Madison WI Capitol buildingMadison Wisconsin racks up yet another "Best City" award this month, this time for Kiplinger's "Best Cities for Young Adults". With a population of just over a half a million people in the Madison metropolitan area and an unemployment rate of 4.9% (the national unemployment rate is 8.2%), Madison tops out the list of best cities to live in for young adults in part because of its relatively low cost-of-living index of 108.2 (the national average is 100) and average rent of $849 per month for a one bedroom apartment (the national average is $959). The median household income for Madison, WI currently stands at $58,775 (the national median household income is $43,024).

More important than statistics, however, is the vibrant and energetic feel of Madison's…

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Do you love to look for homes on the go? Lake & City Homes Realty is proud to announce our new mobile phone application for searching Madison Wisconsin homes! Simply type in our website address www.lakeandcityhomes.com in the address bar of your mobile phone's browser and you'll be presented with this prompt:

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Click OK and you'll be taken to our mobile phone application: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the Lake & City Homes Realty mobile phone app you can access every home for sale in the Madison Wisconsin area while on the go! Our Advanced Search lets you search by City, Neighborhood, Zip, or MLS number for all property types including single family homes, condos, lots & acreage, condos, & multi-family homes. Just like on our…

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lakeandcityhomes.com home page quick search toolThe ability to search homes by Street Name has been available on lakeandcityhomes.com for some time, however it's been missing from the Quick Search on our home page. Until today, that is! Lake & City Homes Realty is happy to announce that we have added "Street name" (see arrow on screenshot) to the "Start Your Home Search" field in the quick search on our home page. So now, in addition to searching by City, Subdivision, Zip, or MLS number from the Quick Search, you can also type in a street name to quickly reference all the homes currently for sale on that street, regardless of city. 

In addition, we added a "By Address" tab to our advanced search form here. :) And, happily, we did not eliminate the ability to drill down and search by street name when…

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similar propertiesGreat news! We've added a new feature to our property details pages that we think you're gonna love. It's an idea similar to "Related Products" that we borrowed from Retailing except that it's for real estate so we call it "Similar Properties". Located near the bottom of every property details page you'll see four properties that are similar to the property you're currently looking at. The picture to the left is an example of what we mean. Underneath these four properties is a button marked "View all similar properties here" if you want a complete list of properties that are similar to the current property.

How do we define "similar"? Well, in order for a property to show up under "Similar Properties" it has to have the following characteristics:

  • be…

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open house signIn honor of NAR's National Open House day this weekend, Lake & City Homes Realty will hold open houses at three different locations in the Madison area: 37 Glen Arbor Way in Fitchburg, 1965 Quam Point Rd in the Town of Dunn, and 1201 Douglas Trail (MLS #1645729) in Madison.

All three open houses will be held from 1-3pm.

37 Glen Arbor (MLS #1653463) is a stunning new 3-bedroom, 2.5 bath condo listing located in Forest Glen Estates in Fitchburg, 1965 Quam Point (MLS #1643373) is a Town of Dunn ranch with gorgeous views of Lake Kegonsa, and 1201 Douglas Trail (MLS #1645729) is a wonderfully affordable 4-bedroom located in the Glendale neighborhood on the East Side of Madison.

Please join us in recognizing the official start to the 2012 Spring real…

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madison real estate website gets a new user interfaceHappy New Year! We hope that your 2012 has gotten off to a great start. As a token of our appreciation for your business we have just rolled out a brand new look & feel for our flagship Madison real estate site, LakeandCityhomes.com. Please bear with us while we work out the kinks. We think that you're going to love the new functionality and improved readability.

Some of the more noticeable changes include:

  • new & improved Quick Search at the top of the home page
  • radius and polygon searches (included with Search by Map)
  • more readable property details pages
  • links to virtual tours (without leaving the site)
  • create Saved Searches instantly 
  • featured neighborhoods, communities
  • rotating testimonials
  • our new mobile site:…

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tiny houseToday Inman News announced the results of its 10 U.S. hotspots for smallest house sizes. Included in its top ten list were six cities located in the Midwest, notably the great state of Wisconsin. The list was based on the median square footage of homes listed for sale on Realtor.com during the month of September 2011. Note: not all homes for sale are listed on Realtor.com.   Realtor.com reported that the median size of homes for sale in Wisconsin was the 10th smallest in the country for the month of September 2011, at 1,669 square feet. Like the other top ten finishers (with the exception of our nation's capitol which only has two), Wisconsin's homes have a median of three bedrooms.   In addition to Wisconsin, the other Midwestern states cited as…

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mobile app for madison real estate searchEver wondered if there's an app for searching for Madison WI real estate? Well, you're in luck! Lake & City Homes Realty is proud to announce the launch of iLakeandCityhomes.com, the mobile edition of our flagship Madison WI real estate site LakeandCityhomes.com. The mobile addition of our site has some really cool features that our desktop version does not have that we think you're really going to love.

For starters, scroll down and click on a community that interests you. The app loads all the listings for that community in chronological order. That means the latest listings always appear at the top of your screen. That way you can stay on top of which listings are the newest to the market in that community. This is doubly helpful for quickly checking…

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Madison WI jobs pictureIn a recent study of the nation's metropolitan areas, Madison Wisconsin came out on top for having the lowest average unemployment rate for the first 11 years of this century. The average unemployment rate for Madison from 2000 to 2011 was 3.5 percent, the best unemployment average in the country. Not surprisingly, the current rate of unemployment in Madison is higher than its 11 year average, however, at 5.3%. 
Honolulu's job market tied with Washington D.C.'s with an average unemployment rate of 3.7% for the last 11 years. Honolulu's current unemployment rate is 4.9% and D.C.'s is 5.7%. Fresno, California came in last with an unemployment rate of 10.7% for the years 2000 to 2011.   So, like the cold weather or not, if you're seeking full-time…

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A small but critical omission has been corrected on the Property Details pages of LakeandCityHomes.com. First, some background info to put things into context:

Recently I added Lot Size to the search criteria for all the available searches on the site, however when a site visitor looked at the Property Details page for any given property, Lot Size/Acreage was nowhere to be found in the information displayed. But thanks to a very observant visitor to the site, this was pointed out to me and I corrected the issue as quickly as I could. My heartfelt thanks to Jessica for her valuable feedback!

Below are screen shots showing where you can specify one or more Lot Sizes to your property searches, as well as where you can now see Lot Size/Acreage displayed…

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