Buying or Selling Around McHenry?

Start with someone who grew up here
and knows the backroads.

Around Moraine Hills

Lakemoor on one side, McHenry on the other, the Fox River nearby, and a bunch of neighborhoods that don’t all behave the same just because the ZIP code says McHenry.

Some streets flood in April. Some subdivisions hold value when the market softens. Some HOAs are worth it and some aren’t. That’s the kind of thing this site is for.

What’s Actually For Sale Around Here

Live listings and daily updates over on my search site. Pick a bucket to jump in.

Under $300K

Starter homes, townhomes

$300K-$600K

Family homes, subdivisions

Fox River / Chain Access

Waterfront and near-water

Browse homes for sale

McHenry Stuff Worth Knowing

Events, road stuff, tax updates, market things I notice. Refreshed monthly, more or less.

This week

Fiesta Days (July 10–19)

Art & Street Fair — Sat Jul 18

Parade — Sun Jul 19

Petersen Park: fireworks

Coming up

Music Festival (Sept 10–12)

Petersen Park.

Shinedown, Kane Brown, Hardy, and more national acts.

Year-round

The usual haunts

Riverwalk · Moraine Hills State Park · Downtown Green Street

Justin Franzke

I’m Not New Here

I grew up on one side of Moraine Hills. Now I live on the other, in Lakemoor. My parents still own homes on the side of the state park where I grew up.

I didn’t pick this area from a spreadsheet. This is the patch of ground I actually know.

18 years selling real estate in Illinois. Licensed in Wisconsin too. Illinois public adjuster license and decades around construction, which mostly means I’ve spent a lot of time seeing what houses hide.

“I’m not the right agent for everybody. I ask questions. I sometimes notice things people wish I hadn’t.”

Testimonials

We started looking at Lakemoor because we wanted lake access and space that Bucktown just couldn’t give us. Justin was the third agent we talked to, and the first one who actually walked the property with us instead of pointing at his iPad. He caught a piling issue with the dock that would have cost us $18K to fix six months in. He knows this corridor cold and he sees things other agents don’t.

Steve & Deb

When we decided to leave Lincoln Park after 27 years, we weren’t sure if McHenry made sense or if we should be looking at Barrington instead. Justin was upfront that Barrington wasn’t his lane and gave us the honest tradeoff between the two. He also told us to skip refinishing the hardwood on our Chicago sell, said buyers wouldn’t pay for it. He was right. We saved close to $20K not doing repairs.

Erica & Tom

We’d been renting a two-bedroom in Andersonville and going crazy since 2020. Neither of us had bought a house before, Justin met us for coffee before we’d even decided if we were serious about buying. What sold us on him was that he flagged flood-plain issues on a house we’d fallen in love with, which would have wrecked us later. His public adjuster background comes through in every walkthrough.

Gary

Ask Me Something

Selling, buying, fixing, waiting, arguing with yourself, wondering if the roof matters — whatever it is, send it.

I’ll read it and write back like a person. No drip campaigns. I don’t have one.

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