That gagging sound you’ve been hearing throughout Riverside Township this month has been the reaction of homeowners opening their reassessment notices.
On May 12, the Cook County Assessor mailed out the notices to more than 5,000 residential property owners in Riverside Township, which includes almost all of Riverside, the Hollywood section of Brookfield and North Riverside east of First Avenue.
According to the assessor’s office, the median assessed value rose 18.24 percent since 2005, the last time Riverside Township residential properties were reassessed. The median sale price of homes in Riverside Township rose from $310,250 in 2004 to $357,000 in 2007.
However, Riverside Township Assessor Schofield Gross said that he’s seen some increases as high as 40 and 50 percent. As a result, the local assessor’s office has been inundated with calls from homeowners asking what they can do to appeal the assessments.
According to Deputy Assessor Fran Sitkiewicz, about 100 people have visited the assessor’s office, which is on the third floor of the Township Hall at 27 Riverside Road. The office gets another 20 to 30 phone calls a day.
Typically, the office is staffed with two people and is open daily from 9 a.m. to noon. These days, the staff is working well into the afternoon, at times until 3 p.m. to assist those looking for answers.
Staff help homeowners find comparable properties to help make their case to the county assessor. In the past that work was done by hand. Now, with the addition of new computer software, staff can find comparables in a matter of minutes.
Sitkiewicz said she expects that kind of volume to continue, since homeowners have until June 19 to lodge an appeal with the Cook County Assessor.
While the township is seeing a number of people visiting the assessor’s office to file appeals, it’s about the same as in 2005, when the median assessment rose 33.67 percent.
“We had a big increase in 2005,” Sitkiewicz said. “I was surprised with the increase this year.”
Sitkiewicz said that between 2005 and 2007 Riverside experienced a boom in the construction of additions to home, which are just now hitting the tax records. Often people seeing large increases also completed those kinds of projects in the past few years.
Taxpayers won’t see the new assessment reflected on their tax bills until the second installment bills that will be sent out in 2009.
One of the most frequently asked questions when homeowners see sharp increases in assessed value, is whether their property taxes are going to also rise by that amount.
The short answer is “no,” though other factors will affect any tax increase that comes along with a higher assessment, such as any recently passed tax referendums or homeowners’ exemptions.
“It’s not like an income tax, where when your salary goes up, your taxes go up at the same rate,” said Ali ElSaffar, president of the Cook County Township Assessors’ Association. “As assessed values go up, the tax rate goes down.”
“In a world where there was no increase in government spending, if assessed values doubled, the tax rate would go down by half.”
Village governments and school districts don’t exist in that vacuum, however, which makes it hard to predict what a homeowner’s actual tax increase will be come the second half of 2009.
“It’s a series of moving parts; there are lots of things happening at the same time,’ ElSaffar said. “The key thing is that if the assessment goes up 18 percent, taxes will not go up 18 percent. The key is how your assessment is comparable to that median number.”
ElSaffar also said that the recent downturn in real estate values does not mean assessments will be lower. Since the assessment is based on a three-year time period, and because in most cases real estate values at the end of 2005 were higher than at the beginning of 2005, the assessments reflect that increase over those three years.
If home prices continue to fall during the next three years, assessments could conceivably fall.
“It is important to note that we will closely be monitoring recent trends for future reassessments,” said Maura Kownacki, spokeswoman for the Cook County Assessor.
Kownacki said that the actual tax rates for 2009 won’t be known until just before those bills are sent out.
In the meantime, she added the Cook County Assessor’s website (cookcountyassessor.com) has information taxpayers can use in preparation for an assessment appeal, including a database of comparable properties and an online appeals application.
Homeowners in Lyons Township can expect to get their reassessment notices in the mail in late July or early August, according to the Cook County Assessor’s website. Proviso Township homeowners can expect receive their reassessment notices in mid-October.