Cook County’s Fritz Kaegi and the Nation’s Least Transparent Property Assessment System

“A standing-room-only audience for an assessor,” Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi marveled Tuesday afternoon as he made the initial presentation at Connect Chicago Fall 2019. “In most of the country, this isn’t a thing.”

The reason it’s “a thing” in Cook County is because of what Kaegi called the nation’s least transparent property assessment system. “No one understands the system in Cook County,” he said. It’s a system he’s been working to make accessible, transparent and predictable since taking office in December 2018.

He acknowledged, “We’re not there yet, in terms of making our assessments boring.” However, Kaegi said, he and his staff have made considerable progress over the past 10 months, and he cited an uptick of investment sales in Chicago and across the county as evidence that “investors are getting comfortable with the transparency we provide.”

Not everyone would agree that the new system is a boon, though. Industry members have pointed to the higher assessments that frequently have come out of Cook County’s northern suburbs, where Kaegi is beginning what will eventually be a countywide re-valuation, as a portent of higher property taxes.

Kaegi’s aware of the criticisms, and in his opening keynote at Connect Chicago Fall 2019 he sought to explain why changes in assessments don’t always equal higher taxes. “I urge you not to extrapolate from an increase in assessments to an increase in property taxes,” he told the audience.

He also urged industry support for state-level data modernization legislation that would make more-current property-level metrics available to assessors as a matter of course. This will allow factors such as the expense of tenant amenities to be taken into account when making assessments.

At present, he said, although some industry players take pride in navigating the “idiosyncratic” valuation system, “outside investors are not charmed by our idiosyncrasies.”

Kaegi added, “We want to create a system that outsiders can understand,” whether they’re German pension funds or Singaporean wealth funds.

Pictured: Fritz Kaegi at the podium, with a standing-room-only audience.

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