A big announcement!

Big news! We are thrilled to announce that we are joining the Compass team! It has been a wonderful 12 years at Coldwell Banker, but it was time for a change and we were fortunate enough to be handpicked by the Compass CEO to join the team. We are absolutely thrilled about the move!

We are moving for our clients
We chose Compass for one simple reason: Compass is the future of real estate. Our sellers will get access to the latest marketing technology and service. Our buyers will gain access to the most user-friendly, intuitive and results-driven mobile apps created to date. For example: so many of our buyers have such a hard time searching for homes within a certain school’s boundaries. Compass’ apps are set up with school searches from the get go!

Compass’ amazing and innovative new ways of working
For sellers, Compass is in the business of lifting barriers. To help ease the financial barriers around getting a home ready for the market, Compass will lend sellers a deposit of up to 3% of the projected sales price upfront to fund staging, painting, fixing up…whatever projects are necessary. For others, the barrier may be a desire or necessity to sell before buying a new home. In this case, Compass offers clients a one year interest-free bridge loan. Once our homes are listed, Compass’ marketing capacity is unparalleled. One of the coolest tools we use is their proprietary predictive algorithm that tracks people’s online real estate searches. These are just a few examples I am most excited about (call us for more details on how it all works!).

Compass is constantly innovating. One of my favorite tools is their Collections tool. Within the tool, I store all the comparable listings for properties, and status changes will update in real time. And, all of the tools look as amazing as they work. The marketing team at Compass is made up of designers, strategists and producers from brands like L’Oreal, Conde Nast, WeWork, Twitter and J. Walter Thompson.

An incredible foundation
All of the corporate team at Compass is incredible. Ori Allon and Robert Reffkin are the two founders. Ori was a Director of Engineering at Twitter after selling his company to the company in 2011. His first business was acquired by Google, making him the first to have companies acquired by both Twitter and Google. Before founding Compass, Robert worked at Goldman Sachs as Chief of Staff to the President following five years working in the firm’s private equity arm. In 2005, Robert served as a White House Fellow and special assistant to the Secretary of Treasury. Most recently, Joseph Sirosh, the former CTO of Microsoft, joined the team.

We are always looking for the next best way to maximize our client service, and I truly believe that joining Compass takes our business to the next level. It is going to be an exciting 2019!

We sat down with Chicago's top schools consultant, and here's what we learned

I could talk about Chicago’s school system all day long if I had to. And sometimes I actually do. I work with so many clients with young families, that I am constantly reaching for the latest, greatest information. A few months ago we hit a point that we were working with so many young families, that it only made sense to host a dinner to chat schools all together.

We invited our friends at Chicago School GPS to field the questions since this organization was literally formed to help Chicago families navigate the school system! It was a fun evening—great food and informative conversation—what could be better on a school night?! (By the way, we host events like this often. If you would like an invite, please shoot me an email!).

Here are some of my own biggest take aways from the night:

The application process:

• Preschool:

  • Start thinking about schools if your child will be two years old by September

  • Check chicagoearlylearning.org to see which CPS schools offer preschool

• Elementary + High School:

  • Chicago residents have the option to enter the lottery for schools outside of their neighborhood school and can select up to 20 schools.

  • There is no application fee to apply to your neighborhood school or the lottery.

  • School boundaries rarely change. If they do change, your child will be grandfathered in to your old neighborhood school. If you sell your home, your buyer will not be grandfathered in to the old neighborhood school.

  • When applying to neighborhood magnet schools, there is a proximity consideration for students who live within 1.5 miles of the school.

  • Don’t be afraid to make a switch, CPS schools are free to apply each year.

Thanks again to all of our friends and clients who attended. If you weren’t able to join us this time, email me and we will get you on the list for our next one!