Lyons Township Homes Missing From Tax Rolls

LYONS, IL – A house on Gage Avenue in Lyons sold for $200,000 in early 2018.

But Cook County Assessor's Office records show its estimated property value is $56,820, a little more than a quarter of its sale price from more than four years ago.

The problem? The land is assessed, but not the house on the property.

This means the owner paid $1,965 in property taxes in 2020.

By contrast, a next-door neighbor paid nearly twice the property taxes for a house with a county-estimated value of $144,090.

This situation was exposed by Lyons Township Assessor Patrick Hynes in late 2021. But he said the county failed to change the number in time for last April's publishing of home values.

"It was in their office for four months," Hynes said in an interview. "What does it take for the job to get done? There is no reason for it to be off the 2021 roll."

Nearly a decade ago, a next-door neighbor's home on Gage was demolished and replaced. But a county assessor's employee mistakenly recorded the $200,000 property in question as being without a building, thus the unusually low tax bill.

No taxing body lost any money because of the mistake. Other property taxpayers picked up the slack.

Another house missing from the rolls is on South 78th Court in Justice.

Although it sold for $255,000 in 2013, the county lists it as being worth $26,600. The building is not listed.

The tax bill was $878 in 2020. If the house was assessed at its 2013 price, the tax bill would have been nearly 10 times higher.

More than a dozen years ago, the house was demolished and replaced. Hynes said his predecessor, Barbara Weyrick, submitted the building permit to the county in 2010. But the county never took into account the new information.

"It's treated as a vacant lot," Hynes said.

He said he turned in information about the 78th house to the county in February.

Since starting in November, Hynes said he has found $25 million in property value that the county assessor has not counted.

Among the properties is a house on Taft Road in Hinsdale, which sold for $3.9 million in 2020, but the county estimates its property value at $757,940. It came with a tax bill of $17,114, unusually low for a home of that value.

Earlier this month, Patch discovered that WGN investigative reporter Ben Bradley was paying a $5,000 annual property tax bill on a Hinsdale house he bought for $1.4 million a dozen years ago.

In both cases, the Cook County Assessor's Office based its information on old houses that were torn down. But it failed to reflect that new houses were built in their place.