Downtown, North Side homeowners in for big property tax bump this year

Downtown and North Side homeowners can expect a serious hike in the property taxes they owe this year.

On average, single-family homeowners who live north of Pershing Road will be billed $500 to $600 more than they paid last year — a bump of more than 11 percent, according to information released by the Cook County Clerk’s office Thursday.

A nearly 7 percent drop in tax rates levied by local governments wasn’t enough to make up for a nearly 19 percent spike in the average assessed value of properties in the city’s north and central townships last year, the data show.

County taxing bodies are projected to raise almost $15 billion in property taxes from nearly 2 million parcels this year, about 3.7 percent more than was collected last year. Most of that increase will be plumbed from the city’s Downtown, North Side and inner-ring neighborhoods, while the South Side and suburbs will barely see their bills change from last year.

After former Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios’ revamp of city property tax assessments last year, “the property tax burden is shifting away from the South Side of the city,” according to a press release from Yarbrough’s office.

The latest assessments value the average “central” Chicago home around $332,000, with North Side homes averaging about $298,000 each. South Side houses were valued at nearly $157,000, about 8 percent higher than 2017.

“The good news is that the whole reason property taxes are going up is because property values are rising, and that doesn’t happen in a down market,” said John Irwin, a broker in Baird & Warner’s Lincoln Park office.

But with the city on track to lean even harder on taxpayers during the next decade to shore up its ailing pension funds, future hikes could shoo high-earning empty-nesters back to the suburbs and push younger families toward the city’s growing crop of high-end apartment buildings, Irwin said.

“You’re talking about billions of billions of dollars (of public debt), and you can’t just put all that on the backs of homeowners,” he said. “Because there will come a time when it will be too much, and they’ll pick up and leave.”

The assessor redraws property values on a rotating schedule every three years. This year, Assessor Fritz Kaegi is computing new estimated values for the city’s north and northwest suburbs, where his new model already has more than doubled the assessments of some apartment buildings. But those areas won’t feel the impact of the changes until they get their property tax bills next year.

Kaegi’s office will reassess properties in the south and southwest suburbs next year, and he’ll put the city back under the microscope in 2021.

Commercial property owners also will be asked to pay more this year, with the biggest spikes concentrated around Downtown. The average property in the city’s “central” townships, which extend roughly from Pershing north to Fullerton Avenue, saw its average assessment jump by about 20 percent from 2017 to 2018, which translates to a 10 percent hike in the average tax bill this year.

But the typical bill will only increase by about 3 percent on the city’s North Side, and by less than 2 percent everywhere else in the county, the data show.

Property tax payments are due Aug. 1.