La Grange House Wrongly Assessed, Resulting In Tax Break

LA GRANGE, IL – A La Grange house sold for $675,000 in 2016. But eight years later, Cook County's assessment remains far lower.

In 2022, Cook County assessed the property at $388,000, 60 percent less than its sales price six years earlier. In 2023, the assessment increased to $470,000.

This is just another example of the problems that Patch has pointed out with the Cook County Assessor's Office's assessments in Lyons Township.

The latest property in question is at 412 S. Peck Ave.

No taxing bodies lost any money because of the mistake. Instead, other property taxpayers picked up the slack.

The county says the house is 1,619 square feet, yet real estate websites list it at 3,200.

This photo of the house at 412 S. Peck Ave. in Las Grange is from 2007. The house was expanded in 2011, but Cook County's assessment appears to reflect the older structure. (Cook County)

It is advertised as three stories, yet the county says it is two stories. The photo on the assessor's website is from 2007

The most recent property tax bill for the house was $11,405. If it were valued at $675,000, the bill would amount to $16,200 and likely much higher, given the rise in home prices since 2016.

A public records request to La Grange revealed that the owner sought a building permit for an expansion in 2011.

In response to Patch's inquiry, assessor's office spokesman Christian Belanger said his agency would inspect the property this year and, if necessary, update the property characteristics and reassess the home.

He said the office conducted a field inspection in 2012, showing it changed to two stories, from one.

"The current state of the home shows significant changes between that field inspection and now that were not reflected in records we received," Belanger said in an email.

He said the photos on the website are published via Google Images and do not indicate the office's internal characteristics for the property.

In an email to Patch, Lyons Township Assessor Patrick Hynes said under-assessed, high-value properties skew the modeling against lower-value homes.

"If the mass appraisal model thinks that 1,600 square foot homes are selling for $800k, it will spit out assessed values per square foot that are too high for the smaller homes in the market," Hynes said. "And for individual properties like 412 Peck that are actually 3,000 plus square feet but are described with 1,600 square feet, the model will spit out values that are too low."

That's exactly the opposite of what Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi promised when he ran for office, Hynes said. The result, he said, is "garbage in, garbage out."

"The current administration refuses to get out of the office and LOOK at the properties they assess. Maintaining accurate data on your district is hard work; there are no shortcuts," said Hynes, whose job is to advocate for taxpayers, not assess properties.

Hynes, who long worked for the Cook County assessor, said his local office is frustrated with Cook County's data. He said his office takes photos, creates sketches, describes properties and hands Kaegi the correct information on a "silver platter."

"Guess what? HE STILL DOESN'T FIX THEM!" Hynes said.

In a response to Hynes' comments, spokesman Belanger said his office recognized its longstanding problems with the transmission, consistency and integrity of building permit data in the county.

He said the office has made progress in resolving the issues over the last five years, which is how long Kaegi has been at the helm.

Belanger said the office has worked with towns and township assessors to improve the permit intake process. But he said the office knows it needs other methods to accurately capture property data.

"To that end, the (office) has implemented new change-detection software that can help determine when property characteristics have shifted," Belanger said.

Hynes said the Cook County office needs more residential field inspectors. He said the office now has anywhere between 10 and 15. Hynes pointed to a trade group's study that stated Cook County needs 56, which he said was the number when he joined the office in 1998.

Belanger said the office has pushed for more field inspectors since 2019.

"We were pleased that the newest Cook County budget, which was approved in November 2023, included more funding for field inspectors with the Assessor’s Office," Belanger said in his email. "We are currently in the process of hiring for those positions."

Over the last couple of years, Patch has found repeated examples in Lyons Township of properties that are uncounted or under-assessed in tax rolls:

• A well-known investigative reporter paid just a few thousand in property taxes for years on his $1.9 million house.
• A La Grange house was valued at $56,820, but it sold for $200,000 a few years before. The land was assessed, but not the house.
• Eighteen new townhomes were missing from tax rolls in La Grange.
• A Burr Ridge business paid no property taxes on its building for 13 years. The structure was not assessed.
• A Hinsdale house was sold for $3.9 million, yet its property tax bill was just $17,114. The assessment was based on a smaller house that was leveled years earlier.