How Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi has fueled your property tax increase

Property taxes in Cook County have dramatically increased over the past few years and the main reason is that County Assessor, Fritz Kaegi has unfairly increased your home value, the "Assessment"

By Ray Hanania

FREE/Property Taxes, Assessor Fritz Kaegi, Fighting back/Monday Jan. 6, 2025

Your property taxes always go up a little each year. In the past, when the increase was dramatic, there was always a very specific cause that could be explored, analyzed and then adjusted if needed.

But ever since Fritz Kaegi became the Cook County Assessor, property taxes have increased in a broad and dramatic manner impacting not just individual homes but nearly every home in the county.

Fritz Kaegi is incompetent as an Assessor and he doesn't understand the office. Property taxes in Cook County are already complex as the burden traditionally has been shared by several offices.

But since Kaegi has become Assessor, the primary driving force of increased property taxes has not been countywide policies or the real rise in home values, but rather specific policies Kaegi has implemented to manipulate home values.

He does that by artificially increasing your property assessment, or its estimated value.

When your assessment goes up slightly, as it normally does as a result of economic inflation, and other factors, it results in a small increase.

But, when the Assessor dramatically increases the value of your property, without a proper analysis or comparison with homes, the property taxes increase significantly.

Homeowners are reporting that their property taxes have increased more than 120 percent over prior year property taxes. The average increase is about 45 percent. So if you were paying $6,000 a year in property taxes on a modest 2,800 square foot home, your property taxes have increased to more than $9,500 a year or more, depending on where you live.

This is in addition to normal property tax increases caused by excessive spending by local municipal governments like in Orland Park, for example where the mayor has increased fees, taxes and shifted money to his developer pals.

But even those causes of property tax increases can’t account for the gigantic increases homeowners are seeing.

Here is an overview of the causes of why your assessments and your property taxes have increased so dramatically, at record levels that have never been seen before in the past 50 years:

1 - Kaegi gutted his office and reduced the employees from 500 to 270 to make it look like he is a cost-conscious elected official and is trying to save you money by making his office more efficient. But that’s not the case. The reduction has caused many problems for homeowners.

In other words, instead of saving you money, Kaegi's "cost-cutting" is costing you money through massively higher property taxes.

2 - shifting the assessment burden from businesses to homeowners

3 - with inadequate staffing, he has applied a system of generalizing home values in a regional way by creating an "average assessment" in communities like Orland Park, Lyons, Bridgeview, Oak Lawn, Burbank and Oak Park ... instead of assessing each home individually to get an accurate assessment

4 - instead of having staff measure new homes to determine the assessment, he is using online services to measure homes and he has incorrectly measured more than 45,000 new homes in Cook County, allowing no system to correct the measurement errors. New Homes that are 2,800 square feet are being assessed at 3,500 to 4,000 square feet.

5 - Kaegi continues to lie to the mainstream news media, telling them that assessments DO NOT DRIVE PROPERTY TAXES, but that is not true., The DO DRIVE property taxes because the assessment of ah some determines what you tax should be

6 - Banks are complaining that Cook County's assessments and property taxes are out of whack because they see the 2nd Property Tax installment far exceeding the 1st Property Tax Installment. The 1st Installment is an "estimate" based on 55 percent of the property's value from the prior year. That is supposed to absorb any increases. The 2nd Installment is supposed to be a lower more accurate number. Still, because of Kaegi's mismanagement, the 2nd Installments have been 20 to 50 percent higher than the 1st Installment, resulting in sticker shock and banks notifying mortgage holders that their Escrow funds are deficient not just by a few hundred dollars but by several thousands of dollars.

You can do something about it by joining the property taxpayer protest and demanding that Kaegi be removed from office and replaced with someone who has the interests of homeowners as his number one priority.

Join the Facebook.com/Remove FritzKaegi Facebook page and share your information with others on how your property taxes have outrageously increased.

Remember, property taxes always increase, but they do so slowly, moderately, and in a way that homeowners can adjust.

The problem is that Kaegi’s incompetence and his policies to help his friends in the business community are forcing property taxes to increase dramatically.

You are the only person who can stop him. But you have to take a stand and be involved.