Last week the Cook County Clerk’s office released the 2015 property tax rates for Chicago and the suburbs and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting. I thought I would be hit by both an increase in the assessed value of my home and an increase in the effective tax rate in order to pay for the city’s higher expenses. However, the aggregate assessed values in Chicago went up enough so that it wasn’t really necessary for the city to raise the tax rate. The net effect of all this is still higher taxes for the average Chicagoan – up 12.8% or $413 as shown in the table below. That table also shows the net impact for the North and South Suburbs of Cook County.
The property tax release also contains sample tax calculations, using average property values, that explain how they came up with these numbers. Since you probably haven’t gotten your own final tax bill for 2015 yet you can use these examples to play along at home and estimate what your property taxes are going to be. Here is the Chicago example:
As I’ve done before, I always like to boil down this convoluted mess to a single factor that I can use as a rough estimate of what property taxes are going to be. As you can see above the homeowner exemption is worth about $481. Ignoring that exemption for a moment the three factors collapse to 1.83% of the fair market value for 2015, which compares to 1.86% for 2014. So you can basically apply that percentage to your assessor determined market value and then deduct $481 if you have your homeowner exemption.
As you can see the tax rate didn’t really go up. The city managed to get their tax increase by virtue of rising property values. When it comes to Chicago property taxes you want everyone else’s property values to go up but not yours.
2015 Cook County tax bills will probably be mailed July 1, 2016 and payment will be due August 1.
#PropertyTaxes #CookCountyTaxes #ChicagoPropertyTaxes
Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service discount real estate brokerage. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market, get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry, or you just think he’s the next Kurt Vonnegut you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.