Why Did My Escrow Payment Go Up? (Your Rate Is Fixed, So What Happened?)

You locked a fixed rate. The whole point of a fixed rate is that the payment never moves. Then a letter shows up from your servicer, and next month's payment is a couple hundred dollars higher than the one before it. Nothing about your loan changed, and yet the bill did. If that is you right now, yo

How to Read Your Cook County Reassessment Notice (and What to Do in the Next 30 Days)

A letter shows up from the Cook County Assessor with a new, bigger number on it, and most people do one of two things: toss it in a drawer, or panic. Both are mistakes. That letter is your reassessment notice, and it is not a bill, it is the one window you get to challenge your home's new value befo

How to Appeal Your Property Taxes in Cook County (From Someone Who Did It)

A couple of years ago I opened my own reassessment notice and my stomach dropped. The county's estimate of what my house was worth had jumped, and I knew exactly what that meant for the tax bill coming behind it. So I did something most people never do. I appealed it myself. No attorney, no firm, no

Marry the House, Date the Rate? An Honest Look

You have heard the line. It is on every real estate social feed, it shows up in listing presentations, and the average agent has used it at least once to coax somebody off the porch and into the buyer pool: marry the house, date the rate. Commit to the home, treat the rate as temporary, refinance wh