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
How Interest Rate Buydowns Actually Work (2-1 vs Permanent)
When we bought our new construction home, the builder advertised a rate that looked fantastic. Then we found out the catch: that rate only applied to their existing inventory, not the home we actually wanted to build. The billboard rate was real, just not for us. So we changed the play. I ran the lo
How to Avoid Being House Poor (Even When Everyone Says You Can Afford It)
I was talking with a client about his situation. Good income, nice house, and every month still felt tight. Savings never grew. Every repair went on a card. Vacations kept getting pushed to next year. A friend listened to me describe it and said, "You know you're describing being house poor, right?"
How Lenders Actually Count Overtime, Bonus, and Side-Gig Income
A friend of mine, Jason (this is actually his real name, but I think there are too many to know for sure who he is), spent weeks fighting with his lender over money he had actually earned. He works overtime. A lot of it. But the lender he picked did not really understand how his income worked, so Ja
Can I Buy a Rental Property While Still Paying Off My Own Mortgage?
A friend of mine, I will call him Tom (and yes, you better believe that's not his real name), was about to move into a new home and had a decision to make about the house he was leaving. He could sell it, or he could keep it and rent it out. On paper it looked like easy money. He had built up equity
Should I Refinance My Mortgage? How to Know If It Actually Makes Sense
A friend named Lenny (and yes, his name has been changed to protect the innocent) refinanced his mortgage to lower his monthly payment. On paper it looked like a clear win. Lower rate, lower payment, why not. What his mortgage rep never explained was that the closing costs were getting rolled into t