Yes. Since August 2024, a written buyer representation agreement is required before a broker can tour you through a home. It is not fine print — it states what @properties Christie’s International Real Estate is paid and who pays it, agreed before we start rather than discovered at closing.

It does not have to be a long commitment. It can cover a single property, a short window, or a full search. Read it, change what you want changed, and sign it when you are comfortable. Any broker who rushes you past it is telling you something.

To be precise about it: commission is earned and paid to @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, the brokerage — never to me directly. I am a licensed broker sponsored by @properties, the agreement is with the brokerage, every dollar is paid to the brokerage, and I am compensated by @properties afterward. No payment ever goes to me or to Ongena Group.

Where that money comes from is negotiable: the seller may offer to cover it, you may pay it directly, or it gets worked into the terms of the deal.

What matters is the order of operations. We settle the number before you fall in love with a house, so it is never a surprise competing with your emotions. If a seller’s offer does not cover it, you hear that from me before you write the offer.

Commission is negotiable, and always has been. It is paid to @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, the sponsoring brokerage — not to me directly — and the listing agreement you sign is with the brokerage. I will give you the number and exactly what it buys before you sign anything: repair guidance priced from construction experience, staging, professional photography, a private network release before the MLS, full marketing, negotiation, and a written traffic report every Tuesday whether the news is good or not.

If you want to compare that against a discount alternative, do it. Ask what the cheaper option does in each of those phases.

A resale home generally needs three years to break even on the cost of buying and selling it, and five or more to clear a market cycle comfortably.

New construction is different. It carries roughly an 8–15% premium over market value simply for being new, and that premium is very hard to recover inside three years. Plan on seven or more.

If your honest timeline is shorter than the home requires, that is a conversation worth having before the search, not after the offer.

It comes down to your horizon and your tolerance for work. New construction buys you time before major systems need attention, and costs you the new-build premium plus a longer hold. Resale is priced closer to real value, and you inherit whatever the last owner deferred.

The deciding question is usually not taste, it is how long you will be there and how much disruption you can absorb in years three through seven.

Concretely: reading how much life is left in a roof, a furnace, or a tuckpointing job rather than noting that it exists. Telling a structural problem from a cosmetic one. Pricing the repair before you negotiate rather than after the inspection. Knowing when a room being sold as a second bedroom does not meet code as one — which is a real thing that has changed a client’s price by $25,000.

It does not replace your inspector. It changes which homes you spend an inspection on.

Nobody can tell you where rates go, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something. What can be said is how the tradeoff works.

A higher rate on a lower price is refinanceable. A lower rate on a higher price is not — you own that price forever. And when rates fall, the buyers who were waiting come back all at once, which is what pushes prices up and returns you to competing offers and waived contingencies.

The right question is not where rates are going. It is what the payment is at today’s number, and whether the home fits the years you plan to be in it.

There is no single Chicago market. Conditions on a three-flat block in Avondale and a lakefront tier in Streeterville can move in opposite directions in the same quarter, and a citywide headline will not tell you which is happening on your street.

So the answer comes from comparable sales on your specific block, days on market for your property type, and what is under contract nearby right now. Ask and you will get those numbers, not an adjective.

No. Clients have closed in forty towns and neighborhoods — the city, the North Shore, and the western and southwest suburbs. The business is built around following clients through their moves rather than owning one ZIP code.

That is planned for in the first conversation, not improvised in month three. Before listing we agree on a date that matters to you and what happens if the home has not sold by it — a price strategy, a marketing change, a rental fallback, or taking it off and returning in a better season.

You also get a written report every Tuesday, so a problem shows up in week two rather than week ten.