But it seems like 'nothing' comes for free.  

For me I am free pretty much always now:)

There are not a ton of comps on Zillow or other websites that I have checked and it was last sold a while ago so even these resources are unable to give me a quote.  

Not much there yet but there’s a gigantic project in the workshttps://www.mesadelsolnm.com/mediaOk, I'll have to check it out thanks !

House hacking in Chicago can be a game-changer—letting you live for free (or close to it) while building wealth through real estate.

I did try my local banks but will check to see if there are any I missed. 

If the answer is yes, then it's a no brainer to make minimum payments on your 2.8% interest rate mortgage, and use the funds that you would have paid extra to pay it down faster, to either invest in more real estate, the market, or anywhere else where you can get a ROI > 2.8%.If the answer is no, then feel free to aggressively pay it down as fast as possible, to become debt-free faster, and just have a large amount of money in savings or to splurge with.The bottom line is that your 2.8% mortgage is GOOD debt.

So you need to check with the zoning department about non-owner occupied and how hard it is to get the variance.

Outsource tasks like admin work or cold calling to virtual assistants (VAs) to free up your time for more important tasks.3.

A true levelized cost of energy (what the true price would be if it were an actual free market) gets very complicated quickly and it's basically impossible to calculate accurately due to the energy industry being so heavily manipulated by incentives from the government for so long, across all forms of energy.