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A new search snippet for Madison WI distressed property was unveiled this week on the Lake & City Homes website. The tool makes it possible to instantly retrieve daily updated listings and prices for all the short sales, foreclosures and REOs (also known as real-estate owned properties) in Madison WI. You can now quickly filter out these opportunities when looking for below-market prices on homes in Madison WI, Dane County and throughout South Central Wisconsin.

For more information about Madison area short sales or Madison area REOs and foreclosures, please call broker/owner Jolenta Averill at 608.230.5553 today.

Details are beginning to emerge about Obama's "homeowner stabilization plan". From the reports I'm hearing it sounds like a $75 billion plan that will attack the problem at the heart of the matter: housing affordability. While those of us who have been working hard all our lives, saving money, and who paid cash for our homes (or at the very least bought homes we could afford), it will be a tough pill watching ourselves, our children and our children's children bail out the generation who thought they were entitled to Money For Nothin'. As Cal Carter so aptly pointed out this morning, maybe Greenspan should have been watching MTV. Unfortunately it's becoming more and more clear to more and more people that if we don't straighten out this housing mess, we're…

The new tax credit for first-time homebuyers that's included in the economic stimulus package was slashed from the previously proposed $15K to just $8K and a far cry from the $20K the homebuilding industry wanted. Analysts expect the credit consisting of 10% of the value of any home up to $8K to have a smaller impact on the U.S. housing market than previously hoped. Last year, Congress enacted a $7,500 tax credit for first-time buyers (which had to be paid back over 15 years) and the impact on home sales was negligible.This time the tax credit is limited to first-time buyers who act between the start of 2009 and the end of November 2009. First-time buyers are defined as those who haven't owned a house for at least three years.

The credit of 10…

Ajilon Professional Staffing recently reported to Forbes magazine that there are still areas of the country where the unemployment rate is low and the job outlook is strong. Ajilon calls them "10 Cities For Job Growth in 2009".

The top ten cities that made the cut are:

1. Madison, WI   
2. Washington, D.C.   
3. Boston, MA   
4. Richmond, VA   
5. Milwaukee, WI   
6. Pittsburgh, PA   
7. Baltimore, MD   
8. Seattle, WA   
9. Houston, TX   
10. Dallas, TX

Already I've heard - pretty much across the board - that activity has picked up substantially in our local market. Coupled with the good jobs outlook and an early start to the Spring housing market, 2009 could be a very good year for Madison real estate!

Be sure to visit my website for links…

Lake & City Homes Realty is proud to announce its first featured listing! This adorable brick & stone bungalow is located at 2661 Hoard Street on Madison's East Side on a quiet tree-lined street in desirable North Gardens (in fact, just three doors down from my brother's house!).

Features include a very nice-sized living room, separate dining area, generous eat-in kitchen, two nice-sized bedrooms (with deck off Master bedroom), separate office (could also be used as a playroom, den or workout room), plus a dry basement currently used as an art studio but which could be finished. Over 1,000sf of living space for just $149,900! Join us at our first open house this Sunday, February 8th, 2009 from 1-3pm!

Madison WI is chock full of adorable homes for sale…

At long last Lake & City Homes Realty is proud to announce its new yard signs and open house signs!

A big thank you to Lisa Whiting and Marily Crews-Nelson of Whopping Big Signs (a division of Magellan Mapping out of Waunake, WI), for the skillful reproduction of our new logo, including its signature skeleton key onto a 24x36, full color, 2-sided, 080 aluminum, ≈24 gauge, baked white enamel sign with rounded corners and grommets top and bottom!

Please take a look at the final results and record your comments in our blog. A great deal of effort went into the design and production of this most important piece of business collateral and we really, really want to know what you think about it!

December was the worst month for housing starts in the 20 years Dominic Collar of MTD Marketing Services of Wisconsin has been tracking housing starts data in Dane County, Wisconsin. An average December is about 250-260, says Collar, but December ’08 saw a mere 20 housing starts. That's a 74% drop from December 2007’s 78 housing starts and a 90% drop from the December 2003 high of 210.
  According to Collar's records, 20 years ago housing starts in Dane County averaged 1200-1300 per year. 10 years ago housing starts averaged 1900 per year. In 2008 housing starts were 667, down 42.8% from 2007’s 1167 housing starts. The prior year didn’t fare much better. 2006’s 1396 housing starts was also a dramatic decline from 2005’s 2319 housing starts, a drop of… Read Full Post

Sales of single-family homes in Madison Wisconsin were down a substantial 19.3% from 2007 to 2008. Sales of Madison condominiums dropped a whopping 29.3% from 2007 to 2008. The average sale price for a single-family home in Madison fell only slightly, however, from $255,223 in '07 to $248,073 in 2008, a reflection of the slower, yet relatively healthy, demand for good quality single-family homes. A slim majority of the 3,343 single-family homes listed in Madison in 2008 were sold (53.10%). By contrast, only 31.29% of the 2,352 condos listed in Madison in 2008 were sold, a clear indication of the persistent oversupply of Madison WI condos. Average days on market for all single-family homes in Madison WI increased marginally from 66 in 2007 to 71 in 2008.…