Courtesy of Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi

Berwyn property owners received assessment notices from my office this week. As your County Assessor, I’d like to explain what this means. We reassess one-third of Cook County each year. We last assessed Berwyn in 2020 and must do so again this year. By law, assessments are based on market value. Our algorithmic model used the more than 400 homes in Berwyn sold during the last three years to value your property, which considered location, square footage, and other factors. The median sale price for a single-family home in Berwyn during the last reassessment was $252K. Last year, the median sale price rose to $285K.

Using this data, we estimate the median market value for a single-family home is $247K. Price levels vary significantly within each neighborhood. With your reassessment notice in hand, look at the top right corner to see the value placed on your property. Then, under “current characteristics,” find your neighborhood. Visit the Assessor’s website to learn more and look at your neighborhood to see recent sales and assessments. If the characteristics listed are incorrect, or if you think your property was over-assessed, consider filing an appeal by May 24. Appeals are free and can be filed online. We also reassess commercial properties, which are mostly retail and multi-family in Berwyn. The income commercial properties generate, drives their valuation. Assessments incorporate a property’s use, estimated income, market-level vacancy, and expenses. On our website, owners can locate their property on a worksheet that contains the assumptions we used.

If your assessment changes by a certain amount, does that also mean your tax bill will change by the same amount? No. Here’s why: the total amount of property taxes collected in Berwyn is predetermined by taxing bodies (schools, village, Cook County, and so on). Your property’s share of the equalized assessed value in each taxing district basically determines your share of the tax levied by that unit of government. So, if your assessment goes up, while everyone else’s assessment also goes up, your share of the property taxes levied in Berwyn may change by a much smaller amount. In fact, last year in Chicago, hundreds of thousands of Chicago homeowners saw their assessed values rise, but their property tax bills fall, because their assessed value rose less than the change in Chicago’s overall assessed value.

So how are things looking in Berwyn? Assessed value is up 36%, to $118m. Appeals will reduce this number. Appeals compared to the prior reassessment year have declined for four consecutive years now, but it’s hard to estimate appeals’ impact in any single year. The picture further changes as the Cook County Board of Review also revises assessments through appeals. Also, our local taxing bodies will decide how much to levy next year. This will affect your tax bill in 2024. To learn more about property assessments and appeals, join the Assessor’s Office and Berwyn Township for an in-person or virtual workshop. More information can be found here: https://www.cookcountyassessor.com/event-list.

Photo Credit: Cook County Assessor’s Office