How Residential Property is Valued By The Cook County Assesor
If you are like me and recently received your reassessment letter from the Cook County Assessor's Office and were somewhat SHOCKED by the increase, you might be interested in knowing the following:
Straight from the Cook County Assessor's Office Website.....
How Residential Property Is Valued
The Cook County’s Assessor’s Office is responsible for valuing the more than 1.3 million residential parcels in Cook County. Cook County is divided into three assessment districts (City, North and South). Each of the assessment districts is valued once every three years.
The Cook County Assessor’s Office uses a computer-assisted mass appraisal method to value residential properties. This computerized sales comparison model considers several different value components including, but not limited to, sales of comparable properties, land, location, building square footage, and construction type. These are some of the very same factors that would be considered by an appraiser seeking to value an individual property.
Residential properties are assessed as of January 1st of the current year, using three to five years of prior sales information. By using multiple sale years, this increases the stability of market value predictions.
Uniformity Between Properties
Our appraisal method reviews all the sales within a neighborhood and estimates a market value by assigning values to the individual building characteristics of sold properties. The market values of all properties (sold and unsold) are determined by using the value estimates. Adjustments are made for disparities discovered when comparing the building characteristics, thereby accounting for differences (like age, quality of construction, size, etc.) between properties.Any necessary final adjustments are made to ensure a fair and uniform assessment of all residential properties.
--Cook County Assessor's Office website April 11, 2015
WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU:
It means that it is virtually impossible for the Assessor to adequately put a value on each individual home since they are evaluating 1.3 million homes on a mass scale. So, IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO APPEAL YOUR PROPERTY TAXES EVERY YEAR! There is very little downside! For a flat fee of $350, I can do this for you. Essentially, what I am doing is pulling all the property assessment values from the Assessor's Office and finding the properties that are most similar to yours. Based on THOSE numbers, I re-calculate what your assessment value SHOULD be based on these neighborhood "comps" or comparable properties. These comps form the basis for an appeal based on a lack of uniformity.
PLEASE EMAIL ME AT Lauren@easytaxappeals.com if you would like a FREE (no obligation) analysis of your property and potential savings available. If you decide that you would like to appeal, I send out some paperwork which allows me to represent you. You return the signed and NOTARIZED paperwork to me along with your check and I will take care of the rest. Also note that if the Assessor's Office appeal is not as successful as you hope, you can also appeal to the Board of Review later on in the year. THE BOARD OF REVIEW APPEAL IS ALSO INCLUDED IN MY ONE-TIME FLAT FEE.