* 11/18/25 - Crains - Loop loss fallout: Chicago homeowners hit with biggest property tax bill hikes in decades + link to related report from Cook County Treasurers office
Buzz Sawyer
Cook County Treasurer's Office - 11/17/2025
Loop loss fallout: Chicago homeowners hit with biggest property tax bill hikes in decades
Chicago homeowners wondering what the pandemic's thrashing of the Loop means for their wallets now have an answer: the largest residential property tax bill hike in at least 30 years.
Due in large part to the recent decimation of commercial property values in Chicago's urban core, the median residential tax bill in the city this year rose by 16.7% to $4,457, according to an analysis by Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas. (Read the full analysis here.) Pappas' office mailed out the long-delayed tax year 2024 bills on Nov. 14 with a Dec. 15 deadline to pay them.
Chicago homeowners will collectively pay $469.4 million more than last year, amounting to the highest median percentage spike on record for that group. Owners of commercial properties in the city's central business district, meanwhile — a cluster that includes office buildings, retail stores, hotels and restaurants — will pay $129 million less than last year, the report found.
The new bills are a jarring financial aftershock for local residents more than two years after the public health crisis ended, underscoring the importance of downtown's recovery to the rest of the city's financial health. And similar to other parts of Cook County over the past couple years, the residents suffering the worst of the property tax pain are in poorer neighborhoods on the South and West sides that can least afford it.
“When the Loop gets a cold, the rest of the city gets pneumonia,” Pappas said in a statement. “Homeowners across the city are paying the price."
While staggering, the tax bills swings were somewhat expected. City residents were bracing for impact after homeowners in the south and southwest suburbs last year endured a similar outcome, as did north suburban residents the year before that. The city saw big changes this year because it was revalued in 2024 by Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, whose office rotates reassessments each year among the three areas.
Assessed values determine each property owner's share of the local tax burden under the zero-sum structure of the county's property tax system, which means other taxpayers pick up the slack when one group of property owners pays a smaller share. In Chicago, home values have largely gone up while big commercial properties downtown, such as office towers, are now worth fractions of their pre-pandemic values because of new work patterns and elevated interest rates.
Adding to the sticker shock: Cook County taxpayers overall had to cover an extra $528.6 million this year for local governments, schools and taxing districts, 6.3% more than the year before, according to Pappas' report. Fifty-seven percent of the 993 taxing agencies in Cook County increased their levies this year, the report said, led by school districts at 4.3%.
But the property tax pain is far more severe for some homeowners than others. Percentage increases in lower-income, predominantly Black South and West Side neighborhoods were far higher than they were for the rest of the city, the analysis found. Three such community areas saw their median residential bills rise by more than 80% year-over-year, led by West Garfield Park with a median homeowner hike of $2,000, or 133%.
"I’m particularly concerned how lower-income homeowners in struggling communities are going to be able to pay their bills,” Pappas said in the statement.
Higher home values in those communities were partly to blame for the tax bill spikes. Inventory of homes for sale in Chicago is less than half of what it was before the pandemic, a lack of supply that has pushed up home sale prices in areas that previously been on lengthy slides in assessed value.
West Garfield Park, for example, saw its median assessed home value shoot up by nearly 132% year-over-year, according to the report. North Lawndale spiked by about 112%, while Englewood assessed home values were up by 105%.
The numbers were far rosier for tax purposes in more affluent neighborhoods. The treasurer's office found that the 17 Chicago communities with the highest home values all saw their residential assessments go up by less than the citywide median increase of 21.4%.
One key factor in that gap was the lack of assessment appeals by homeowners in poorer parts of the city. While 47% of homeowners citywide contested their assessments, the appeal rate among lower-income neighborhoods was substantially lower. West Englewood had the lowest appeal rate in the city at just 5.1%, despite its median assessed home value rising by nearly 70%, according to the report.
That aligned with a long-term pattern: A study published earlier this year by the treasurer's office found homeowners in the county's highest-income areas contested their assessments 46% of the time between 2012 and 2023, while those in the lowest-income areas appealed just 11% of the time. The recent result: Tax bills rose by about 5% between 2021 and 2023 in high-income areas and about 10% in low-income areas, most of which had predominantly minority populations.
But no culprit played a bigger role in the tax burden shift to homeowners than the gutting of commercial property values downtown, where properties lost $379.2 million in assessed value, a 7.2% year-over-year drop, the report said.
Record-high office vacancy, diminished downtown foot traffic hampering retailers and restaurants and real and perceived issues with crime have kept many institutional investors away from downtown deals over the past couple years, pummeling property values and fueling rampant foreclosures and other distress.
Pappas' report found that the share of the city's tax burden shouldered by Loop commercial properties for the current bills dropped to 11.2% from 13.4% a year earlier.
Office towers — many of which have sold at steep discounts over the past couple years — accounted for much of the lost value. Willis Tower, whose owner has spent more than $500 million on renovations over the past decade, had its tax bill fall this year by 6% to just under $50.2 million, according to the treasurer's website.
The tax hit to homeowners might have been worse, but for growth in value among apartment buildings and warehouses, two of the better-performing sectors for real estate investors in recent years.
In a hike that many apartment landlords will pass along to tenants through higher rent, large multifamily properties this year are paying $100.5 million, or 13%, more than last year, according to the Pappas report.
Industrial properties, propped up by demand for space to store and distribute goods bought online, saw their property tax bills collectively rise by $73.5 million, or 22%. Heavily industrial areas in Far South Chicago carried the load with taxes on industrial buildings rising by 40.2%, partly due to properties being newly classified as industrial, the report said.
Long-term fallout from the shifting property tax burden remains to be seen. But after a months-long delay in the bills due to a computer system problem, taxpayers are now receiving them closer to an upcoming primary election in March in which Kaegi is seeking a third term — and looking to overcome an endorsement of his challenger by his own party.
Kaegi has been at the center of a raging property tax debate since 2018, when he first took the reins of a job that largely flies under the radar relative to its impact on voter finances. Massive gaps between where his office has pegged valuations and where they end up after appeals to the three-member Cook County Board of Review have made property tax bills wildly unpredictable — especially during and after the pandemic.
After commissioning an expert review of the assessment process, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle late last year announced a series of practices she expects Kaegi and the Board of Review to adopt to improve a system she says has been flawed for decades and needs substantial reform to be fair to taxpayers.
Kaegi has consistently pointed to the Board of Review's work knocking down the value of commercial properties on appeal as the reason homeowners have seen tax bills spike over the past three years. Voters will decide in March whether they agree.
Kaegi also predicted the sticker shock for city residents would be somewhat muted this year because many downtown office buildings are in tax-increment financing districts, areas where property tax revenue above a certain level goes into a fund that is separate from what goes to taxing bodies. Those TIF districts "are going to act like shock absorbers for a downshift in office values" and insulate the impact that lower assessments will have on other taxpayers' bills, Kaegi told investors at an event last year.
It's unclear how much of an effect downtown TIF districts had on softening the blow to homeowners' bills. The treasurer's office analysis found that TIF districts citywide will receive $127.6 million more this year than the previous one. That increase was lower than the bump citywide TIFs received the last time Chicago was reassessed in 2021, when the districts billed $133 million more than the prior year, the report said.
For taxpayers, the strain on TIFs could create headaches in the future because the city has leaned more heavily on TIF proceeds — which are meant to spur economic development in blighted areas — to balance its budget. Mayor Brandon Johnson recently declared a record-high TIF surplus of more than $1 billion to help close a gap in the city's 2026 budget.
Danny Ecker is a reporter covering commercial real estate for Crain's Chicago Business, with a focus on offices, hotels and megaprojects shaping the local property sector. He joined Crain’s in 2010 and previously covered the business of sports, as well as the city's convention and tourism sector.