Tag: Joseph Berrios

Some Cook County assessments are maybe about as bad as we thought

We have a new report(pdf) today from the Civic Consulting Alliance, pointing out that residential assessments  (excluding condominiums and large apartment buildings) done by Joe Berrios and his crew are of poor technical quality, don’t make effective use of modern techniques, and tend to treat expensive properties more leniently than less expensive ones.  The Tribune article gives pretty good context and describes the contents of the report, so I won’t try to duplicate it. Rather, I’ll focus on just a few things that caught my eye.

The study uses data that apparently has never been made public.  That is, it belongs to the public as represented by Joe Berrios, but the public hasn’t been permitted to see it.  And we’re still not permitted to see it.  In fact, the consultants and the Assessor seem to have spent more than two months negotiating a five-page nondisclosure agreement (reproduced at the end of the report) to make sure we wouldn’t see it. But we are able to see some detailed analysis, in the study appendix, that’s more useful than the raw data for understanding how assessments actually work.

We get some useful detail on the bias in favor of expensive properties.

The above figure, which is Appendix Table 5 in the report, shows the inaccuracy (left half, shorter bar means less inaccurate) and bias in favor of expensive properties (right half, shorter bar means less bias).    We can see that the bias in favor of expensive properties exists for all four categories, but is  most serious for multi-family and mixed-use (residential with a storefront, for example).  But for such properties, there’s no reason to expect that the expensive property contains the wealthier taxpayer.

Also as previously observed, the report notes that more appeals are filed by owners of more expensive properties:

This implies that wealthier homeowners are getting a bigger tax break, proportionally, than less wealthy homeowners. I suspect it’s true, but I really don’t see any way around it within the current assessment system.  The wealthier homeowner has more to gain from a successful appeal (or, what is the same thing, more to lose by failing to appeal.)  She may also be more comfortable dealing with government officials and forms (and perhaps with the tax lawyers who send mailings to homeowners).

But isn’t the same true of the income tax? The wealthier taxpayer is more likely to know, or learn, tax-avoidance tricks, and/or to use a skilled tax preparer.   The difference is that parcel-level assessment data is, to some extent, public information, but income tax returns in the U S no longer are.

Of course the main remedy for problems of inequitable assessments comprises:

(1) Assess only land value, ignoring the value of any improvements on the parcel.

(2) Post the assessments, including all information used to calculate them.

 

 

Another outrage that a land value tax would eliminate

One of many sophisticated dogs named “Wrigley” Image credit: Liz CC BY-NC 2.0

Expanding on a subject covered here nearly six years ago, Tim Novak of the Sun Times writes about  assessment deals in Wrigleyville.  Actually, not just 32 properties in Wrigleyville, but apparently on 13,984 parcels countywide, each of which reportedly contains commercial use along with at least one, but no more than six, apartments.

Because Cook County taxes residential (and vacant) property at 40% of the rate applicable to commercial property, and because, 17 years ago, the Cook County Board decided to pretend that commercial property containing one to six apartments is residential, taxes on these 32 Wrigley-area properties (and, presumably, on all 13,984 parcels) are only 40% of the amount they would otherwise be.  Furthermore, Novak visited some of the properties and found evidence that they don’t contain any apartments at all. Which Assessor Berrios thanked him for reporting.

Novak also visited an auto repair shop across the street from Wrigley, whose owner owes $78,000 in back taxes and claims to fear losing his property.  Of course I don’t know the owner’s personal financial situation, but given high land prices in the neighborhood, it seems he could sell his site for a couple million dollars, take the money and buy (or buy land and build) a better facility a mile or two away.  Across from Wrigley may have been a good location for car repair in the 1970s, but not so today.

Three conclusions:

(1) Sun Times needs to sell papers (and attract web traffic) and putting “Wrigley” in the title probably doubles or quadruples the number of people who’d read an article about “tax break.” But the issue is taxes, not commercial baseball.

(2) Once again, let’s be thankful that real estate tax and assessment data is (mostly) accessible to the public.  Who knows what kinds of scandals there are on the income tax and sales tax returns filed by the politically-connected property owners, their accountants or attorneys? Unless Wikileaks takes an interest, we’ll never see them.

(3) All this would be solved with a land value tax.  Everybody pays the same rate — a big rate — based on the value of their land, exclusive of improvements, and perhaps no other taxes are needed.  If there were inequities, the Sun Times — or the Civic Federation — could publish maps making them readily visible.

 

Tribune exposes one scandal and misses a bigger one

Property tax needs attention

credit: From Sovereign to Serf (CC BY-ND 2.0)

The Chicago Tribune, or what’s left of it, has issued a pretty good report on inequities and corruption at the Cook County Assessor’s office. Of particular note, they’ve included a lot of detailed statistics looking at assessment/sales price ratios, as well as a lot of details of recent history.  I think it’s fair to describe their main points as:

  1. Less expensive homes typically are assessed at a higher percentage of market value than more expensive homes, and therefore pay more taxes than they would if assessments more accurately reflected market prices.
  2. Sophisticated homeowners are more likely than unsophisticated ones to appeal their assessments, and a large percentage of appeals are successful.  This is one cause of the problem in (1).
  3. The quality of assessments in Cook County doesn’t meet professional standards of accuracy.  The MacArthur Foundation funded development of new mass appraisal methods which may provide more accurate results, but the Assessor has made little or no use of them.
  4. The Cook County Assessor’s office suffers from some combination of corruption and incompetence.

Continue reading Tribune exposes one scandal and misses a bigger one

An improved real estate tax can help revitalize the south suburbs

photo of a south suburban rainbow by Tom Gill (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Thanks to Crains for an article discussing the multiple difficulties of maintaining the south side of Chicago, and the south Cook County suburbs, as viable communities. There are a lot of issues here, but two of them are real estate taxes and vacant lots. The article notes that effective tax rates – taxes as a percentage of property value – in the south suburbs are more than double the average (I suppose they mean the average for Cook County). And that’s for the south suburbs as a whole; in one area your annual tax bill will be over 10% of what your real estate is worth.

So of course there are numerous vacant lots as well as rundown properties. If you spend $100,000 to build a house in an area where the effective tax rate is 10%, you’ll pay $10,000/year tax (in addition to the tax on the unimproved land value). That’s far more than your mortgage, maintenance, and utilities would be, so you don’t build it.

In fact, it’s worse, because Cook County, in practice, assesses residential properties at a higher percentage of value than vacant land – 56% higher according to the latest data(pdf) from the Illinois Department of Revenue. Even more incentive to let the property run down.

Suppose, instead, that two changes were made:

(1) Assess the value of vacant land, as well as of houses, accurately. This is the responsibility of the Cook County Asssessor.

(2) Stop giving vacant land the discount that residential property gets. Currently, commercial and industrial properties are supposed to pay a tax rate 2.5 times what houses and vacant land pay. That might not be a good idea, but it’s the law as enacted by the Cook County Board. The Board could move vacant land into the same category as commercial and industrial land.

If these two changes were made, the effective tax rate on vacant land would be triple, or more, what it is today. That changes the calculation for the land owner. Suddenly the cost of holding land vacant is higher, which means the alternative – developing or selling it – is lower. That’s important, because more development means more housing and/or more jobs.

Of course this change would raise more revenue for schools and other governments, or perhaps could be used to lower taxes on other uses. The amount of revenue isn’t certain, since the Assessor does not share information on the number or value of vacant parcels.

There is absolutely no danger that owners will pick up their vacant land and move it out of Cook County. It is here to stay. We just need to fix the incentives to encourage development in areas where it is lacking.

This is not the whole solution to the difficulties of the south suburbs, but it is one useful step that costs homeowners and governments nothing.  All it requires is for Cook County officials to do their jobs.

Residency requirements….

envelope1When the dinky suburb I live in decided to outsource the water bill processing to a firm six towns distant, I didn’t really object.  Maybe it’s more efficient to have the work done elsewhere.  But when the Cook County Assessor asked me to send a form to an address just outside the county boundary, I wonder what message he is trying to send.