Second installment bills reveal 16.7% property tax hike for Chicago homeowners in wake of 2024 reassessment
November 17, 2025 8
Chicago homeowners saw their property tax bills jump an average of 16.7% thanks to the 2024 reassessment of Chicago, while the commercial property in the Loop went on a diet, carrying a smaller portion of the overall property tax pie.
Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas's Office released its analysis of the new bills on Monday, soon after the second installment 2024 property tax bills arrived Friday.
Cook County home and business owners pay property tax one year in arrears. In any given year, owners pay tax for the use of their property over the prior year. Many believe the County granted the yearlong property tax break as a Great Depression palliative. It in fact occurred before the Depression, in the late 20s, because of popular unrest over unequal assessments of similar properties, a longstanding problem PTS was founded to help address.
These second installment 2024 bills must be paid before Dec. 15th.
Under Cook County's Triennial Reassessment paradigm, the County's Northern Suburbs, South and Western Suburbs, and the city of Chicago each undergo reassessment once every three years and reassessment hits one of the three blocks per year. For 2024 — the second installment of which was the bill delivered Friday — the reassessment occurred in Chicago. The Northern Suburbs are under reassessment in 2025.
The overall 2024 property tax levy of $19.2 billion represented an increase of just 5%, as opposed to the Chicago homeowners larger increase of 16.7%. This is in part because downtown commercial property with its high, if not historically high, level of vacancy saw property tax assessments fall after — if not the reassessment — then the ultimate values finalized by the 2024 appeal process. A rare occurence indeed.
Pappas's office wrote of the development, "The amount of taxes imposed on Loop commercial properties for tax year 2024 decreased by more than $129 million because of a significant drop in their values. Property taxes are a zero-sum game. When one group of property owners pays a smaller share of an ever-increasing overall tax bill, others whose property values remain level or rise pay more. For tax year 2024, Chicago homeowners will pay $469.4 million more than they did the year before, because of the tax shift from commercial to other properties and Chicago Public Schools and other local governments asking for half-a-billion dollars more than they did a year earlier. The median residential tax bill in the city rose 16.7%, to $4,457 — the largest percentage city increase in at least 30 years."
Homeowners in Lawndale on the West Side attended a symbolic "property tax bonfire" on Saturday, indicating a broader picture of residential property tax discontent. Some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods saw bills jump by over 50%, including a chastening 132.74% in West Garfield Park.
With City Hall facing at a historic budget shortfall of $1.15 billion for 2026, it appears the public may feel more inclined to get sick than stomach yet another property tax hike. There's more closed avenues to address these budgetary issues without addressing Cook County's unfunded pension mandate crisis than we saw in Chicago this summer.