Category: Tax Appeal
Tax Appeal
Ben Franklin was right when he said “…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. ” ; but it is also true that property taxes can be appealed and reduced.
If the assessor’s (retroactive) Fair Value estimate of your home is higher than the current value of your home it is very likely that you are being overtaxed. In Illinois you can appeal the value used to calculate your taxes with a special purpose retroactive appraisal by a state certified appraiser, or with your own research. You can not appeal with a real estate agents or brokers estimate, such as CMA or BPO. Appraisals developed for mortgage purposes or automated (clickbait )calculations like zestimates are also not acceptable. If you suspect an assessor in northeast IL has overvalued your home please contact me. I have many years of experience and my work has always been accepted by townships, counties and the state board.
Property Tax Alert
Over the past 20 years of providing independent appraisals, I have seen numerous errors in the living area estimates used by local tax assessors for the homes they value. Here is a common, easy-to-spot error I’ve seen in Northern IL especially Kendall and Grundy counties.
The sample sketch above shows the second floor area from the same two-story home. Notice how the open two-story ceiling area (such as over a foyer and family room) is not included as floor area on the sample on the left but is include in the sample on the right? If your home has this type of feature and has been measured like the sample on the right it is being over taxed for living area that you do not have! In this sample that difference is 600 square feet. There is no measuring standard that includes that type of space as floor area, yet I have seen it counted thousands of times in tax records throughout Northern IL! If you own a two-story home with open two-story ceiling area, you owe it to yourself to verify that the public records have this area excluded from the living area estimate used to develop your tax assessments. As an independent state certified appraiser I can provide a professional living area sketch that you can use to have this and other types of measurement errors corrected and your taxes reduced. This can done with a quick visit to the home and a simple consulting report or bundled with an appraisal report to fit any budget.