Dane County · Buying in Wisconsin since 2010
Sell my house fast in Madison, Wisconsin.
Dan and Diana run House Buyer Dan out of Appleton, so a Madison house means a scheduled trip for us, not a hop across town. When the house is a tired rental near campus or an older place that will not compete with its renovated neighbors, it is worth the trip, and Dan or Diana sees every one before we put a figure on paper.
- No fees, commissions or repairs
- Close in as little as 7 days
- Written cash offer in 24 hours
Rather talk to a person right now? (920) 259-4326
The market here
What Madison housing is actually like
The housing stock
Madison's oldest housing sits on and around the isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona: Victorian houses near the Capitol, worker cottages and bungalows on the near east side, and faculty-era houses west toward the university. A large share of those were cut up into flats decades ago. Away from the lakes the city turns to postwar ranches and newer subdivisions.
Why Madison sellers call us
Most Madison owners who reach us have a rental they are finished with, often near campus or on the east side and often with tenants mid-lease, or a family house in an older neighborhood that would need a long list of work to compete with the renovated places on the same block.
Neighborhoods and areas we buy in
- Near East
- Near West
- Williamson-Marquette
- Schenk-Atwood
- Vilas
- Bay Creek
- Tenney-Lapham
- East Side
Coming down from Appleton: how a Madison sale with us works
The two of us behind House Buyer Dan, Dan and Diana Ahlborn, work out of our Edgewood Drive office in Appleton and have bought Wisconsin houses since 2010, mostly around the Fox Valley and Green Bay, where we live. Madison is not our backyard and we will not pretend it is. We do not know which east side block floods in a heavy rain or which landlord on Johnson Street everyone has heard of. What we can do is come and look properly.
In practice that means we set a visit date with you instead of appearing the same afternoon. Once the date is fixed, one of us walks the house from the basement floor to the attic hatch, every unit if it is a rental, and takes notes on what a contractor would have to do. If you live out of town, a property manager, a tenant you trust or a relative can open the door; plenty of Madison owners we hear from are heirs living in another state, or landlords who moved away years ago.
The offer comes in writing the day after the visit. It is not a single number with no explanation. It shows the price we expect after renovation, what the repairs will run, and the margin we keep. You can check any of those numbers against a Madison agent or contractor.
The closing itself is handled by a Wisconsin title company. It searches the title, prepares the documents and sends the new deed to the Dane County Register of Deeds, which is in Room 110 of the City-County Building downtown. Wisconsin's real estate transfer fee, three-tenths of one percent of the value, is owed by the seller whoever the buyer is. Beyond that we pay the closing costs, there is no commission, and you choose the date. Should we miss it, the On-Time Guarantee means you receive $5,000 from us. The step-by-step process page covers the rest.
Selling a Madison rental: emergency contacts, open orders and tenants mid-lease
A big part of the Madison housing we are offered is rental property: a house near the UW split into three flats, an east side duplex, a converted mansion carrying more bedrooms than it was built with. The owners are usually not in crisis. They have simply had enough of August turnovers, or a boiler and a roof are both due, or the building came to them through an inheritance nobody asked for.
Before you sell, it helps to know where you stand with the city. Madison's general ordinances, at MGO 27.04(2)(k), require every rental unit to have an emergency contact registered with Building Inspection. It is a one-time online registration per parcel number, it costs nothing, and the city finds unregistered rentals by comparing the property address against the owner's mailing address. If yours was never registered you can expect an Official Notice giving 30 days to put it right. Interestingly, the city recommends registering even when a house is just awaiting sale.
The more serious item is an open repair order. When a tenant reports a problem and an inspector writes it up, the city has a rent abatement process under MGO 32.04: if the work is not done and approved on reinspection, a hearing examiner can reduce the rent on that unit. An order like that makes a financed buyer's lender nervous and can sink a conventional sale late in the process.
None of it stops a sale to us. Tell us what notices you have, and the cost of clearing them goes into the written figure. We take the building with the tenants in it; leases continue and security deposits move to us at closing, so nobody gets a move-out letter because you decided to sell. Our pages for landlords who want out and on selling with code violations explain the handover in more detail.
Five historic districts and what the Landmarks Commission reviews
Some of the oldest houses in Madison sit inside one of the city's five local historic districts, and owners there live under a rule most of the city does not have: the Madison Landmarks Commission reviews every exterior change, and alterations need a certificate before the work goes ahead.
- Mansion Hill, north of the Capitol Square, was the first district, named in 1976. The city notes that many of its mansions are now multi-unit housing, largely for students.
- Third Lake Ridge, from Blair Street to the Yahara River between Williamson Street and Lake Monona, followed in 1979 and is the largest.
- University Heights, platted in 1893 for university staff, became the third district in 1985.
- Marquette Bungalows, two blocks of 47 bungalows built between 1924 and 1930, was named in 1993.
- First Settlement, near the site of the 1837 Peck boarding house, became the fifth in 2002.
For a seller the review process matters most when the house needs exterior work. Replacing original windows, re-siding, rebuilding a porch or changing a roof material is not a weekend decision in these districts. Fixing a house up before listing can mean waiting for approval and using materials the guidelines accept, which costs more and takes longer.
When we buy a house in one of these districts, we take it as it stands and we price the review into our plans. You do not file anything. The approval process becomes our job after closing, and the house you hand over can have the peeling porch and the storm windows it has today.
The inspection report on an old isthmus or east side house
The near east side and the streets around the isthmus are full of houses from the decades either side of 1900, and the buyers who love them still get an inspection report. Here is what tends to show up in houses of that age in Madison, and what does not.
Usually on the list
- Electrical work in layers: some original wiring still live, newer circuits added for each tenant or kitchen, and a panel that an insurer may question.
- Lead-based paint on trim, sashes and porches. Every house built before 1978 needs the federal lead disclosure, and in these houses the old layers are almost always there under the new ones.
- Bedrooms added in attics and basements over decades of renting, some without a window large enough to count as an exit.
- Stone or block foundations that let water in when the ground is saturated, and sewer laterals that a camera shows are cracked or full of roots.
Usually not on the list
Lead water service pipes. Madison Water Utility replaced roughly 8,000 lead service lines in a program that finished more than a decade ago, and its inventory now lists no known lead service lines in the city. That is one worry a Madison seller does not have to carry into a sale, although old galvanized pipes inside the house can still be on the report.
Every item on the first list is normal, and every one gives a financed buyer a reason to reopen the price. We cost each one before we write our offer, so the figure you sign is the figure you get. Our guide on houses that need too much work shows how we weigh repairs against resale.
When a Madison house should go on the market instead
Madison is one of the stronger housing markets we buy in, and that changes the advice. If your house is in decent shape, in a neighborhood buyers already want, and you can manage a few weeks of showings, list it with a good local agent. Someone buying a home to live in will usually outbid us, since a project is the last thing they are paying for.
The cases where we are the better choice in Madison tend to look like this:
- A rental with tenants who will not keep the place show-ready, or whose leases run past the date you want to be done.
- A house that needs enough work that the inspection will turn into a second negotiation.
- An estate where the heirs are spread out and nobody can manage a listing from a distance.
- A date that cannot move: a job starting elsewhere, a divorce judgment, a care facility admission.
One more thing worth knowing: the assessed value on your Madison tax bill is the city's estimate for taxing purposes, set each year by the assessor. It is a useful starting point, but neither a buyer nor we will price a house from it. Compare actual net figures instead. Get an agent's estimate of what you would actually clear once commission, repairs and several months of holding costs come out, then set our written number beside it. The comparison page and the breakdown of how we build a cash offer help with that.
We also buy around Madison, in Monona, Fitchburg, Middleton, Sun Prairie and the rest of Dane County.
What we take on
The Madison property types we buy
Isthmus and near-campus houses converted to rentals
Long-held rentals with decades of deferred maintenance
Property with registration or inspection matters outstanding
Occupied rentals, tenants included
Houses that will not show well against renovated neighbours
Free, no obligation
What is your Madison house worth to us?
Give us the Madison address and tell us who lives there now: you, tenants, or nobody. We will agree on a day to come down, walk the whole building and then send you a written number with our resale estimate, repair costs and margin listed line by line.
Rather talk to someone? Call or text (920) 259-4326 — a real person answers.
Madison sellers ask us
My Madison rental never got its emergency contact registered, or there is an open repair order. Can I still sell?
Madison houses sell quickly. Why would anyone here take a cash offer?
Our house is in one of Madison's historic districts. Do we need Landmarks Commission approval to sell it?
Appleton is a long way from Madison. How do you arrange to see the house?
Will a buyer's inspector flag lead water pipes on an old Madison house?
Free guides for Madison sellers
Local resources
Local resources for selling in Madison
The City of Madison Assessor's Office, in Room 103 of the City-County Building at 210 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, sets the assessed value of every parcel each year and its online property lookup shows the parcel number you will need for rental and tax records.
- Wisconsin DNR — shoreland zoning
- Madison's own clerk and assessor
- Dane County shoreland rules
- Wisconsin DNR — lakes information
- Wisconsin Circuit Court Access
Next steps
We also buy nearby
Get a cash offer on your Madison house
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