![]() ![]() It adjusts for the number of visitors and daily workers commuting into cities. The crime index weighs serious crimes and violent crimes more heavily. "But the reality is that Homewood is one of the best-off suburbs" in the southern region, Dabrowski said in an email.Crime rates in Olympia Fields by year Type ![]() Dabrowski's research shows that the property tax rate grew by about 54 percent in Homewood between 20, which is more than double the rate of growth in Wheaton in the same time span (24 percent). ![]() The combination forces property taxes up faster in the south suburbs than elsewhere. The foreclosure crisis left homes empty or decrepit, further shifting the tax burden to the owners of viable homes.Īt the same time, municipalities, school districts and other taxing bodies for the most part "haven't been shrinking their footprint," said Ted Dabrowski, president of Wirepoints, a website that focuses on fiscal policy in Illinois. At the height of the crisis, about 1 in 20 homes were in foreclosure in many south suburbs-Calumet City, Hazel Crest, Markham and Olympia Fields among them-compared with a countywide peak of about 1 in 33, according to the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University. In the years after the housing bust, south Cook County was hit hard by foreclosures. Yet the pattern is clear: For south suburban homebuyers, property taxes are a considerably larger piece of the burden they'll take on with the house than it is for buyers in other parts of the metropolitan area.Ī key reason for south Cook County's higher property taxes is the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the Chicago and Northwest Indiana areas in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, which has shifted the tax burden onto homeowners. ![]() Property tax bills are highly individualized due to variables that range from lot size to senior citizen exemptions, and some of these examples are in lower-taxing collar counties. They may not zero in on the bills until "their lender tells them, with taxes this high, you're going to have to look for houses that cost less" in order to be able to afford the total monthly cost of homeownership. The buyers, whom Johnson declined to identify, were moving from another home in Flossmoor, so "they knew Flossmoor taxes," she said, but buyers looking in from other parts of the region "would say 'Oh, my God.' "įirst-time buyers who go house hunting in the south suburbs "are shocked by the property taxes," said Regina Washington, a Matchmaker Property Solutions who works primarily in that area. The house first came on the market in February 2015 and went under contract in December with her clients, who closed their purchase Feb. "They're absolutely the reason it was on the market so long. "The taxes are outrageous," said Felicia Johnson, the D'aprile Properties agent who represented the buyers. Tax rates in south Cook County municipalities are, on average, about twice those in western and northern towns. The dollar amounts are different-the sale price of the house on Braeburn Avenue went down by more than $500,000, while the taxes went up $6,700 between the 20 tax bills.īut the criss-cross paths of prices and property taxes, with one going down while the other goes up, is a painful truth of the Chicago housing market that is most acute in the south Cook County suburbs. Here's what's not so common: In that same stretch of 12 years, the home's property tax bill went up by 40 percent. A home in south suburban Flossmoor sold last week for about 50 percent below what the sellers paid for it in 2006, a common enough story in Chicago's slowly rising real estate market. ![]()
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