Chicago’s Cook County Tax Assessor is either playing favorites or miscalculating residents’ tax assessments and therefore, their home values. These errors naturally filter through to AVMs.
Here’s the story. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s 3,817 square feet home (2nd largest in his neighborhood) only received a 1% tax assessment increase while his neighbors got bumped more than 36% (on average). It seems when asked for an explanation, the tax assessor said numbers are crunched based on square footage and that the Governor’s home was previously OVERVALUED and is now in line. So much for the argument that public data is accurate. This seemed to satify some but not the skeptics. It seems no matter how you crunch it, the Governor’s home is either undervalued (lower tax per square footage) or his neighbors are overvalued.
TIP: if beds, baths, rooms and sq. footage are missing from a zestimate, that means it is relying on tax assessment records. Buyer (and seller) beware.
Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune reported the story and I refer readers to his article which tries to unravel the whole ball of confusion.
Hat tip to Fran Bailey of Chicago Metro Area Real Estate Blog. She reports that an experienced Realtor appealed her assessment and was told that Cook County assessments are based ONLY on square footage. That seems fair, doesn’t it, Mr. G?
RevereSpin blog also has a nice summary.
I found this chart interesting. It came from the Chicago Daily Herald via Reverse Spin blog. Based on the non-uniformity of the tax assessment increases in the neighborhood, prior years may have been grossly undervalued for some. What do you see in the non-uniformity?
Same here in Minnesota. the zestimate comes from the bad data in tax records and what they county uses for the market value which is not the real value anyway. What I found amazing is that when I added the missing square feet and adjusted the information it still came up with the same price. The comps are coming from another city.
I think that is why zillow is looking for owner input. So that where critical data is missing, the owner can do the work to fill in the blanks. More needs to be known exactly how jurisdictions calculate assessments. The fact that there is an appeal process is an admission that public data inaccuracies produce inequitable results. Bad tax data is a fact of life yet only professionals on the ground realize this.
Thanks for your comment Teresa.