Alvarado Group

Vue d'ensemble

Sara and Carlos Alvarado are proud to present the Alvarado Group, a family run business passionate about real estate, healthy homes and vibrant communities. Its future was destined long ago as Sara was raised in a real estate family with her Father, Bruce Wunnicke, being a residential broker and bringing her along to showings at a young age. In college at the University of Minnesota-Mpls, Sara leased apartments in the Uptown area for a large property management company. She also fell in love with the Spanish language during a study abroad program in Seville, Spain and went on to get her BA in Spanish. It can be a blessing to find what you truly love at a young age (including her husband, who she met at age 24).

After college and some serious traveling, Sara had the opportunity to live in Los Angeles to continue pursuing real estate while incorporating her bi-lingual skills. LA, however, was a too much fun for Sara and not knowing where she was going to settle down to start her business career she decided to spend the winter of 1999-2000 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on the beach and teaching English. Her three month plan turned into a three year adventure when she met her future husband and business partner Carlos. At the time, Carlos was running his own Mexican restaurant "La Estocada. Carlos was well established and well connected in Puerto Vallarta so after getting married they decided to stay there and Sara had the opportunity to work as a sales agent for condominiums at a local real estate company. And along came Alex, their first son. Soon after he was born they started making arrangements to move to Madison to be closer to Saras family.

Sara, Carlos and Alex moved back to Sara's hometown of Madison in 2002. It was then that Sara decided it was time to continue forward in real estate and began working full time on her real estate career in September of 2002. Many agents warned her not to plan on getting a paycheck for 6-9 months in the beginning. Not liking the sound of that, Sara went on to close four transactions by December. In her first year, she was among the top 20% of realtors in the South Central Wisconsin MLS and helped 21 families with their home purchase/sale process. The team now helps an average of 50 families a year and consistently grows every year ranking in the top 30 Realtors out of 3,000. Sara has always been passionate about helping families like her own during the process of finding and/or selling a home. She puts a great deal of heart and soul into the connections she creates and the clients she works with. Since 2002, Sara has accumulated a vast amount of experience with both first time home buyers and seasoned clients.

Upon moving to the United States for the first time, Carlos decided against working in the restaurant business went into a completely different area--banking. He worked with Park Bank for three years learning as much as he could about the financial world and creating wonderful connections in the Hispanic community. And along came Baby Leo, born in November 2004. Juggling a dual career family and two young children got them thinking about the freedom of entrepreneurship, so early in the year of 2006 as Sara's business was still growing fast, it was clear that Carlos could bring his financial savvy and Hispanic community connections to help the Alvarado team. Carlos got his real estate license and went to work right away serving the Hispanic market in Madison. In specializing in the Hispanic market, Carlos has made powerful connections with Spanish speaking local professionals from mortgage consultants, insurance agents, inspectors, and a long list of home improvement contractors.

After years of working in larger real estate companies the two entrepreneurs met with an owner of a small boutique real estate company in Seattle and started to process of creating their own unique brokerage Team. Sara and Carlos opened the Alvarado Real Estate Group as an independent brokerage in March of 2008. There isn't another real estate company like ours in the Madison area. The team approach is organized to insure a smooth transaction process. When you work with us, you will consult with your licensed Realtor to help find and/or sell your home, and your Realtor specializes in the consulting and negotiating stage of the transaction. Our Listing Marketing Assistant creates the marketing materials needed to effectively showcase your home while our Transaction Coordinator is responsible for making sure all the details are attended to once we have an accepted offer. We have the bases covered..both yours and ours. There are many business models that are adapting the Team approach because it makes sense. When you visit the Doctor you don't schedule your appointment with the Doctor and have her/him help coordinate your insurance for billing. Like a good baseball team, you need all the players on the field and they are all important in making sure the ball doesn't get dropped. It is exciting to see this move into the real estate world as well.

The team is also very active in the community. It is their belief that homeownership is made all the more happy when families feel a part of their community and there are positive neighborhood experiences. Due to the Alvarado's passion for raising their children bilingual, Sara was quick to get involved with Nuestro Mundo, a Spanish/English immersion elementary charter school, which at the time, in 2003, was still a dream to this group of people within the community. To be involved in helping make this dream become a reality and now after 5 years and a long waiting list, I'll never say never to any dream. It takes passion, a clear vision and a lot of volunteer support...and we can make a difference in our community. That is why Nuestro Mundo Community School is what it is today. Alex started Kindergarten at Nuestro Mundo in the fall of 2006 and Leo will follow in his footsteps soon enough.

Sara and Carlos are currently working on projects relating to environmental issues in the real estate industry and for their clients within their own homes. It starts with ways to empower people to make small changes in lifestyle and home projects that can lead to large differences for our future. Part of the initiative to bring awareness and find solutions to this growing concern stems from their second son, Leo, being diagnosed with asthma when he was 15 months old. The environmental triggers that are the cause of many asthma flare ups have increased dramatically and the prevalence of asthma in children aged 5 -14 yrs has risen 72% over the past 14 years. Being involved above and beyond the period of time we work with our clients in the sale/purchase process is incredibly important to us, says Sara at a recent energy saving light bulb event that the Alvarado Group sponsored. We create an intimate bond with our clients and want to give more to their lives and to the strength of our community. We believe that global change starts at home and were committed to making that the foundation in the way we grow our business, create community and raise our children.

This has led to many powerful changes in the industry as well. Not all our clients are interested in what a green home is when we start looking at homes so we've created a Green Home Care Package that we give them after we've gone through the transaction and they are about to move in. It has been well received by all our clients. We have also partnered up with Robin Pharo, the president of Healthy Home Reports, to walk through the home with the new homeowner and help them understand ways they can improve their house and create a healthier and more efficient home for their family. Sara Alvarado has been on the Green Built Home Committee since early in 2007 and has founded a group of active Realtors, called Madison's Green Agents, which gathers monthly to discuss ways Realtors can become more educated on Green homes and Green living practices. There is so much going on in the Madison community and many exciting ways to get involved. After months of researching and working with the local MLS, we were finally able to get a new searchable category added to the MLS that lets Sellers properly market their home if it is Green Built Home certified, Energy Star certified or if it is an older home and has had a home performance evaluation completed with Focus on Energy. This was a very exciting step!

Madison by Bike or Foot
updated 01/2010 by Madison Green Map