In the News

Here’s a number worth sitting with: this July, the Thornton reservoir, one of the giant stormwater holding tanks under the Chicago area, hit 94% of its 7.4-billion-gallon capacity. That’s the fullest it has ever been. Its sibling, the McCook reservoir, filled up seven times this summer. According to City Bureau’s reporting, McCook had only hit…

There is a state program that will hand an Illinois homebuyer up to $15,000 toward a down payment, charge zero interest on it, and not ask for a single monthly payment until the day that buyer sells, refinances, or pays the mortgage off. It has existed for years. It works in every one of Illinois’…

There is a moment in every home inspection where the inspector goes quiet, crouches down next to the electrical panel, and takes a photo. Not two photos. One, very deliberate photo. If you are the buyer standing behind them, your stomach drops. If you are the seller, you are about to find out something about…

If you opened a homeowners insurance renewal this summer, read the number, and then read it again — you are not imagining it, and you are definitely not alone. Illinois now has a law about that. It just will not do anything for you until July 1, 2027. That gap between “signed” and “in effect”…

The envelope that landed in Wayne Township mailboxes on August 27 is probably the most ignored piece of mail in DuPage County. It isn’t a bill. Nothing is due. There’s no payment stub, no late fee, no threatening red type. So most people file it under “deal with this later,” and later turns out to…

Every seller asks the staging question in roughly the same shape: “Do I really need to spend two thousand dollars renting furniture for a house I’m trying to get out of?” It’s a fair question, and most of the answers floating around online are written by people who sell staging services. So I did something…

Every few months a commission headline crosses the wire and somebody in Bartlett forwards it to me with three question marks. This week it was two of them: a Washington state regulator reminding agents that they can only be paid through their own brokerage, and another round of coverage on the $120 million antitrust settlement…

There are ten homes for rent in Bartlett right now. Ten. In the same MLS pull, there are seventy-seven single-family and attached homes for sale. That ratio — roughly one rental for every eight listings on the market — is the part of the rent-versus-buy debate that national headlines keep leaving out. And there are…

The number that surprises people at an Illinois closing table is almost never the lawyer’s bill. It’s the property tax credit — a five-figure line item on plenty of Chicagoland deals that exists purely because Illinois collects property taxes a year behind. Buyers brace for the “2 to 3 percent in closing costs” they read…

Nearly every list of first-time homebuyer mistakes says the same five things: get pre-approved, don’t chase the lowest rate, don’t skip the inspection, don’t drain your savings, don’t buy a car in the middle of underwriting. All true. All useless once you’re standing in a Bartlett kitchen with a decision to make on Sunday night….