Twice in One Week - Dealing with Difficult Agents Call them what you will. You may consider them colleagues or competitors, but we agree to cooperate with them and to help each other to make the transaction experience better for our clients in the end. But some of the fellow agents we encounter almost seem to be practicing real estate with blinders on.In the past week, I've encountered two such difficult agents. One of these agents made an error in a purchase agreement, forgetting to put a survey contingency into an offer and then insisting that our seller client pay for a survey map.The other agent neglected to advise his client that they should have a home inspection and also failed to advise their client that they should schedule and attend a final walk-through.Both of these agents d... 06/16/2022

Call it a Cabin if you prefer. But is it Really a "Cabin"?Somewhere around here, in one of a couple of glass-front lawyer's bookcases, is a copy of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book was published 170 years ago and inside the cover is a pen-and-ink etching of a small, rustic cabin.The cabin depicted in this illustration is very small, very cozy and basic, with a small stone chimney and a wisp of smoke rising from the place, signaling that someone is home.We love the concept of cabins. It conjures up images of "Lincoln Logs" that kids used to build with, dating back to 1916. A cabin looks sturdy and protective, almost like a little fortress. It's a symbolic image that speaks to our desire for warmth and security and the concept that one doesn't need a huge house to feel ... 11/06/2021

Madeline Island Ferry Line Adopts Policy Requiring Passenger Masks Yesterday the Madeline Island Ferry Line posted a policy requiring passengers using the on-board passenger cabins "to wear a mask covering the mouth and nose". The Ferry line meets the definition of a "common carrier" under Federal Maritime Law (see Federal Maritime Commission rules, 46 CFR, subsection 530.0). This rule which pertains to "a vessel operating on the high seas or the Great Lakes", gives the Ferry Line broad authority to make and enforce regulations on Lake Superior dealing with passenger safety and conduct while on board. This is a proactive step towards protecting passengers from the COVID-19 virus. It should provide an added level of confidence for those who use the Ferry Line for basic transportation bet... 04/14/2020

Seven Years of the Madeline Island Real Estate Market at a Glance About a dozen years ago, the Island Gazette newspaper offered a column entitled "What's it Worth?", written by a local real estate agent. The column was an effort to forecast the current and future market for homes in LaPointe, Wisconsin. At that time, most of our local agents were not using comprehensive SOLD data or detailed comparable sales statistics to construct a clear picture of our local real estate market.  Fast forward to 2020, and we're now able to view a quick, accurate picture of median home prices on Madeline Island over the past seven years:    Over the past seven years, our local market median home price appears to have returned to the mid-$200,000 range. The drop in median price may be attributed to multi... 04/13/2020

The Ashland Daily Press has reported that all municipal buildings in the Town of La Pointe, Wisconsin were officially closed yesterday until further notice, presumably because of concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.The closing will be in effect until further notice. Meetings in municipal buildings are canceled, except for those scheduled by appointment.Numerous similar closings are being reported along the south shore/Apostle Islands region, from Ashland and Odanah to Madeline Island, Washburn and Bayfield. The Red Cliff Tribe of Lake Superior Chippewa closed its "Legendary Waters" Casino today, following a similar move by the Bad River Tribe at their own casino. The casino closings are expected to continue for at least two to three weeks.  03/19/2020

 PRESS RELEASE Real Estate Broker Eric Kodner Interviewed by Bruce Vielmetti, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel  October 25, 2019 (MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin) - Wisconsin Realtor® Eric Kodner was recently interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper, for a recently-published article on Lake Superior shoreline erosion and its potential effects on waterfront homes. The article was published on October 25, 2019. A real estate educator and real estate broker in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Kodner is the Managing Broker and owner of Madeline Island Realty, in LaPointe, Wisconsin. Madeline Island is part of the Apostle Islands region, located in the southwestern portion of Lake Superior. In the Journal Sentinel article, Kodner was quoted as stating that the impacts of recent Lake Superior storms ha... 10/31/2019

           Heavy October rains flood Big Bay Town Park, on Madeline Island   PRESS RELEASE Real Estate Broker Eric Kodner Interviewed by Bruce Vielmetti, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel  October 25, 2019 (MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin) - Wisconsin Realtor® Eric Kodner was recently interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper, for a recently-published article on Lake Superior shoreline erosion and its potential effects on waterfront homes. The article was published on October 25, 2019. A real estate educator and real estate broker in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Kodner is the Managing Broker and owner of Madeline Island Realty, in LaPointe, Wisconsin. Madeline Island is part of the Apostle Islands region, located in the southwestern portion of Lake Superior. In the Journal Sentinel article, Kod... 10/29/2019

Midwest Real Estate Data is Coming After Pocket Listings - Stay Tuned  Inman News published this news story yesterday and it's already sounding an alarm among agents who live off of "pocket listings". MRED (out of Chicago) has had a longstanding policy opposing pocket listings. Now MRED has taken the next step, asking NAR to adopt a nationwide ban on pocket listings. Whether you agree or not, pocket listings are considered anti-competitive. In some cases, pocket listings may even be a Fair Housing violation. Asking NAR to adopt a national policy against pocket listings is a big deal, and it will impact agents all over the country.  We see pocket listings all over the nation and not just in population centers. In our cozy little Apostle Islands community (Madeline Island and the surround... 10/22/2019

Refuse to Lower Your Price? You Might be Selling Others' Homes Listing your home for sale means entering into competition with other sellers. The moment your home hits the market, you are in competition. I'm often surprised at how many home sellers don't consider that. Every other home for sale in your community is competing with your own. They compete with your property in terms of condition, cleanliness, and price. Not only will overpricing your home fail to get you results. It also drives buyers to consider competing properties other than your own. Real estate professionals often refer to this as "bounce". Overpricing can drive buyers elsewhere. Some sellers who overprice wind up sitting on the sidelines, watching others succeed while their own efforts fail.  If you don't mind paying... 09/02/2019

I Wish I Could Show You this Residential Property Flyer, but I Won't. I really can't show you this "Home for Sale" flyer. I'd probably be in trouble with the listing broker for insulting whoever produced this marketing piece. So I'm going to describe it instead. You decide if this is an example of praiseworthy print marketing. First of all, let me preface my comments on the flyer by disclosing that this Madeline Island home for sale is a lovely waterfront dwelling with a large dock, priced at just under $700.000.  The 8 x 10 flyer is one-sided and is printed in color. The actual content area is eighty square inches. The portion of the flyer devoted to describing and depicting the house is about thirty square inches. What's on the remaining fifty square inches of the flyer? The co-produc... 08/20/2019

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See our Madeline Island Realty ad in the Island Gazette on March 24th As of the end of 2017, we completed our sixth consecutive year in which we made at least one Madeline Island/Bayfield sale at or above $500,000. And in the last eight years, we made nine upper-bracket sales between $500,000 and $1.5 Million in our service area.  No other real estate brokerage in the Chequamegon Bay/South Shore area has matched our record in upper-bracket sales. We know that upper-bracket sellers face greater challenges in achieving a sale than those who are selling a mid-priced home. All of those sellers deserve a level of professionalism that is commensurate with their property investment in the Apostle Islands area. See our ad in the latest issue of the Island Gazette, coming out at the end of March... 03/03/2018

Problems with Madeline Island Maps on the Web Three years ago, while we were updating our website, we discovered something on Bing and Open Street maps (Open Street maps are used by MapQuest and have been used in the past by Snapchat and Foursquare). The problem was that Madeline Island was depicted on those maps as being totally underwater: [Before the OpenStreet Map Correction - Madeline Island Appears Submerged] As you can see above, the Bayfield mainland is pictured in white, against the blue background of Lake Superior. But Madeline Island appears completely submerged. Some roads are visible (in white) and a few landmarks (like the airport) are shown, but the outline of the Island's shoreline is invisible, making Madeline Island look as if it is underwater. Some examples of the man... 03/03/2018

Amazon's "Agent NEO" app Could be a Game Changer for Real Estate Agents Inman News is talking about this. I haven't seen it mentioned on Active Rain yet, but it's certainly getting attention elsewhere. And if you've missed it, you might benefit from doing a little research. Agent NEO is Amazon's latest foray into providing a service to the real estate profession. The Agent NEO app is currently in Beta testing. It looks like both large and small brokerages are applying to test the new app.Who couldn't use another way to reach real estate consumers? Alexa has become a popular way to keep yourself organized at home, so it's perfectly adaptible to serving as a personal assistant in the office. It's also likely to be seen in the future as a great way to broaden an agent's reach to prospectiv... 12/06/2017

Why Do So Many Buyers of a Summer Home Wait Until Autumn to Buy? Real Estate agents who sell recreational properties ("summer homes" or "vacation homes") witness this phenomenon every year. In our service area, the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior (also referred to as the "South Shore") buyers typically begin to come visit us and look at properties in April or May.  Buyer interest begins slowly, but ramps up in early summer, with a peak sometime between the Fourth of July and Labor Day.  And buyer traffic lingers until late fall, sometimes right up to the end of the calendar year. But the vast majority of our recreational home buyers tend to wait until they see properties disappearing from the market.  WHY  do so many buyers wait until something they wanted to buy is gone? There may be ... 05/07/2017

 MLS Consolidation On the Way & What it Means to Consumers & Agents To paraphrase the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, "the only constant (in real estate) is change". And if national real estate experts have anything to say about it, we are looking at another incoming wave of change in the way we deliver real estate listing data to the public. A panel discussion at the recent Inman Connect event in New York revealed what's in store for our industry. The big revelation was the prediction that we will see perhaps a dozen large regional MLSs across America within the next decade or so, in place of the approximately 750 MLS entities now in existence. At the present time, industry experts view today's MLS organizations as a mess, described as monopolistic, anticompetitive and slow-moving. Most ... 02/01/2017

Madeline Island Real Estate Buyers Picking up Late Season Bargains Almost every year, we see a late-season surge of home buying on Madeline Island and throughout the Apostle Islands area. 2016 has been no exception. Home buyers and vacant land shoppers who began looking months ago have finally gotten serious about these late season values. The November sale of 2862 North Shore Road, LaPointe Wisconsin is a good example. This value-priced log home on Madeline Island was clearly one of the best home values of 2016 in our market area. In December, we saw a North Shore Heights lot on Madeline Island (nearly six wooded acres, with deeded access to Lake Superior, plus shared dock and beach) sell for a record low price. If you missed this opportunity, you passed up on owning a truly great parc... 12/07/2016

Words of Appreciation From a Client in Hawaii One of our seller clients who resides on the Island of Maui wrote us today with a very kind testimonial. She wrote, "Eric Kodner of Madeline Island Realty was very helpful to us in selling our Madeline Island waterfront home, especially appreciated since we live quite far from the area and had to conduct business across five time zones.  He gave us good advice, showed the house often (even in bad weather) and followed up on every prospective buyer. When it came time to close the sale, we had all our ducks in a row and everything went smoothly.   We greatly appreciated Eric's efforts on our behalf." Testimonials can be extremely important when you are a listing agent. And great testimonials like this one are our bread and butter.   06/01/2016

Craigslist Rental Scam Complaint Reported to Police on Madeline Island In our Madeline Island Real Estate Blog, we've tried to warn readers about the perils of using Craigslist to advertise properties for sale or for rent. And we also routinely warn consumers about the lack of safety or consumer protection when responding to Craigslist real estate ads. Now, it appears the La Pointe (Wisconsin) Police Department has posted a warning on Facebook about a rental scam on Craigslist which targets people searching for a place to rent on Madeline Island.  [see below] The warning from the La Pointe police department states that a Craigslist ad is attempting to rent a property on Madeline Island which is currently for sale. According to police, the folks who placed this ad are not  the owners of ... 04/13/2016