The big dirty city. That's where I live. You can see the Elevated cars go by from my backyard. You can hear rush hour traffic. And at the same time, by looking at my street, I might as well live in Mulberry. Hundred year old Victorian homes shaded by hundred year old maple trees.
There has long been a stigma associated with living in a city the size of Chicago that it is loud and dirty. While it's hard to argue that at certain times of the day it can be pretty loud around my house, I don't think my neighborhood is any dirtier than any other block in this country. But there is another larger argument these days; is it better for the environment to live in a large city or the leafy suburban paradise that surrounds it?
There is more and more evidence towards city living. We may live closer to our neighbors, but as a result, we use far less resources and tend to use public transit rather than long commutes alone in our cars. Here is a great website where you can actually manipulate the data to compare maps of all sorts of environmental data. Make sure you have a fifteen minutes to play with this, it's pretty engrossing.
So, that brings us to mortgages. Fannie Mae has an "Energy Efficient Mortgage"product that nobody seems to know about. If you are buying an older home you can have the property inspected by a "HERS" inspector where they make recommendations regarding the energy efficiency of the home in question. You are then allowed to upgrade anything from HVAC systems to windows and insulation and wrap the cost into the mortgage. This is available both as a purchase transaction as well as a refinance transaction. If you are interested in obtaining more information, just drop me a line.
Joe Burke
Your Chicago Mortgage Guy
773-742-6707
