(Guest Post) What Are Milwaukee Homes Selling for Now?

Sometimes you get a great opportunity to help others in your area. Well if you are living in Milwaukee and wondering about selling your home in the near future, "What can I expect to sell my Milwaukee home for?" Our new friends of Zillow.com gave us a little insight to that question. Our neighborhood of Brown Deer for a single family home is right around $129,500, according to Zillow, at this time. If Max and I decided to sell, we'd be looking at around a $39,000 profit after our initial investment of $80,500 and around $10,000 of improvements  And that's just at the average home listing price. Who knows, an appraisal might say something else. That makes for a really nice down payment on another home.

Anyways, be informed. You always want your home to sell well but do not set yourself up for disappointment. Know your neighborhood. Watch what similar homes are selling for in the area.

By: Tali Wee of Zillow.com

Thinking about selling a home in Milwaukee? Before considering buying or selling a home in the Milwaukee region, review the statistics of home values throughout Milwaukee county, examine the listing prices of homes verses their sales prices and compare these numbers to the state of Wisconsin and the United States. Having this information on hand gives real estate consumers greater understanding of their initial investments and potential listing prices for their current properties.

According to the Zillow Home Value Index for Milwaukee, home prices are estimated at $91,600 as of June 2013. Prices are on the rise in comparison to this past winter when the median home value dipped down to $84,000. This was an all-time low for Milwaukee real estate since 2008. Luckily for home owners, Milwaukee’s home values are rising at a steady pace of 1.6 percent year-over-year.

The list price of a home is the dollar amount that homeowners expect for the sale of their homes. The current median list price for homes in Milwaukee is $100,000, an increase of 16.4 percent from last year.

List prices are often set by the seller’s agent who best understands the market value of the home. However, due to multiple offers and bidding wars in competitive markets, the final sale prices of homes can fluctuate significantly from their initial list prices.

The current median sale price in Milwaukee is $116,500. The higher sale prices are good news for sellers who are receiving more for their properties than originally expected. The median sale price has also increased 5 percent year-over-year.

The neighborhood with the highest median list price of $669,000 is Northpoint. The neighborhood is located right on the shores of Lake Michigan, which inflates home prices.

For mid-range real estate in Milwaukee, check out Riverton Heights, where the median list price is around $82,500. Although it is a bit farther away from the beach, most who live in Riverton Heights are higher-income urban families, upper-scale singles and young married couples. Location, including whether a neighborhood is family-friendly, is an important factor when gauging a home’s value.

Purchasing a home in Milwaukee is less expensive than homes in the state of Wisconsin. The statewide Home Value Index is $141,600. The median list price of Wisconsin is $159,900 and median sale price is slightly higher at $172,600.

These numbers suggest a less competitive market across the state than in Milwaukee, where the list prices are significantly lower that the sales prices. Therefore, selling a home in Milwaukee may be quicker and homes may close higher than the seller asks.

So, how does this compare to the national housing market? As of June 2013, the median sale price of U.S. homes was $214,500 with a median list price of $199,900. This figure is significantly higher than Milwaukee, but note that highly affluent neighborhoods and individuals are included in the data.

Almost half of the population of Milwaukee owns a home. These homeowners should be relieved to know that 56.4 percent of Milwaukee homes have increasing values, which is a 23.3 percent increase from last year.

Based on the home value trends in Milwaukee, selling a home now is of better return than just one year ago.

LPB - Curtains (pun intended)

After living in our house for almost two years, we finally got around to putting curtains in our living room. I found a pattern from Target that I liked and since we were getting married, put it up on the registry (free stuff is the best stuff).We luckily got one set from my friend Grace and I purchased the other set with a Target gift card also from the wedding.

We put the first attached the brackets higher than the window to make the ceiling feel taller as spoken about at Apartment Therapy. Everything was going swimmingly until...

Right before we finished hanging the curtain rod, Max, who was standing on the couch instead of a chair, twisted his ankle, fell onto the coffee table and almost fell on a screwdriver. Thank the Lord he didn't. Turk knew he was in pain and began to lick him to make him feel better. Sometimes it's crazy how intuitive animals really are.

The rest of the day we spent in urgent care making sure he didn't re-break his ankle again. Sad news was he did trigger his hairline fracture but it wasn't severe. Here he is rollin' like a badass at Target while we waited for his pain medication.

After all that, we have lovely curtains in our living room. I'm loving the Moroccan print!

Do you like the mix of brights, neutrals and patterns?

2012 Realtors Home And Garden Show

It may just be his job, or the fact he is a super, awesome individual, but our buyer's agent Jeremy Rynders strikes again. When we finally signed the last of the papers to move in, he got us all new door knobs and keys. For the holidays, he sent us a year's subscription to The Family Handyman, a DIY magazine, which Max loves. Then a few weeks ago, we get free tickets to the Realtors® Home and Garden Show here in Milwaukee. The man is awesome! How did he know we were thinking garden upgrades...psychic powers I assume. ;)

My cousin Brian and his wife Megan, who also recently bought a house this November, called up and said they also got free tickets (ok so it might be a "recently bought home" sort of thing, but oh well) and asked us if we wanted to go together. So off to State Fair Park we went.

I was really overwhelmed and jealous by the beauty of some of the patios they had.

Here is a corner pergola over a little corner patio. I'm looking at you, Mr. Fix-It-Mark to tell Max we need one of these over our future patio. Doesn't it just look so cute and quaint. And also functional! The little open air pergola's really cool down a patio with simple shade.

Although not the most functional, this fountain with coy pond was quite cool. Coy pond in Wisconsin? *shrugs

This was a simple solution I think pretty much anyone could do. Hang mason jars with twine from an overhang area. Use pond sea weed (does anyone know the technical term, is it algae?), add water and flowers. Easy decor.

I also found this free-hanging trellis to be very cool. You could easy have flowers or ivy go up and over your pergola that way in a super decorative way. This is by Exteriors Unlimited.

One of my favorite displays (surprise, surprise) was from Stein's Gardens and Gifts. They showed many of the new trendy plants for gardening with the names so you could actually purchase them and not just admire like many other booths had. 


This little pink number called Kalanchoe which are apparently succulent flowering plants. Pretty sweet combining pretty flowers with the trendiness of the succulents.

When doing outdoor spaces you can't forget the little touches like this owl. 

Maybe more of a little tweeting bird fan? I also love the flowers they paired here, Cyclamen.

Another favorite for ground cover and garden filler Fox Red Curly Sedge for some grasses. 

A main feature from the event was 3-D chalk art from artist, Julie Kirk-Purcell. Not gonna lie, quite impressive.

I loved the wrought iron chandelier with the long wax candles for outdoors in this display. Unfortunately, the lady manning the booth was really standoffish so I didn't talk to her. I loved the display though. Note to self: If at a home show and you are the vendor, talking to potential customers draws in business... just a thought.

Some stand out services that interested us, both as home DIYers but also just in general for you our readers.


1. Brigheter Concepts, Ltd.
This company specializes in Solartubes®. Max is obsessed with them and wants to put one with a vent fan in our bathroom above the shower. It gives all the natural light we would need in the space.


2. Haack Architectural Sales LLC
This company specializes in Euroshield®, an environmentally friendly rubber roofing material that really caught my eye. The rubber roofs are at least 95% recycled material, mostly old tires, are much more weather resistant and last 4 times longer than traditional asphalt roofs. Sounds win, win to me.


3. Granicrete Wisconsin
The company specializes in concrete solutions that look and feel like granite or marble, without the cost or the physical weight. This really excited me because they can take laminate counter tops like ours, coat them in a 1/8" concrete layer and then their special coating to give it a granite look without the granite weight. Our old house cannot support such a load.


4. Stein's Gardens and Gifts
Their landscaping design program is amazing. Average price of design service is $300 and you get a $300 plant credit. Can your really beat that? You are buying the plants anyways. Might as well get the professional design service to go with it.


5. Terra Latch
I couldn't find the company name but the product is called the Terra Latch. It is a small plastic clip that allows you to attach terra-cotta pots to pretty much anything you want; fence, deck, side of the house, you name it! I thought it was amazing. If you Google them the product pops right up to order. Average price $5.95.


What was your favorite part of the show? Any of my photos or vendor recommendations inspire you?


I'm in no way affiliated with any of these companies or the Realtors® Home and Garden Show, these are all just observations of their services and my thoughts.

Good Enough for Mario

We know when we are outmatched and need to call in a professional to do some work for us. After all the demo in the bathroom, we thought that replacing the tub would be a piece of cake for Joe the Plummer. Until he told us we had cask iron pipes which were wayyyyyyyyy outdated and needed to be replaced for the modernization of our home. And then he said he would need to return with another plummer to get the job done. That's when I realized Joe wasn't a Joe at all, but they were actually a Mario and Luigi team.

Two men to fix all our pipe work and install our tub! Horray! No more complaining of tub grossness like here. They both showed up and (from what Max told me since I was at work) worked from 8am-5pm straight to get everything done.

Here were our before photos of the tub and the giant cask iron pipe in the basement.

Here are the glorious after shots.

This is our new Peerless tub and surround. They also mixed (putting the hot and cold lines on one handle) our water and put our new faucet hardware on for us. Everything is now also on copper piping behind the wall.

Here are the new pipes for the sink and toilets for both our main bathroom and half bathroom since they share that wall.

This is the new hole for the toilet. We are waiting to install both the sink and toilet until we have the flooring and walls finished to make things easier for installation.

Here in the basement are the new PVC pipes they installed. The two lines going up go to the two toilets. The skinny one coming off the left and going farther down is the tub to allow proper drainage of the water.

Our two man plummer team did good!

Although we haven't gotten the bill yet, we are certain with these unplanned updates we went over our $3000 budget for the bathroom. On the plus side, our home is now modernized which ups the resale value, our tub will properly drain now (it was having severe issues before), both bathrooms will be included in the bill and we shouldn't have any problems in the future.

What sort of unexpected expenses did you have in your renovations?! Old pipes like us? Nasty stud walls? Support beams you didn't know about? Just had no idea where to start? Let us know!

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Note: Mario and Luigi photo from here.