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How Property is
Valued
The Cook County’s
Assessor’s Office is responsible for valuing the
more than 1.1 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 a property.
Home sales volume
is significant in Cook County in virtually every
neighborhood, making sales the most reliable source
of market value. Residential properties are assessed
as of January 1st of the current year and
use three to five years of prior sales information.
Multiple sale years also increase the stability of
market value predictions and smooth out market
fluctuations.
Uniformity
between Properties
Our
computer-assisted 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.
It is important
to note that only properties located in the same
neighborhood are compared to each other.
Neighborhood codes define the geographic area within
which home sales will be compared during the
reassessment analysis. Neighborhood codes are
determined primarily by differences in sale prices,
housing stock and/or geographical factors. In order
to create a neighborhood code, the listed factors
are considered and field inspections are conducted
for each township as it is reassessed. Analysts also
meet with the Township Assessors to refine their
neighborhood codes.
Innovative
Procedures
This year,
analyses will be performed on a township basis to
determine if, over the previous five years, recently
sold homes were the result of a purchase intended to
tear down a home and replace it with a new and
larger home. A “teardown sale” is a property that
is bought for the land, with the older (and
typically smaller) home on it being demolished for
new construction. This analysis is accomplished by
identifying sales over the last five years and
comparing the sales to issued building permits to
see if there has been a class change.
If a teardown
sale is found, it is deleted from the sales
comparison model and therefore cannot influence our
valuation of the larger homes. The new property
would be valued using the new building’s
characteristics and valued according to its new size
and class. All home sales that have been purchased
for teardown purposes will be excluded from the
overall sales pool to ensure uniformity and
fairness. However, removing these sales does not
necessarily curb the assessment increases that might
be seen for the smaller homes. When many smaller
homes are being sold in an area, the valuation of
these homes is determined primarily by the recent
overall median sales trends and prices.
Homeowners are
encouraged to review their property’s assessment in
comparison to similar properties on the office’s
website. Access the “Online Tool” icon, then click
onto “Residential Property Search”. |
