Abnormally Low Hinsdale Tax Bill: County Investigates

HINSDALE, IL – The Cook County Assessor's Office is investigating how a Hinsdale homeowner ended up with such a low property assessment, an official said Thursday.

The house in question is where WGN investigative reporter Ben Bradley lives. He bought the newly built house from the builder in 2010 for $1.4 million and put it on the market last month for $1.9 million.

Yet the county assessor values the house at $231,000, which results in annual property taxes of $5,000. The new house replaced a far older one.

"In order for us to know changes were made to the property, a permit would have to be filed by the homeowner and, in turn, the local municipality," assessor's office spokesman Scott Smith said in an email to Patch. "We are investigating whether that was done or not."

Without the information, Smith said, the assessor's office is not alerted when big changes are made to properties. No other database or process exists that tips off the assessor.

On June 13, Bradley's house was listed. That same day, the Chicago Tribune's "Elite Street" reporter wrote about it.

Three days later, the assessor's office sent an employee to do a "sketch" of the property.

"(W)hen the sale was announced in the press, our office noticed it and immediately investigated, which is why a sketch exists," Smith said.

Through a public records request from Patch, the office indicated no other sketch has been done on the property, where the first house was built around 1915. That means the assessor's office has no evidence that it ever visited the property until last month.

The older house was about one-seventh the size of its replacement.

If the house is actually worth $1.9 million, the property taxes would amount to $40,000 a year. At $1.5 million, the taxes would be about $32,000.

This doesn't mean government bodies lost any money. It just means other taxpayers picked up the slack.

In an email to Patch last week, Bradley said, "I’m not aware of any taxpayer who would walk into the County Building and say, 'I’d like to give you more money than you say I owe.'"

He never appealed his taxes. Anything involving the building permit would have taken place before his ownership of the house.