The second and final installment property tax bill for 2024 was mailed to Cook County property owners on Friday, November 14. Social media was abuzz as many people opened their mail (or checked the Treasurer’s website) and found a big increase in their annual property tax bill. Multiple news reports described how some communities in Chicago – largely those which are Black, Brown, or low-income – had increases between 2023 and 2024 exceeding 100 percent. Yet considering all homeowners in Chicago, their aggregate tax bill increased by 11.6 percent according to a Cook County Treasurer report published at the same time.
I compiled eight reasons – from the Treasurer’s report, news reports, and my own research – as to why a Chicagoan’s property tax bill may have gone up.
Before moving on, check that your understanding of the levy system used in Cook County is the same as mine. Every year the various taxing bodies pass budgets and the portion of their budgets that will be funded by property taxes becomes their levy. The levy is a product of the assessed values (adjusted by exemptions and appeals) times the tax rates (which are determined by the Cook County Clerk, and change based on local factors including whether a property is in a TIF district or expanded mental health district). As long as the levy does not exceed the cap (set by state law) then the taxing bodies will receive the entire amount of their levy. In other words, the combined property tax bills is equivalent to all of the levies added together.
2024 was a reassessment year
Assessed values, the value on which the tax bill is calculated, tend to increase the most in assessment years. These happen on a “triennial” basis, meaning every three years. The last assessment year in Chicago was in 2021. The assessed value in 2024 is a lot different than the assessed value in 2023 because the last time it was assessed was actually in 2021. Home values can fluctuate a lot in three years.
This is a great moment to point out that a change in the AV does not equal the same change in the tax bill for countywide and individual property reasons (think: property-level exemptions). My mom’s condo’s AV increased by 23 percent between assessment years. While the condo’s AV increased by 23 percent the tax bill increased by only 16 percent.
The median tax bill increase for Chicago homeowners – which includes condos, single-family houses, and owner-occupied two-to-six flats – was 16.7 percent. But the median tax bill didn’t climb everywhere. The Treasurer’s report said that the median residential tax bill fell in nine Chicago community areas!
Your property value went up, which meant your assessed value went up
The Institute of Housing Studies indicates in its latest home values report there was a 72 percent price increase for single-family houses in the Austin-North Lawndale-Garfield Park submarket from 2020 Q1 to 2024 Q4. This roughly matches the previous assessment (January 1, 2021) and current assessment (January 1, 2024). The highest growth in single-family house values was in the Englewood/Greater Grand Crossing submarket (see map below), showing an increase of 97.0 percent. Citywide, IHS reports that “prices rose 47.8 percent” since 2020 Q1.
Another example: the median sale price of single-family houses in the West Englewood community area – which is part of the Englewood/Greater Grand Crossing submarket – increased by 122 percent from 2020 to 2024, per sales data collected by the Illinois Department of Revenue and analyzed by the Cook County Assessor’s Office.
The Cook County Assessor’s Office says about its method, “The goal of the model is to answer this question: ‘What would the sale price of every home be if it had sold recently in an arms-length transaction?'” In September the Cook County Assessor’s Office published a new Home Value Report website that explains how their automated valuation model (AVM) works. This may also be referred to as a computer-assisted mass appraisal.
The AVM is a computer program that uses lots of data, mostly about sale prices and dates, to estimate the market value of properties – it’s necessary to do this as a mass evaluation because a sale is the best way to determine the market value but most properties don’t sell each year and some sales have to be ignored because they’re atypical1.
Look up your home’s report; the HVR website works for single-family houses and two-to-six flats and does not work for condos and cooperatives.
The HVR – example below – will show the AVM’s five most representative nearby property sales, out of potentially thousands reviewed, that led to establishing your property’s assessed value. The HVR for the example property I selected demonstrates how the CCAO’s automated valuation model creates an estimated market value for any given residential property. Its 2021 assessment was $9,000 (implying an estimated market value of $90,000), and its 2024 assessed value is $23,000 (implying an estimated market value of $230,000). To give you some background: this two-flat was obtained in a tax sale in 2019, sold to someone for $75,000, renovated by that someone in 2022, and then sold in 2023 for $365,000.
Downtown Chicago property values dropped disproportionately, thus decreasing their share of the assessed values
Commercial properties in Chicago’s downtown contribute a lot of property tax revenue to the various taxing bodies. Although values dropped there the various taxing bodies will collect the same amount of property taxes for the year. The levy system means every taxing body collects 100 percent of the levy they set for the year. A property’s assessed value’s proportion of the aggregate assessed value for all properties in the whole county determines that property’s share of the levy (tax bill). A drop in values in one area or class of buildings means that other properties are going to make up a slightly larger proportion of the total assessed value and thus a slightly larger proportion of the levy (tax bill).
From the Treasurer’s report: “Commercial property there lost $379.2 million, or 7.2%, in assessed value, according to the report. The Loop’s commercial properties accounted for 11% of all taxes collected in 2024, compared to 13% the year before.” Putting that into real terms these properties were billed about $108 million less in 2024 than in 2023. Because of the levy system those two percentage points that downtown properties aren’t paying is made up by all other properties.
Property owners of higher value properties appealed
Every successful appeal means every other property pays just a tiny bit more because the appealed property’s share of the total assessed value has gone down a bit2. And appeals are not submitted evenly distributed or evenly practiced3.
Property owners in majority Black and Brown communities are the least likely to appeal. The Treasurer’s report says, “Many of Chicago’s South and West side communities, where home values have soared in recent years and homeowners are far less likely to appeal their assessed values, will see significant property tax increases. Residential property values and tax bills increased by the largest percentages on the South and West sides, where median bills shot up by more than 30% in 15 community areas — with a massive 133% increase in West Garfield Park.”
The Chicago Tribune reported earlier this year on a different study by the Treasurer, looking at where appeals most often come from:
While overall 27% of homeowners appealed, the study found “wide variations” in which homeowners filed their own appeals. Just 3.4% of homeowners in West Englewood, a majority-Black and low-income neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, disputed their assessment during 2021 city cycle, while nearly all Loop homeowners — 96% — did so. That could be because assessments dropped in Englewood and went up in the Loop that year as Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi rejiggered the office’s methodology.
Homeowner appeal rates are highest in majority white neighborhoods and lowest in majority black neighborhoods. And there’s a clear trend that the higher the median income in a neighborhood there’s a higher proportion of homeowners who appeal. (This is the case for homeowners across the city and across the county.)
Then there’s the discrepancy between business property owners and homeowners. In a spring 2025 study from the Treasurer about appeals the office found that 74.8 percent of businesses appealed, countywide, from 2021 to 2023, while only 42.2 percent of homeowners did. In this period, the tax bills for businesses went down by $3.26 billion while the tax bills for homeowners went up by $1.91 billion.
Taxing bodies increased their levies
Certain taxing bodies maximized4 the amount of property tax levy they were allowed to increase from 2023 to 2024. This means just about every property will pay a little more. From the Treasurer’s report:
- “Chicago Public Schools had the largest levy increase in 2024, asking for $171.9 million more in property taxes than in 2023. That was the maximum allowed under the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law [PTELL], which limits levy increases to the rate of inflation from the previous year or 5%, whichever is lower. The national inflation rate was 3.4%, allowing CPS to boost its levy by that amount for the 2024-2025 budget year.”
- “The total tax amount in Chicago increased in 2024 by $528.6 million, or 6.3%, due to increased TIF revenue, governments seeking more money and refunds made through the state’s recapture law.”
Taxing bodies used recapture
Recapture means to (re)collect money after property owners’ successful appeals caused the owners to get refunds. This process is best explained by the Treasurer’s report.
Recapture allows non-home rule taxing agencies – like school districts, park districts and sanitary districts – to recover money refunded to taxpayers after their property assessments were lowered by the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board, state courts or county offices [like the Cook County Board of Review].
Those refunds reduced the amount of money taxing agencies anticipated having to pay their bills. When those refunds were large, that crimped the ability of affected taxing agencies to provide services.
The law [adopted by the Illinois legislature in 2021] requires the county Clerk to automatically increase taxing agencies’ levies by the amount refunded during the previous year, although agencies may reject the increase.
The Chicago Public Schools collected the most through recapture, at $49.1 (which is included in the $171.9 million described in the previous section.
TIF districts still exist
TIF districts have an indirect impact. They divert property tax revenue to special funds used for economic development and infrastructure development. Since they don’t go to taxing bodies’ regular funds the taxing bodies have a tendency to maximize the PTELL (see above).
As the Treasurer’s report puts it, “That extra money [the 11.5 percent increase of property tax revenue diverted to TIF accounts from 2023 to 2024] did little to relieve the overall financial burden on homeowners. That’s because nearly all the money is channeled into special funds that do not pay for everyday government services such as police officers’ salaries and running schools.”
The Board of Review may have overdone appeals
The Board of Review significantly adjusts downward the assessed values of property owners who appeal.5
The Edgewater Beach Apartments, a cooperative residential building with 400 units, appealed directly to the Board of Review, which reduced their assessed value by 64 percent. The Edgewater Beach Apartments (EBA) also appealed their 2021 assessment and the Board of Review reduced that assessed value by 32 percent. Hat tip to Eric Erins for pointing out the inexplicable pattern of tax bills.
The AV reduction combined with the other factors in this blog post resulted in a 72 decrease in their tax bill from 2023 to 2024. If EBA’s tax bill in 2024 was divided equally amongst the 400 unit owners each would pay $493.32, which seems like a pretty good deal. A condo on the next block that sold for $375,000 in 2019 and has an assessed value of $24,000 (implying an estimated market value of $240,000) has a tax bill of $5,652.17.
This reaction by the Board of Review implies that the Assessor’s Office was off…by a lot; see point one above about home values increasing. But is the Board of Review establishing a more accurate assessed value than the Assessor’s Office and analyzing the property amongst its peers, as the automated valuation model does? There’s something to be said about the transparency difference between the Assessor’s Office and the Board of Review (which comprises three elected officials each overseeing one third of Cook County).
- The BOR gave this reason for the 2024 appeal: “The Decrease is the result of: A value supported by Assessor’s Recommendation or restoration or prior Cook County Board of Review, PTAB, or Specific Tax Objection lawsuit decision.”
- The BOR gave this reason for the 2021 appeal: “The Decrease is the result of: Consideration given to cost, income, or market date, and/or your appraisal.”
Those aren’t very explicit reasons. The Assessor’s Office isn’t given the same cost, income, or appraisal information that appellants provide to the BOR. It appears that the Assessor’s Office is allowed to ask for and receive that information from the BOR, during the appeal process, but as of December 2024 wasn’t requesting that. On the other hand, Assessor Fritz Kaegi has advocated for many years in Springfield that a state law should be passed to compel that information from commercial property owners to better meet the goal of establishing more accurate and fairer assessments. Additionally, Kaegi has joined with assessors in other counties to advocate for allowing assessors to access residential appraisal data the federal government has.
In the surrounding area, the Institute for Housing Studies shows that in the Uptown-Rogers-Edgewater submarket the price of single-family houses increased by 33.8 percent from 2020 Q1 to 2024 Q4, and Zillow shows a 32 percent increase for condos and cooperative apartment units from late 2017 to present in the EBA’s ZIP code.
The EBA share of the levy went down but the full levy will get collected and the share of the levy that the Edgewater Beach Apartments (EBA) is no longer responsible for after the appeal will be collected from every other property taxpayer. I’m singling out EBA because of the drastic AV reduction the BOR granted, essentially back to the building’s pre-2021 AV. (Review EBA’s tax bill and AV history.)
Bonus reading: A report commissioned by Cook County President Preckwinkle’s office explored the differences in methods and adherence to industry standards by reviewing the Assessor’s Office assessments in 2021 and the Board of Review’s reactions via request for appeals. I’ll add that two of the three Board of Review commissioners were different in 2021 than today.
Footnotes
The levy system is in contrast to the millage rate system. In the millage rate system the taxing bodies set a millage rate. That rate is multiplied by the assessed value of each property and that determines the size of each property’s tax bill. Millage rate is probably easier for property taxpayers to understand.
All quotes in the footnotes, except where otherwise noted, are from a Chicago Sun-Times article about the Cook County Treasurer’s November 2025 report which analyzes annual changes in the tax bill data.
- For example, only properties that are “arms length transactions” should be evaluated. Assessors should incorporate only fair market transactions in their models and exclude transactions between family members and trusts, to give a couple of examples. Read more about arms length transactions. ↩︎
- The Edgewater Beach Apartments, for example, which is a cooperative, had their assessed value reduced from $5.89 million to $2.13 million. Note that this reduction in AV was granted by the Board of Review and not by the Cook County Assessor’s Office (CCAO). It’s my belief and understanding that because the CCAO now has a highly accurate automated valuation model (AVM) that many appeals to the CCAO fail. But appeals to the BOR more often than not succeed. The Assessor and the three BOR commissioners are elected. ↩︎
- “Homes on the West and South sides were also hit harder because property owners appealed their assessments less often, according to the report.” ↩︎
- “Across the county, taxes rose $871.8 million to nearly $19.2 billion, or 4.8%, well above the 3.5% inflation rate for 2024, according to the report.” ↩︎
- Read Assessor Kaegi’s letter to the editor on this topic. And it looks like the Treasurer’s office nominally agrees with the assessor’s characterization of the BOR’s actions. From the Treasurer’s November 2025 report: “The shift onto residential properties occurred after the Cook County Board of Review significantly lowered the estimated value values of commercial, industrial and large multifamily properties set by the Assessor’s Office.” ↩︎
