Boost your Curb Appeal
It might still be winter in Chicagoland, but that doesn't have to stop you from boosting your curb appeal. Home buyers are out right now and ready to choose a home to move to this summer. As a seller,...
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Appraisals for Home Buyers
What role does an appraisal play in the home buying journey? If you're buying a house with a loan, then your lender is going to order an appraisal. And what they're looking for there is not to see whether or not you got a great deal or even if ...
Appraisals for Home Sellers
Does a seller need an appraisal to sell their house? The short answer is NO, you don't need an appraisal and honestly the appraisal doesn't matter because it's a snapshot of a minute in time and it's all historic. It doesn't speak to what the c...
Red Flags in Home Buying
Unfortunately, sometimes there are big red flags that we want to look out for when you're house shopping. The first one is foundation cracks. Concrete cracks are totally normal. Concrete cracks all the time. But if that crack is more than about...
Escalation Clause
When you're buying a house, one of the tools that we might need to implement to help you win in a multiple offer situation will be an escalation clause.
So what is an escalation clause?
This is an addendum that goes with the contract that...
How many houses should I see before we are ready to write an offer?
People often ask me how many houses they should see before we are ready to write an offer. The reality is this can vary a little bit for everyone, but most people need to see about 10 houses before they're ready to make a decision.
Sometimes...
Being Ready to Make an Offer
So, you're out house shopping and you're trying to figure out how to know if you're ready to make an offer on a house or not.
How do you know if you're ready to make an offer? Well, there's really four things that you need to consider.
O...
Am I Ready to Write an Offer?
You're thinking of buying a house. How do you know if you're ready to write an offer?
First, you need to know your overall buying power. So, how much house can you afford? You need to actually talk to a lender at today's rates to really get ...
Why Buy Now?
One question that comes up a lot right now from people who have owned their homes for some time is, “Who is even buying right now with these rates?” If you have had an interest rate under 4% for the last decade, then sure, the rates seem hi...
Rent vs Sell
I remember being out to lunch with a group of coworkers sometime around 2012 when I still worked in the city - we went around the table and there were about 6 people there and everyone was an “accidental landlord” -
Most people owned the...