A Crib Dock Can Add Value to Your Waterfront Property Shoreline In our geographic area in northwest Wisconsin (the Apostle Islands region of Lake Superior), it's not uncommon to see what are sometimes described as "permanent docks" or "crib docks" along the shoreline.  Among the twenty-one Apostle Islands, Madeline Island is home to perhaps a couple hundred of these crib docks. Construction of these crib docks generally consists of oak cribs, pinned together with heavy iron spikes and filled with large brownstone boulders. The rock-filled cribs are then "topped" with planking, allowing a dock surface that can be equipped with mooring cleats or dock lighting, sometimes even boat davits or a winch system.  The U.S. Forest Service describes crib docks as being "capable of lasting 50 years ... 04/11/2016

NEW Statistics on Luxury Home Sales in Bayfield WI & on Madeline Island The most recent stats on luxury home sales for the Madeline Island (La Pointe, Wisconsin) and Bayfield, Wisconsin area have been updated and are now available. At Madeline Island Realty, we're particularly proud to report that those updated statistics show eight of the last nine homes sold in our local market area over the last five years, and sold at prices in excess of half a million dollars, were properties listed by Madeline Island Realty.   But there's more to the bar graph and sales numbers than meets the eye.  We dug into the history of those nine most recent sales over $500,000 and we found something that local area homeowners should know. Out of those nine most recent closed luxury home sales in the Apostle... 04/11/2016

A Damp and Musty Smell in the House Cost This Owner a Sale This happened just a couple of weeks ago.  Prospective buyers (clients of mine) were viewing a waterfront vacation home listing in our area and they appeared to be close to making an offer.   Following a third showing of the property, the buyers immediately informed their agent that they noticed a "damp, musty odor" inside the house. When this happens, alarm bells go off inside a buyer's head.  Mildew?  Mold?  To a buyer, there is an immediate presumption that something is wrong. Upon follow-up, the buyers admitted that they were not sure what exactly they were noticing, but the words "there's a bad smell somewhere in here" and "the place smells musty and old" kept coming forth in their comments. Buyers can be brutally honest ab... 04/09/2016

Pricing second homes/vacation homes is often more complex and more challenging than putting a price on a primary home. Seller motivations are different, time frames are different, even the level of urgency is different.The most recent edition of The Residential Specialist magazine (pubished by CRS, the Council of Residential Specialists in Chicago) features an article by Donna Shryer entitled "The Fine Art of Pricing". The article is well-written and the information it contains certainly applies to primary homes. But second homes are a different matter.The article states that sellers want and need data, preferring an evidence-based approach to pricing. Unfortunately, we find over and over again that our second home sellers tend to ignore whatever data we bring to a listing presentation.... 03/27/2016

The Perils of Showing North Country Vacation Homes in March When you list and show vacation properties, especially during winter and early spring months in the northern United States, doing the job properly requires a certain amount of fortitude. After packing your car (or SUV) with warm clothes, boots lined with Gore-Tex and Thinsulate, gloves, hats, scarves, an emergency kit and the usual electronic gear (iPad, smartphone, laptop, portable printer), you are ready to venture forth. But even the most careful preparation for a late winter showing doesn't mean you won't encounter a few surprises. In the case of our trip to Bayfield and Madeline Island on Wednesday of this past week, those surprises began with a winter storm that dumped around a foot of snow on the area. The Madeline Islan... 03/20/2016

Seller Error Number One: Telling an Agent What You Need  for Your Home This is probably the most common mistake sellers make when listing their home for sale.  The seller begins the conversation with "I need $500,000 for my home".  The reasons are invariably illogical.  The seller says, "I need that much money for my retirement" or "the house we want to buy costs that much". Or the seller hands the listing agent a copy of an eight-year old appraisal that shows his/her desired sale price to be 100% accurate. Why is seller insistence on a firm net sale price a huge mistake? Because the seller doesn't determine what the net sale price will be.   Neither does the listing agent. It's the market  that will determine whether your home will sell, when it will sell, and for how much. Sellers, do... 03/05/2016

The Essential Elements of a Shared Driveway Agreement Shared driveways and roadways are popular in our market area (Madeline Island and Bayfield, Wisconsin) for a number of reasons.  Fewer driveways along a stretch of county or town road means a more pristine appearance to a residential neighborhood.  With fewer breaches in the road, inbound and outbound traffic from multiple dwellings are funneled into one outlet.Fewer trees are cut when every home doesn't require its own driveway.  There is less damage to wildlife habitat and there are fewer culverts buried alongside the roadway at driveway outlets.The flip side of these benefits is about the potential for disputes between neighbors whenever there are shared (common) elements in a development. A shared well might be an example.In orde... 02/07/2016

Ours May Possibly be the Only Beachfront Real Estate Office on Lake Superior To our knowledge, Madeline Island Realty enjoys the only beachfront residential real estate office on Lake Superior. If that is true, it would be quite a distinction, as Lake Superior has over 2700 linear miles of shoreline. By the way, that shoreline circumference equals approximately ten per cent of the way around our planet, measured at the equator (about twenty-five thousand miles). [Madeline Island Realty is next door to the Beach Club Restaurant, to the right of center in this photo.] Madeline Island Realty is located at 809 Main Street, La Pointe, Wisconsin 54850. Our two-story office (formerly a residential waterfront dwelling) is next door to the Beach Club restaurant and across the street from the Isl... 01/02/2016

Fifteen Years Since Our Office First Joined a Multiple Listing Service I remember quite well the day that our company, Madeline Island Realty, became the first real estate brokerage on Madeline Island to join a Multiple Listing Service (MLS). It was at the beginning of 2001 that I begain having discussions with the folks at Northwest Wisconsin Multiple Listing Service in Eau Claire, Wisconsin about becoming a member. At that time, nobody on Madeline Island or in nearby Bayfield, Wisconsin had an MLS membership or uploaded their property listings to a Multiple Listing Service. At that time, in our sleepy little corner of Wisconsin, real estate websites for small brokerages were just beginning to make an appearance. Marketing properties for sale meant printing listings in black and white,... 12/29/2015

Here's Why  We Prepare Market Reports for our Readers Regular market reports offer an opportunity to educate sellers and buyers about trends in the current real estate market in a particular area. The phrase, "real estate is local" might be better expressed as "real estate markets  are local".  Almost all consumers are looking for an edge in their area real estate market and the knowledge that comes with reading current market reports is one way to gain that edge.  We start by identifying trends and challenges in our particular service area. This means we gather and interpret data on current sold and pending properties, as well as current listings. We look for quarterly, sometimes monthly shifts and changes in sales statistics. And we review seasonal sales data as well, before we prepar... 12/20/2015

Is Craigslist the Right Place to Advertise a Luxury Home Listing?  We noticed not long ago that one of our local area competitors is marketing their real estate listings on Craigslist, including upper-bracket homes.  Advertising listings on Craigslist was a much-promoted strategy for real estate pros back in the mid-1990s and all the way up to late 2013.  At that point, Craigslist changed the rules, getting rid of embedded links in property ads. Craigslist lost most of its value to those in the real estate industry almost overnight and things haven't been the same ever since that decision. Apart from the 2013 decision to take away much of the SEO value that Craigslist once brought to online real estate marketers, there are other reasons to be wary of advertising listings on that site (o... 12/20/2015

2015 Has Been a Unique Year for our Madeline Island Real Estate Market - Market Report by Eric Kodner, with Madeline Island Realty It's early for me to prepare a year-end summary on the 2015 real estate market right after Thanksgiving, but I'd say it's timely.  2015 was a year like no other, maybe even a forecaster's dream, as it offers some powerful clues to where the market for homes and vacant land may be headed in the future. Let's begin with the good news. The 2015 market for upper-bracket homes on Madeline Island started strong and buyer interest in that market segment has held through late in the year. The first half of the year brought two closed sales of Madeline Island homes priced at over half a million dollars. Both of these purchases (one in April and the other in mid-June)... 12/06/2015

Madeline Island Home Sellers - Five Things to Watch if you Want to Sell Now Sellers of Madeline Island homes and other properties need to watch these five crucial factors if they hope to sell their vacation home in 2015: Watch the Calendar.  Labor Day weekend is less than ten days away.  After that, kids return to school (if they haven't already) and symbolically speaking, autumn returns to the Apostle Islands area.  Tourist traffic begins to slow, although weekend tourist traffic should remain lively on Madeline Island until early to mid-October. Like it or not, we are primarily a seasonal real estate marketplace, although the volume of winter and early spring home sales in our market has improved, particularly over the past four to five years. Autumn can be a great time of year to sel... 08/26/2015

Sellers, Are You Overlooking the Obvious? Real estate agents and brokers know what sellers want when they embark on a contract to sell their home.  Simply put, sellers are looking for a reasonbly quick sale, at what they consider to be "top dollar" and without having to compromise much on price or terms.  Most sellers also don't wish to do much redecorating or remodeling in preparation for the sale of their property. These are the goals of the vast majority of sellers, and second home/vacation home sellers are no exception. Sellers know what they want, but most of them simply don't know how to accomplish those goals. In fact, some home sellers miss out altogether on what they need to do in order to achieve their real estate goals. Sellers, success begins with a realistic perception of w... 08/12/2015

Six Hard Truths About Selling Your Vacation Home Here are six important truths that many sellers overlook in their quest to sell a second home. Ignore these at your own risk, but remember that you've been warned! The more time your home spends on the market, the worse it looks to prospective buyers. Fifteen years ago, we would see quite a few "perennial listings" here on Madeline Island which remained on the market year after year without a sale.  Being on the market for more than a year can be risky. After a long time on the market, such properties become "shopworn" in the eyes of a buyer. Overpricing is the number one reason behind listings spending too much time on the market. If you offer your home for sale without cleaning or making necessary repairs, expect to negotiate on price. ... 07/31/2015

We Listed 7 of the Last 8 Luxury Homes Sold on Madeline Island Madeline Island Realty is on a roll this year.  Call it a trend or merely an indicator, but the fact remains that over the past four and one-half years, our LaPointe, Wisconsin real estate brokerage listed seven of the eight Madeline Island homes which sold at over $500,000.  And there are a number of reasons why. First of all, below is a bar chart which demonstrates that Madeline Island Realty's upper-bracket sales statistics are the strongest in the Apostle Islands real estate market.  The bar graph below shows all eight Madeline Island home sales at over $500,000 which closed during the past five years.  Seven of these successful home sales were properties listed for sale by Madeline Island Realty.  Only one of these eigh... 07/28/2015

August is Decision Time - Want Your Vacation Home Sold in 2015 or Not? In the northern United States, where shopping for a vacation home is a seasonal affair, the beginning of August is something of a decision-making moment.  In our northwest Wisconsin real estate market (the South Shore of Lake Superior, including Madeline Island and Bayfield, Wisconsin), August marks the beginning of "crunch time".  For many reasons, the price and condition of your home listing at this crucial time of year will make or break the success of your listing. We often remind our sellers that they need to pay close attention to what competing sellers are doing. Like it or not, second home buyers are shopping for value.  Buyers pay serious attention to the price, condition and cleanliness of the homes we show... 07/28/2015

Lower Big Bay Road Popular in Madeline Island Real Estate Market Recent sales indicate that the south portion of Big Bay Road closest to the Town of LaPointe (from the edge of town north to the portion where North Shore Road begins) has become very popular with buyers of Madeline Island homes. The April 2015 sale of 1150 Big Bay Road, LaPointe, Wisconsin and the subsequent sale in May of 1042 Big Bay Road, LaPointe, Wisconsin appear to bear this out.  Both sales were waterfront properties, located just north of the Madeline Island Airport and both were within two miles of downtown LaPointe.  Both properties were listed for sale by Madeline Island Realty. One reason for the success of listings in this area is its proximity to the Town of LaPointe, with the Madeline Island Ferry landing, ... 06/20/2015

Three Waterfront Sales on Madeline Island in the Past Two Months April, May and June of this year have brought welcome news to our Madeline Island home sellers. Between April 15 and June 12, Madeline Island Realty has accomplished three sales of its waterfront listings on the Island. Beginning with the sale of 1150 Big Bay Road, LaPointe, Wisconsin in mid-April, the strength of the real estate market in our 54850 zip code area has made a respectable showing.  There's still an element of bargain-hunting in this market, but it's been offset by prospects cashing in on historically low prices.   In mid-May, we closed the sale of our listing at 1042 Big Bay Road, LaPointe, Wisconsin, another waterfront home located close to the Madeline Island Airport and not far from the Town of LaPointe.  ... 06/18/2015

 The market for Madeline Island homes in or close to downtown LaPointe, Wisconsin is still hot.   With the recent sale of 671 Main Street LaPointe, WI 54850, just south of the downtown district and close to the Madeline Island Yacht Club & Marina, it's clear that the popularity of homes close to the Madeline Island Ferry landing is still strong. Two months ago, in mid-April, we blogged about this Madeline Island real estate market trend. At that time, we reported that five of the six most recent upper-bracket sales (sold at over $500,000) during the past forty-two months were all within three miles of the Town of LaPointe.   Now those statistics are six out of seven closed sales within the same three-mile distance from downtown LaPointe, during the past three and one-half years. The sal... 06/18/2015