You tell a buyer what you pay in property taxes. They run the number, it works, everyone is happy.
Then their lender builds an escrow using a different figure, or they get their first bill after closing and it is thousands higher than the one you quoted. Sometimes that happens after the sale, which is bad. Sometimes it happens during attorney review, which kills the deal.
Your tax number is accurate for you. That is not the same as being accurate for them.
Cook County reassesses on a three-year cycle
The county does not revalue everything every year. It runs a triennial cycle, and which year your property gets reassessed depends on which township it sits in.
Per the Cook County Assessor’s assessment calendar, the recent rotation has run: North Suburbs in 2022, South and West Suburbs in 2023, the City of Chicago in 2024, North Suburbs again in 2025, and South and West Suburbs in 2026.
So Chicago was last reassessed in 2024. In the off years, city property is only reassessed if something specific triggers it, such as division work, a permit application, or other special circumstances.
That last clause matters more than it looks. A permit can pull your property into a reassessment outside the normal cycle. Owners who finally permit that basement or that rear addition before selling sometimes discover they have also invited a new valuation.
Exemptions do not come with the house
This is the one that catches buyers hardest, and sellers are usually not trying to mislead anyone.
Exemptions reduce what appears on the second-installment bill. The homeowner exemption, and senior exemptions or a senior freeze where they apply, attach to the owner and their occupancy, not to the bricks.
A long-time owner, especially an older one, can be paying a number that a new purchaser has no way to replicate. When that owner sells, the exemptions come off. The buyer’s bill resets to something quite different from the figure on the seller’s last statement.
Nobody lied. The number was simply never transferable.
How this breaks a sale
Three ways, in rough order of how often we see them.
Escrow blows up the payment. The lender does not use your bill, it estimates the buyer’s. If the estimate comes in high, the monthly payment moves, and a buyer who was qualified at the top of their range is suddenly not qualified.
Attorney review turns into a renegotiation. Illinois contracts commonly prorate taxes, and in Cook County you are prorating a bill that has not been issued yet for a year that has not finished. The proration rate becomes a negotiation, and on a reassessment year the gap between a conservative rate and an optimistic one is real money.
The buyer does the math late. They find out what the bill will actually be at week seven and decide the house no longer works.
This hits hardest on the Chicago housing that sells to first-time buyers, where the payment is already at the edge of what qualifies. A few hundred dollars a month of unexpected escrow is the difference between a closing and a dead contract, and nobody finds out until the lender runs the numbers.
If taxes are already behind, that is a different and more urgent problem. We covered it in selling your Chicago home if you are behind on property taxes and in what happens if your home goes to the Cook County tax sale.
What to do about it before you sell
Pull your actual bill rather than quoting from memory. Both installments, most recent year, with the exemption lines visible so you can see what is yours personally.
Know whether you are carrying exemptions a buyer cannot. If you have a senior freeze, your quoted number is close to meaningless to a 35-year-old buyer. Say so early rather than letting it surface at escrow.
Check whether your township is in a reassessment year. If it is, expect the proration fight.
Do not assume an appeal result carries forward. If you successfully appealed, that reduction applies to the years it applied to. It is not a permanent feature of the property.
Quote a range rather than a figure. The most useful thing you can tell a Chicago buyer is what the bill looks like without your exemptions, which is the number they will actually pay. Sellers who lead with that lose fewer deals at week seven, even though the number sounds worse up front.
Where a cash sale removes the problem entirely
The tax number is a financing problem more than a value problem. Remove the financing and most of it goes away.
There is no lender building an escrow, so a high estimate cannot reprice a buyer’s monthly payment or disqualify them. There is no appraisal. And we are underwriting the property with our own figures from the start, which means we are not going to come back at week six having recalculated the taxes and ask for a credit.
Proration still gets handled at closing, the way it does in any Illinois transaction. The difference is that it is a line item between two parties who both already know what the bill looks like, rather than a late discovery that costs you a buyer.
Two Rivers Properties has handled hundreds of Chicago-area properties and we read Cook County tax bills for a living. We make a cash offer within 24 hours, can close in as little as 7 to 14 days once title clears, and there are no commissions or closing costs on your side. Our how it works page walks through it.
What to have ready when you call
The PIN and the address. Your most recent tax bill, both installments. Which exemptions you currently receive. Whether you have appealed recently and what happened. Whether taxes are current, and if not, how far behind.
If you cannot find the bill, the PIN alone is usually enough for us to look it up.
The short version
Your property tax figure describes your situation, not the property’s. In Cook County, with a triennial cycle and exemptions that do not transfer, that gap is wide enough to end a sale.
Price it honestly up front, or sell to a buyer who has already priced it. Call Two Rivers Properties at (872) 208-1774 or get a cash offer.
This post is general information and not tax or legal advice. Assessment cycles, exemption rules and proration practice change. Confirm your situation with the Cook County Assessor and an Illinois real estate attorney.
