Every month you stay in the wrong house to keep a sub-5% mortgage, you give up something larger: appreciation on the home you should already own, equity you could be compounding, and a life that fits. I'm Daniela Reyes — and this is the math your last agent didn't show you.
30 minutes. No pitch. You leave with the numbers.
You compare your current $2,840 payment to a hypothetical $5,100 payment on the bigger house and stop there. That comparison is incomplete in three specific ways — and the gap between the comparison you're doing and the comparison you should be doing is where the real money lives.
A $1.2M home in the neighborhood you want appreciated 6.1% in 2024. Staying in the $720K house cost you the delta — roughly $29K — in equity you didn't build. Year after year.
$420K in dead equity inside a house you've outgrown is not "winning." It earns appreciation on the wrong asset. Redeployed, it cuts the next loan amount, the next payment, and the next 360 months of interest.
When you put $400K equity down on a $1.2M home, you aren't borrowing at 6.8% on the whole price — you're borrowing on $800K. The effective cost across the asset is closer to 4.5%. Most people never run this number.
The homeowners who "won" the low-rate era and then refused to move are the same homeowners who, three years later, are sitting on the wrong house with a payment they're afraid to touch. The rate didn't lock them in. The narrative did.
None of these require rates to drop. All of them require a real conversation with a real lender and a real agent who's done this before. We've used each of these in the last 18 months.
Sell first, close, then rent your own home back from the new buyer for 30–60 days while you finalize the purchase. Removes the contingency, makes your offer on the next home cash-equivalent, and eliminates the "two-mortgage" fear.
Tap current home equity via a HELOC or short-term bridge loan to make a non-contingent offer on the next home. Sell your existing home after move-in, when it shows better empty and staged. We've seen this strategy add 4–7% to the sale price.
Both transactions close the same day, equity rolls directly from sale to purchase. Requires choreography between two title companies, the lender, and both agents — but eliminates carrying costs and bridge interest entirely.
Close on the new home with a smaller down payment, then once the existing home sells, apply the equity as a principal reduction and recast the loan. Same rate, lower balance, lower payment — without a refinance.
A 7/1 or 10/1 ARM at 5.85% beats a 30-year fixed at 6.95% for the 74% of homeowners who statistically sell or refinance inside 9 years anyway. The "I want fixed forever" preference costs the average move-up family $38K over their actual holding period. Larry walks through this number with every client.
In 30 minutes, you'll see your own numbers — equity, blended rate, three viable sequences, and the actual dollar gap between staying and moving. You leave with the math whether you list with us or not.
We pull live comparable sales for your specific home — not Zestimate, not last year's data — and model the realistic net proceeds after Compass commission, title, transfer taxes, and Concierge prep. You walk away with a defensible number, not a guess.
This is where the blended rate, the right loan product, and the recast option get modeled — by a lender, not by an agent guessing. For this step, I work with Larry Steinway because he runs the numbers in writing and tells my clients the truth, including when the move doesn't make sense.
Thirty years modeling move-up scenarios in the Chicago and North Shore market. Larry runs blended rate analysis, recast eligibility, and product comparisons in writing — before you list anything.
Of the five strategies in Chapter Two, we pick the two that actually fit your household, income, school calendar, and risk tolerance. We model carrying costs, bridge interest, and rent-back math side by side. You decide. We don't push.
Compass fronts the cost of staging, paint, light renovation, and pre-listing improvements — paid back at closing, zero interest. The average Concierge-prepped listing in our market sells 32 days faster and 4.6% above non-prepped comps. We map the renovation budget to ROI line by line.
Compass Private Exclusives gets your listing in front of 30,000 agents before it ever hits the MLS. We coordinate the sale, the purchase, and Larry's loan in lockstep. One project manager. One timeline. One closing table — or two, choreographed.
Step 01 starts the minute we sit down. Bring your address.
Two things matter when you're selling and buying in the same 90 days: a private network that previews inventory before it lists, and capital to prep the sale without writing a check. Compass is one of the few brokerages that gives me both.
It's also why my move-up clients close on the next home 41% of the time off-market — before competing buyers know the listing exists.
Compass Concierge fronts staging, paint, renovation, and prep. Repaid at close. No interest. No risk if the home doesn't sell.
Private Exclusives surfaces your listing to the Compass network before it hits the MLS — the same way you can preview off-market inventory on the buy side.
Compass-prepped listings in our market sell for 4.6% more than non-prepped comparable homes. On a $900K sale, that's $41,400 you don't leave behind.
I started at Compass in 2019, right before the locked-in era. I've watched the same conversation happen at my dining table 200 times: a family who outgrew their home in 2021 telling themselves they "can't afford to give up" a 3.1% rate while their actual lived experience deteriorates month by month.
So I built a method specifically for them. My average client has owned their current home for 5.4 years, has $387K in equity, has a sub-5% mortgage, and a real life reason they can no longer ignore. I don't work with first-time buyers and I don't work with investors. This is the only thing I do.
My job, the way I define it, is to give you a number you can actually defend at a kitchen table — and then either run the move with you, or tell you to stay another 18 months. Both answers are wins.
Each of these households walked away from a low-rate mortgage in the last 18 months. None of them describe it as a loss.
Sold a $740K starter for $812K via Compass Concierge prep. Bought a $1.35M four-bedroom in Winnetka using a rent-back. Payment rose $1,640/mo. Blended rate: 4.4%. They estimate they "bought back" 90 minutes a day in space, schools, and sanity.
HELOC against the Evanston home funded a non-contingent offer in Glenview. Won the bid against four other buyers. Sold the Evanston house 11 days later — empty, staged, and 6.2% above first listing comp. Recast the new loan once equity rolled in.
Simultaneous close — sold Skokie SFH and bought a Lakeview townhome the same Friday. Equity covered 55% of the new purchase. Larry structured a 10/1 ARM at 5.85% based on their 7-year holding plan. Monthly payment dropped $310.
If a real estate professional won't tell you their fees in the first conversation, walk. Here are mine, in plain text.
It depends entirely on three numbers we'll run together: your blended rate on the next home, the forgone appreciation on the house you should already own, and your realistic holding period on the next property. For roughly 60% of the homeowners I meet, the math says move. For 40%, it says wait. We tell you which one you are in 30 minutes.
You don't have to. Three of the five strategies in Chapter Two — rent-back, simultaneous close, and sell-first-then-buy — eliminate the dual-mortgage scenario entirely. Larry models the carrying-cost risk for every strategy before you choose one.
The homeowners who said this in 2022 are saying it again in 2024. If rates drop a point, prices will move with them — that's well-documented buyer behavior. The "wait for rates" strategy works on paper and almost never works in practice. We'd rather model your actual numbers than guess at the Fed.
Most consults are agents trying to win a listing. This is Larry and me working through your equity, your loan options, and the sequence math together — in front of you, in writing. You leave with documents whether you list with us or not.
No. Larry runs the audit because he models these specific scenarios faster and more honestly than most lenders I've worked with. If you have your own lender, bring them. If you want to compare Larry's quote to one or two others, that's expected and encouraged.
Then we tell you to stay, and we tell you exactly what would need to change — equity level, market shift, life event — for the math to flip. About 40% of audits end this way. I'd rather lose a listing than help someone make a six-figure mistake.
Average move-up timeline across our last 24 transactions was 73 days from audit to keys-in-hand on the new home. Concierge prep takes 2–4 weeks, listing typically sells in 8–18 days in our market, and Larry's team closes in 21–28 days.
Bring your address, your current rate, and a rough sense of where you'd want to move next. Larry and I bring the rest. You leave with a defensible number — whether you list with us, with someone else, or stay put for another two years.
30 minutes · No charge · No pitch · We tell you to stay 40% of the time
