The Triennial Reassessment of Chicago is starting (slowly)
July 05, 2021 5
Chicago's Triennial Reassessment is officially underway, as the Assessor's Office released new property tax assessments for Rogers Park Township in the middle of June.
The development marked the Office's first release of new tax assessment figures since October 2020 and the completion of one of the eight Townships, all in the city of Chicago, it must reassess in 2021.
It also marked Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi's first time trying his hand at assessing properties within the city's borders. In 2019, his first year in charge, Kaegi oversaw a reassessment of Northern Cook County and last year he took on the South and Western suburbs, all while implementing a "Covid-19 adjustment" to properties located elsewhere in the County.
“Despite the pandemic, Chicago’s real estate market is showing strength,” Kaegi remarked in a statement in mid-June. “In many parts of the City, home values are steady or rising. COVID-19 has had negative impacts on some commercial real estate types, but generally, rents have increased since 2018, driving property values higher.”
These observations ran contrary to the premise of last year's Covid-19 adjustment, which was that the virus would inveitably prove a drag on Cook County real estate values in 2020, 2021, and perhaps beyond. Instead, property sale prices in Cook County were up an average of 15 percent year-over-year between January-February 2020 over January-February 2021, according to data released by Illinois Realtors.
Meanwhile, Norada Real Estate Investments is celebrating a local "seller's market," pointing to a 21.8 percent increase in statewide median property sale prices from May 2020 to May 2021 and forecasting an additional 7 to 16 points of growth over the next 12 months.
This could doubtless contribute to, perhaps even justify, a significant spike in property tax assessments across Chicago as Kaegi rolls out further assessments throughout the rest of 2021. We have professionally viewed such an increase as increasingly inevitable over the past several years. Higher assessments mean bigger 2021 tax bills.
Additionally, we already know tax rates will rise in the city too after the Council voted to increase property taxes by $94 million in November of 2020. In layman's terms, this means if you own property in Chicago, you will have a higher property value being multiplied by a higher tax rate in 2021, increasing your total liability at both ends of the spectrum.
While this news is not encouraging for local owners, it does appear, based on the Rogers Park Township figures, the County is not going for all it might have in these new assessments. In weighing the data, Property Tax Solutions' staff and experts have observed residential assessment increases running between a couple of percentage points to 45 percent and better. Commercial property assessments, on the other hand, were increased more significantly, in some cases surpassing 90 percent.
In any case, our website exists to help local real estate owners cope with and correct the market. Once new assessment figures come in for your Township, we invite you to use our patented instant calculator to see how yours compares to that of other comparable properties nearby. Use of our technology is free and, if your tax assessment is deemed worthy of appealing, we charge no fee upfront, only a portion of the savings if we win.