Overall, the 2024 edition of the triennial reassessment cycle by the Assessor’s Office showed a total assessed value in Chicago of $50.8 billion, a 23% increase over total values in 2023. Residential properties of up to six units saw assessed values of 18%. Multifamily, defined in Cook County as seven or more units rather than the more common five or more units, saw a 34.4% jump in the valuations announced on January 31, 2025. Commercial properties were up 21.9%. Vacant land jumped by 52%. Industrial was up 65%.

However, the Board of Review can change assessments during the appeals process, as the Assessor’s Office said. “In previous years, the Board of Review has granted significant reductions on appeal to commercial properties,” they wrote. The result was a shift of the overall tax burden more heavily on residential.

The Assessor’s Office said in a January report that a new study found that commercial appeal appraisals underestimated market values by 38% as the median ratio of appraisal to sale price was 62%. “If substandard commercial appeal appraisals are accepted routinely by appeals bodies, the result can be an increase in the tax burden for other property owners, including homeowners,” it noted.

“It’s crucial for offices in the property tax system to adopt and maintain heightened standards for appraisals,” Kaegi wrote in prepared remarks.

The Tribune separately wrote that nearly $500 million in taxable real estate value had been added after the assessor’s office “fixed hundreds of mistakes identified in an investigation by the Illinois Answers Project and Chicago Tribune.”

The paper said the joint investigation said the Assessor’s Office “failed to accurately assess at least 620 new or renovated properties during the 2023 tax year.” The Tribune also said Kaegi’s office hired or promoted staff and improved processes in determining tax bills. Records showed that the office fixed 491 valuations out of 620 properties identified by the investigation as being misclassified.

In an opinion piece in the Tribune, Kaegi wrote that there was a “giant gap between the top and bottom ends of the office market” in Chicago’s downtown Loop. GlobeSt.com has frequently reported on the bifurcated nature of metropolitan office markets in general.

Kaegi argued that some criticism of the office’s appraisals failed to take the split property nature into account and that the study said commercial assessments out of the Board of Review tended to be too low. It also said some assessments from the Assessor’s Office were also too low.

The latest development is that Kaegi is pushing to get data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency for “millions of property appraisals” to 16 of the nation’s largest assessment offices including Cook Country’s, The Real Deal reported. The information would likely cover both residential and multifamily properties.

“In recent years, we’ve eliminated a large portion of the regressivity in Cook County’s residential assessments,” Kaegi reportedly said in prepared remarks. “With the release of this data, we would be able to clear one of the final hurdles to achieving thoroughly fair and accurate assessments.”