Frequently Asked Questions
What services do you provide?
We provide property tax appeal assistance to homeowners. We also provide marketing and some data analysis tools for tax consultants. Feel free to read more
about our homeowner solutions and tax consultant services.
Which homeowners can use your services?
Right now we focus on homeowners with single family homes or townhomes in Cook County, Illinois.
Owners of residential condominiums should talk to their condominium board to learn about their
appeal options.
What does all this cost?
Our services are currently free for Cook County homeowners.
Why not sign up right now?
How does the Tax Appeal Wizard come up with comparable properties?
We've taken the same basic formula that the Assessor's office and tax consultants use to detemine
comparable properties, but made it easier to apply. We find homes in your neighborhood
that are similar to yours in various criteria (like age, construction, size, etc), but whose assessed values
and property taxes are lower. We then help you file a standard appeal that states since
these other similar homes have lower property taxes, you should have lower property taxes, too.
Why would I use you to help me with my appeal? Can't I do it myself or hire someone to do it?
You sure could. Before we came along there were two ways to appeal your
assessed values:
- Research and file the appeal yourself. This option was time-consuming because it required homeowners
to spend hours either on the Cook County Assessor's web site or at the Assessor's office,
sifting through hundreds of properties to find ones similar enough to their home in order
to file an effective appeal. When you file an appeal, it's important to find the right kind of
similar properties — they can't just be any home in your neighborhood.
- Hire a tax professional to do it for you. This option was easy but expensive. Some tax
consultants charge an up front fee, and if they lower your taxes, they often charge a percentage
of the money they saved you. Granted, if they don't save you anything, they (usually) won't
charge you anything.
Now there's a third option: use our Tax Appeal Wizard to file your own
appeal — at no cost — in 5 minutes or less.
Where do your get your information?
We get all our property, sales, and assessment data from public records. That information
is available for anyone — we just took it a step further and built a system around it
so that the information is easier to use and understand.
If I use the Tax Appeal Wizard am I guaranteed to lower my property taxes?
No. There's no guarantee no matter how you appeal your assessment (on your own, with us, or using a tax consultant).
But you have nothing to lose by trying.
If I use the Property Tax Wizard to appeal my assessment, does that mean I can't use a tax consultant?
Not at all! In fact, that's a very good approach that gets you the best of both worlds. Use the Property Tax Wizard to file your
appeal to the Cook County Assessor. If that doesn't lower your assessed value enough, you can
then speak with a tax consultant, who can try additional appeals to lower your taxes even further.
So, what is an "assessed value"?
It's the job of the Cook County Assessor's office to figure out the value of the
1.6 million properties in Cook County by coming up with an assessed value.
First, the Cook County Assessor tries to figure out the market value of
your property, based on prior sale data, appraisals, or other means. It then multiplies that
market value by a certain percentage based on the type of property it is. The resulting
number is your assessed value.
For example, let's say the Cook County assessor determines that your single family home has
a market value of $400,000. The multiplier for single family homes is 16%, so your assessed value
would be $400,000 x 16% = $64,000.
Every three years, the Assessor's Office takes a third
of the Cook County townships and reassesses (comes up with new assessed values for)
properties in those
townships, then mails out the results to the homeowners. Homeowners then have a short time
period in which they can appeal (protest) their new assessed values and try to get them lowered.
So what does my assessed value have to do with my property taxes?
The Cook County Treasurer uses the assessed values to determine how much to charge homeowners
for property taxes. So, the lower your assessed value is, the lower your property taxes are.
That's why appealing your property assessment is so important — if you file an appeal,
you might be able to get a lower assessed value and thus reduce your property taxes.