The Tax Man Cometh—2024 Property Reassessment

When you hear about taxes going up in the news, this is about the local tax rate. That’s the amount of money needed to keep everything running. This totals up the costs of schools, fire and police, sanitation, parks, and other services to determine what the bottom line is that a municipality needs to pay its bills. The local tax rate does not have anything to do with the value of your property. Instead, the tax rate is splitting the total bill between all property owners.

Your property’s fair market value is assessed to split the tab fairly so that the owner of a multi-million dollar apartment building owes more than the owner of a $100,000 condo. Several factors go into this calculation, but it generally comes down to comparing the characteristics of properties in a certain area and the sales price of similar homes nearby. Here are some of the factors considered:

• Lot size

• Square footage

• Material of the property

• Age of home

• Location

In Cook County, the market value of all properties is reassessed every three years by the County Assessor. This is separated into sections, with the North townships assessed first, followed by Chicago the next year, and the South townships in the final of the three-year cycle. In the city of Chicago, 2024 is a reassessment year. Since Illinois property taxes are paid in arrears (i.e. all property taxes paid in 2023 were covering the bill for 2022), this means that selling your Chicago building this year could save you some money off of the newly assessed 2024 taxes, but only if you can sell before the new assessments come out on the second property tax bill, scheduled to come out on August 1, but historically this second bill has been delayed as late as mid-October. Making this gamble may be worth it if your building is in a location that has gained in popularity since the last assessment cycle. 

Appealing Your Property Tax Assessment

Once the property value assessment is complete, owners will receive a reassessment notice. This notice will include the dates by which an appeal must be submitted, which limits your ability to contest the newly assessed value. A property owner may submit an appeal based on inaccurate information contained in the assessment notice or if they believe the newly assessed value to be too high. Many property owners appeal their tax assessment with the same regularity that the notice is given as a means of maintaining lower costs. Even for owners selling a property, appealing an assessment can help with your resale value for listings later in the year as new buyers will have access to the information once it is released, too.