Latest news with #FritzKaegi
CBS News
13-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Cook County property tax bills delayed after data error, officials say
Your Cook County property tax bill could be delayed after a data error at the Cook County Assessor's Office is holding up a key step in the process. Assessor Fritz Kaegi blamed Tyler Technologies, the contractor in charge of updating the data systems across the county's property tax offices for the issue. "The Cook County Assessor's Office does not determine when tax bills go out. For the past six months, the Assessor's Office has been sounding the alarm on this issue with all the people involved in the transition off of the legacy mainframe," Kaegi's office said in a statement. "It is not an easy process to retire this antiquated system, and it is imperative that all of the data transferred to the new system is correct. We have made repeated requests from the vendor, Tyler Technologies, to change these specific IDOR reports to ensure that they are wholly accurate." But Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said the problem originated during the assessor's portion of the process, in which "data was not transmitted to the state in a timely manner." Preckwinkle's statement continued to say that her office is now in communication with the Assessor's Office as they work through the delay. "With this issue now on the radar of the Property Tax Reform Group, we can collaborate to help ensure that tax bills go out as soon as possible," Preckwinkle wrote. It was not immediately clear how delayed property tax bills would be in reaching homeowners.
Chicago Tribune
05-05-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Appeals system raised property tax bills for Cook County homeowners, report says
Cook County's property tax appeal process shifted $1.91 billion in taxes from businesses onto homeowners over the last three years, exacerbating inequities in the city and suburbs, a new report found. Homeowners' bills grew by a total of about 7% over that span as a result of the shift, according to the latest report from the Cook County treasurer's office, the first to calculate how much shifting burdens have cost on property tax bills. Those increases fell more on lower-income Black and Latino taxpayers, the report found. The report does not draw conclusions about whether those appeals were correct, but does show 'that the county's assessment appeal system works far more to the advantage of business property owners than homeowners, and at the same time favors wealthier white homeowners over lower-income minority homeowners.' It looked at the impact of appeals at the county assessor's office and the three-member Board of Review during the 2021 and 2023 tax years. Though those years corresponded with much of the pandemic, its conclusions echoed similar findings from a Chicago Tribune and ProPublica investigation in 2017 about appeals' impact on assessments. Properties are reassessed every three years. Every year, owners have two chances to knock down their assessments via appeals before the value is finalized: once at the assessor, next at the Board of Review. If they're dissatisfied with those results, they can take their case to the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board or to circuit court. Owners of businesses have historically been far more likely to appeal. In the span of the study, nearly 64% of commercial building owners appealed, representing more than $100 billion in value. More than 46% of all businesses were 'serial' filers, appealing every year, according to the report. Business appeals 'were particularly successful' in the period of the study, the report found, lowering 'their taxes through appeals by a total of 12.5%,' or about $3.3 billion. Owners that didn't appeal wound up paying for it: Any reduction in assessed value for one property owner shifts the burden onto others. Successful appeals for valuable commercial buildings have a much bigger impact and shift millions in tax burden onto homeowners and other businesses. 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. In the suburbs, just 22% of south suburban homeowners appealed during that reassessment year, compared with 60% of those in the north suburbs. Homeowners and businesses in lower-income areas were 'hit the hardest,' the study found. 'Homeowners in those neighborhoods were less likely to appeal, less likely to win and, when they did win, received lower overall dollar reductions in their homes' assessed values,' the report said. Appeals led to bills increasing by about 5% for homeowners 'in high-income areas and about 10% in low-income areas, most of which had predominantly minority populations.' The assessor's office said a major reason for appeal rate disparities by neighborhood could be that median bills in wealthier neighborhoods are much higher. In some Chicago neighborhoods, the treasurer highlighted particularly sharp hikes where residents could least afford it. The South Deering neighborhood, which is majority Black and has a median household income below $35,000, saw overall tax bills go up 24.3% following appeals during the 2021 Chicago cycle. So did the majority-Latino Gage Park neighborhood, where median household income is about $50,000. It saw bills go up by 23% that year after appeals. But while all property owners have the right to appeal, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas said the answer isn't necessarily for everyone to do so. Rather, the assessor's office and Board of Review need to get on the same page about their data and methodologies so owners trust the assessments in the first place and so reductions for businesses aren't as dramatic, she said. Both offices pledged to do just that in December, after a county report concluded decades of communication failures had helped fuel gaps in how each office approached assessments. That study, commissioned by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, found suburban businesses were assessed too low compared with their actual sale prices and that appeals to the Board of Review made assessments less accurate. It also found Kaegi initially assessed Chicago commercial properties too high in 2021. But the political reality of reaching consensus is thorny. Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele and two board employees with ties to Commissioner Larry Rogers Jr. are running to replace Kaegi in the March primary. Steele and Rogers, meanwhile, are also rivals. 'These two offices are in a war zone, and if they don't stop their war zone, this is going to go on,' Pappas said. 'Can we get to the middle to get to a solution that doesn't hurt people?' Assessments for commercial buildings have been a hot button issue since Kaegi took office. The previous Tribune investigation found high-end downtown businesses had been under-assessed. For thousands of those properties, the investigation found, their assessment did not change 'even by a single dollar,' while for others, their assessments were 'so riddled with errors that they created deep inequities.' Kaegi pledged to fix those issues. The first commercial assessments he mailed were 82.5% higher in the north suburbs in 2019, 55.6% higher in the south suburbs the following year, and up 76.5% in Chicago in 2021. Business owners, believing Kaegi overcorrected, filed appeals, and the county's Board of Review, which disagreed with Kaegi's methodology, often granted reductions. Kaegi's office, in a statement, said the latest report backs up its long-held contention that 'outsized reductions' granted by the Board of Review to big commercial appellants are what is driving the shift. 'By comparison, the tax bill changes due to differences in residential appeal rates are relatively minor. We don't believe the problem of property tax unfairness is solved by pitting homeowners against each other, distracting us from the much more consequential inequities at play,' the statement continued, noting that independent analyses found Kaegi's assessments are more accurate than past years. Rogers, the chairman of the three-member Board of Review, said the assessor's 'flawed valuations' are to blame. 'The buck starts and stops with Fritz Kaegi.' Pappas' study suggests if the two offices standardized their data, they might grant smaller business breaks and reduce the massive shifts from the appeals process. The two previously promised to work together, and she said she hoped the report would help 'nudge' them to collaborate. Until then, the report said low-income homeowners should also be given tools to help appeal their assessments. Kaegi's office, the statement said, participated in more than 200 outreach events for homeowners to help with appeals and exemptions last year.
Chicago Tribune
16-03-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Alex Nitkin
Following a Tribune-Illinois Answers Project report, Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi's office is fixing hundreds of properties it misclassified.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Editorial: Does assessor Fritz Kaegi appreciate the true horrors of downtown Chicago's commercial real estate market?
Chicago is known globally for its striking skyline. But now many of the impressive towers that make up that awe-inspiring cityscape are going for a song. Is the property-value carnage happening regularly downtown registering appropriately with Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi? Case in point: The 57-story tower at 70 W. Madison St. sold earlier this month for $85 million, CoStar News reported. That sounds like a lot, but in 2014 the sellers paid $375 million — more than four times what they just got. Kaegi's office late last year reassessed 70 W. Madison for property-tax purposes. The office came up with a value of $317 million, a 27% increase from the $250 million valuation determined in 2023 by the Cook County Board of Review, which hears property owners' appeals of the assessor's work. What did the market just say the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed tower was worth? $85 million. The Board of Review presumably will take that sale into account when it considers the likely appeal later this year. Granted, this is just one building where the assessment and a fast, subsequent sale are at such sharp odds. But the shocking bath the owners of 70 W. Madison took is hardly an anomaly. The former Groupon headquarters at 600 W. Chicago Ave., a 1.6 million-square-foot structure running along the North Branch of the Chicago River, sold in recent days for $89 million. Just eight years ago, Chicago development firm Sterling Bay paid $510 million for the hulking structure. The primary reason for the lost value? Financially ailing Groupon, which had occupied 300,000 square feet there, decamped about a year ago for a 25,000-square-foot space in the Loop. And a deal is close to sell 311 S. Wacker Drive, a high-end office building adjacent to the Willis Tower that many recognize by its illuminated crown at the top, for around $70 million, according to Crain's Chicago Business. The owners paid $302 million in 2014, and the potential buyers even have discussed razing the tower and building something new in its place. All of the above is context for the news that Kaegi's office has completed its triennial reassessment of Chicago properties and found that, despite robustly higher values for homes in the city over the past three years, values for commercial properties as a group have risen even more. After Kaegi's reassessment, commercial properties would account for 51% of the city's tax base and residential for 49%, the Tribune reported. Currently, Chicago homeowners collectively shoulder 51% of property taxes and commercial 49%. The percentages matter a lot. Even if government property tax levies stay level (which they haven't; take a look at ever-rising levies from Chicago Public Schools, which make up well over a half of Chicago property tax bills), a change in how they're apportioned means significantly higher tax bills for homeowners or commercial property owners. As of now, businesses are set to pay more because governments are due the taxes they demand regardless of who pays what, and businesses' share of the burden will increase by the assessor's accounting. But the assessor's work is far from the last word on the matter. The three-member Board of Review, which will consider what we're sure will be a pile of appeals, has seen fit to dramatically reduce the assessor's commercial property assessments in other parts of Cook County, resulting in shockingly higher property tax bills for many suburban homeowners. Kaegi has harshly criticized the board for the financial pain those homeowners are suffering, in particular singling out for his ire Commissioner Larry Rogers Jr., who represents the South and West sides and the south suburbs. Rogers has responded in kind and told us last year he may run against Kaegi for assessor in 2026. We've spoken positively in the past about Kaegi's efforts to modernize his office after the disastrous tenure of Joe Berrios. And we appreciate that the nepotism and other questionable practices associated with the Berrios years aren't an issue now. But large portions of the business community are irate at what they perceive as Kaegi's exorbitant valuations of their property, which in their view he's doing in order to lighten the load on residents. After all, businesses don't vote; people do. At least on the face of it, there's reason to wonder at the conclusions Kaegi's office has drawn in the wake of what all agree has been a painful post-pandemic hit to commercial values, particularly office. Downtown office buildings make up 20% of Chicago's tax base. The assessor found that the value of Chicago's commercial subcategory comprising office, retail and hotels rose 22% since the last assessment. In the three townships making up the Loop, the increase totaled 21%, according to Crain's. That's head-scratching in light of the parade of historically massive losses downtown office building owners have absorbed in recent transactions. Kaegi's office is categorizing some of the worst blows taken by Chicago office building owners as 'distressed' sales that don't always reflect what the assessor views as true value. Many landlords, we're confident, aren't buying that reasoning. We won't be surprised if Kaegi's numbers change radically after the Board of Review is finished. First-installment property tax bills due this coming spring just were mailed out, but they don't reflect the latest reassessments. The second-installment bills, due in the fall, will account for the changes in Chicago. For homeowners, the results could well be ugly, as we've said before. The bottom line is that this war between the assessor and the Board of Review is serving no one's interests. At the end of the day, the job of those who assess property for tax purposes is to get the calculations as correct as possible in light of what's actually happening in the market. It's not to try to redress the inequities of a municipal tax system that relies far too heavily on landowners. Those fights are for the likes of Mayor Brandon Johnson, Gov. JB Pritzker and an independent Chicago School Board that will take full control of Chicago Public Schools in 2027. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@
Chicago Tribune
31-01-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: Does assessor Fritz Kaegi appreciate the true horrors of downtown Chicago's commercial real estate market?
Chicago is known globally for its striking skyline. But now many of the impressive towers that make up that awe-inspiring cityscape are going for a song. Is the property-value carnage happening regularly downtown registering appropriately with Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi? Case in point: The 57-story tower at 70 W. Madison St. sold earlier this month for $85 million, CoStar News reported. That sounds like a lot, but in 2014 the sellers paid $375 million — more than four times what they just got. Kaegi's office late last year reassessed 70 W. Madison for property-tax purposes. The office came up with a value of $317 million, a 27% increase from the $250 million valuation determined in 2023 by the Cook County Board of Review, which hears property owners' appeals of the assessor's work. What did the market just say the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed tower was worth? $85 million. The Board of Review presumably will take that sale into account when it considers the likely appeal later this year. Granted, this is just one building where the assessment and a fast, subsequent sale are at such sharp odds. But the shocking bath the owners of 70 W. Madison took is hardly an anomaly. The former Groupon headquarters at 600 W. Chicago Ave., a 1.6 million-square-foot structure running along the North Branch of the Chicago River, sold in recent days for $89 million. Just eight years ago, Chicago development firm Sterling Bay paid $510 million for the hulking structure. The primary reason for the lost value? Financially ailing Groupon, which had occupied 300,000 square feet there, decamped about a year ago for a 25,000-square-foot space in the Loop. And a deal is close to sell 311 S. Wacker Drive, a high-end office building adjacent to the Willis Tower that many recognize by its illuminated crown at the top, for around $70 million, according to Crain's Chicago Business. The owners paid $302 million in 2014, and the potential buyers even have discussed razing the tower and building something new in its place. All of the above is context for the news that Kaegi's office has completed its triennial reassessment of Chicago properties and found that, despite robustly higher values for homes in the city over the past three years, values for commercial properties as a group have risen even more. After Kaegi's reassessment, commercial properties would account for 51% of the city's tax base and residential for 49%, the Tribune reported. Currently, Chicago homeowners collectively shoulder 51% of property taxes and commercial 49%. The percentages matter a lot. Even if government property tax levies stay level (which they haven't; take a look at ever-rising levies from Chicago Public Schools, which make up well over a half of Chicago property tax bills), a change in how they're apportioned means significantly higher tax bills for homeowners or commercial property owners. As of now, businesses are set to pay more because governments are due the taxes they demand regardless of who pays what, and businesses' share of the burden will increase by the assessor's accounting. But the assessor's work is far from the last word on the matter. The three-member Board of Review, which will consider what we're sure will be a pile of appeals, has seen fit to dramatically reduce the assessor's commercial property assessments in other parts of Cook County, resulting in shockingly higher property tax bills for many suburban homeowners. Kaegi has harshly criticized the board for the financial pain those homeowners are suffering, in particular singling out for his ire Commissioner Larry Rogers Jr., who represents the South and West sides and the south suburbs. Rogers has responded in kind and told us last year he may run against Kaegi for assessor in 2026. We've spoken positively in the past about Kaegi's efforts to modernize his office after the disastrous tenure of Joe Berrios. And we appreciate that the nepotism and other questionable practices associated with the Berrios years aren't an issue now. But large portions of the business community are irate at what they perceive as Kaegi's exorbitant valuations of their property, which in their view he's doing in order to lighten the load on residents. After all, businesses don't vote; people do. At least on the face of it, there's reason to wonder at the conclusions Kaegi's office has drawn in the wake of what all agree has been a painful post-pandemic hit to commercial values, particularly office. Downtown office buildings make up 20% of Chicago's tax base. The assessor found that the value of Chicago's commercial subcategory comprising office, retail and hotels rose 22% since the last assessment. In the three townships making up the Loop, the increase totaled 21%, according to Crain's. That's head-scratching in light of the parade of historically massive losses downtown office building owners have absorbed in recent transactions. Kaegi's office is categorizing some of the worst blows taken by Chicago office building owners as 'distressed' sales that don't always reflect what the assessor views as true value. Many landlords, we're confident, aren't buying that reasoning. We won't be surprised if Kaegi's numbers change radically after the Board of Review is finished. First-installment property tax bills due this coming spring just were mailed out, but they don't reflect the latest reassessments. The second-installment bills, due in the fall, will account for the changes in Chicago. For homeowners, the results could well be ugly, as we've said before. The bottom line is that this war between the assessor and the Board of Review is serving no one's interests. At the end of the day, the job of those who assess property for tax purposes is to get the calculations as correct as possible in light of what's actually happening in the market. It's not to try to redress the inequities of a municipal tax system that relies far too heavily on landowners. Those fights are for the likes of Mayor Brandon Johnson, Gov. JB Pritzker and an independent Chicago School Board that will take full control of Chicago Public Schools in 2027.
