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Discount Real Estate Goes Mainstream in Northwestern Wisconsin

So I ran some stats in the MLS a couple weeks ago to see how I am stacking up against other agents so far in 2009. Lo and behold, I was surprised to find that I was ranked #19 in sales volume out of about 1037 agents in the RANWW (Northwestern Wisconsin) area. Wow! No wonder it feels like I've been so busy!

Next I ran the same report but included sales of only residential properties.With big commercial deals excluded, I moved up to #12. I would hope that any doubts people have as to the viability of discount real estate can now be laid to rest.

That is the power of giving real estate sellers choices. I let sellers decide how involved they want me to be in the transaction. Obviously, sellers…

I've posted my 2nd weekly analysis of some of the best deals available in the Eau Claire area. Last week's list was a top 20, but I decided to expand to 30 this week...especially after learning how to quickly import the data into Dreamweaver instead of entering the data in manually (yuk)!

Among the winners this week are a sweet southside 4br, 2700+ sqft (3338 Evergreen Ln), a modern 5 bedroom, 4 bath home overlooking Princeton Valley (3902 Freedom Dr), and 22 starter homes listed for less than $100,000. Most affordable real estate in Wisconsin indeed!

See the list for yourself on my Eau Claire Real Estate site!

I'm happy to share the entire list to buyers who may be interested, just shoot me an email.

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Michael Paul
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I've been getting a lot of requests lately for people asking for the best deals in town. And because I'm a numbers guy, I've been trying to come up with a good way of analyzing homes for sale to determine "the best deals."

I came up with this simple but effective solution:

• Obtain all Eau Claire property assessment records on CD
• Dump all active listings from MLS into a file
• Bump the two files up against each other
• Compute the list price vs. the assessed value
• Take the top 20 deals and post them on my website.

We'll see how it goes. Many of the listings in the top 20 are distressed in one way or another. Some may not be good deals due to needing TLC. However, I'm confident there will be some gems uncovered by this simple…

The 2008 Coldwell Banker Home Price Comparison Index was just released, and it turns out that Eau Claire is the most affordable real estate market in Wisconsin. In fact, Eau Claire was ranked the 10th most affordable city in the nation.

The survey, which started in the late 1980s, compares similar 2,200-square-foot, four-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath homes in 315 markets across the U.S.

According to the study, such homes sell for an average of $147,300 in Eau Claire. Sioux City, Iowa, had the most affordable homes in the nation with an average sales price of $133,459. Milwaukee was the priciest market in Wisconsin at $374,825. Minnesota's most affordable market was Rochester ($201,900); it's most expensive was Edina ($413,325).

Everyone here in Eau Claire…

Here are the four strangest Wisconsin real estate news stories from 2008 (so far):

First this guy in Whitehall (about 30 miles south of Eau Claire) offers to name the buyer of his home as the beneficiary of his life insurance policy...

Then there was the terrible flood in central Wisconsin which eroded the bank between Lake Delton and the Wisconsin River. Lake Delton emptied into the river, but not before taking this house with it!

Now-- Eau Claire County, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that some of the most prime riverfront real estate in the city should be used for....a new jail. So the dregs of society will have a better view than most of us productive citizens. What a terrible use of taxpayer money. I'm sure some local developers would…

Recently, I was involved in a short sale transaction on the buyer side. It was quite a roller coaster, to say the least. It took four months to complete the deal from offer to closing. No less than four times, we thought the deal was dead...but somehow we kept managing to shock the tired heart of it back to life for another go until at last it was completed.

I must give credit where credit is due. One man with extraordinary skills and drive singlehandedly saved the deal. He saved the buyers from having to find a less desireable house at a much higher interest rate, saved the sellers from foreclosure, and saved the commissions for the agents involved.

The man is a mortgage broker. I admit I was not sold on the idea of having a mortgage broker until…

One topic that comes up frequently when selling real estate in and around Eau Claire is the idea of egress windows in lower levels of homes. I thought it would be helpful to spell out the exact requirements for egress windows to be legal in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Building Code

According to Paul, the current building inspector for the city of Chippewa Falls, the Uniform Dwelling Code applies to all municipalities in Wisconsin. The code applies to all single family dwellings, and municipalities may not enact codes that are more strict than the state UDC.

There are three basic requirements that need to be met for a lower level egress window to be legal: It must be low enough, it must have an areaway, and it must be big enough to allow for exit and…

I'm in the middle of a so-called "short sale" at this time. My wife keeps asking me why they are called short sales, because it is taking so long to complete the sale! I've read that many short sales are taking 90-120 days to complete these days. The backlogs at large banks result from a combination of the high number of homes in foreclosure combined with understaffing.

4-5 years ago, mortgage brokers held most of the market share on the origination of mortgage loans. As they lost market share, banks cut staff. However, with the tightened credit market, many mortgage brokers have gone out of business. That means ordinary banks are taking up the slack and have once again begun originating the majority of mortgage loans. Apparently they have not yet…