to know if your home or condo value is going up or down? Find out here.

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